Tailoring Course - Week Three

I have got a bit behind with my reporting on the course thanks to the IT problems I am having. These should be resolved toward the end of next week when my lovely new PC is hopefully going to be delivered and installed.

Last week, my homework for my course was to create the canvas for the front of the jacket. And here is one of the canvases.

There are three layers at the top, all attached with zig zag machine stitching. The zig zagged line that runs up the middle (ish) of the canvas is where the dart that is formed by the bottom of the princess seam is cut out and corresponds with the lower section of the princess seam that runs down the front of the jacket. The main piece is the bit you saw last week laid out on the canvas “on the squiff”. The upper section is formed from one layer of the same canvas, but cut on the straight grain, and one layer of fusible chest padding which is first fused to the straight grain canvas piece, then zig zagged into position. The unit thus formed is then zigzagged onto the main canvas piece. Only then is the dart, which was marked on the wrong side of the canvas section so the layers don’t obscure it, cut out from the canvas and the raw edges butted up to each other and zigzagged closed. When I am more confident and practiced with the various techniques I am hoping to do an explanation of some of the things I am learning on the course, complete with photos, but currently lack the confidence to post such things until I am sure I am not talking rubbish.

At class this week I was suffering from a mental block involving a fairly straightforward alteration which frustrated me almost to the point of tears because I understood it enough to know what I was trying to achieve in theory but absolutely could not get it from theory to practice. I definitely need to practice that part of the class a lot more. The tutor was very patient with me but I was feeling sooo stupid by the end of the day.

This week I was shown how to tack in the front canvas, lining up the cut and closed dart area on the canvas with the corresponding seam on the jacket and working out from there, smoothing the two layers together as I went to make sure I had no bubbles in there. Then the shoulders were tacked and flat tacked and it was time for my first proper fitting. I stood in front of the mirror just grinning like a maniac because it fit soooo nicely. It felt comfortable, wasn’t pulling on me anywhere and even better, it needed very few alterations, so evidently the hours of effort I put into the flat measurements must have paid off.

The first stage of the fitting was done without the sleeve in. My alterations involved lifting the shoulders at the neckline at the front. This straightened the centre front and the hemline, which were dipping at the centre of the body. The centre front line had to be moved out slightly to give me a bit more room and a better hang on the front pieces, and the back neck line was changed a little to fit it close to my neck as it came over the shoulders. The breakline was changed so that it broke higher up and I could have three buttons, rather than the two it was originally designed to have. The tutor also redrew the lapel shape slightly to make it a tad smaller, though I am not certain whether I am going to go with the new shape, or keep the old one. She also pinned out the shape of the proposed pocket flap which will go in the lower seam of the waist belt with an inseam pocket installed beneath the flap.

The sleeve was then pinned on, starting at the shoulder seam and keeping the sleeve seam allowance correct but hanging the sleeve where it needed to go on the armhole, which was not actually the line of the original armhole on the pattern. The ease required to make the sleeve hang correctly was ascertained by pinning the front and back sleeve onto the armhole in such a way that the ease looked right and allowed the sleeve to hang properly straight. These two pins mark the pitch points and the extent of the ease and their placement has to be marked on the armhole part of the garment with precision. I got a bit confused with the sleeve setting in and need to go back to the tutor for clarification, but the sleeve was pinned in place then I tack marked the armhole all around the edge of the sleeve before unpinning the sleeve and revealing a very wonky armhole line. This had to be smoothed out and tacked in properly before I could proceed.

I had used the two piece sleeve from Marfy 1444 in place of the one piece sleeve the pattern came with. The sleeves did fit beautifully into the armholes. My problem came with the line up of the back princess line seam and the back seam on the sleeve. These are ideally supposed to match up exactly and mine didn’t because the sleeve was from a different pattern. I had to displace the back princess seam, taking out the same amount on one side as I added back to the other side of the seam so that the seam itself was higher up the back and met up with the sleeve seam. Well, I understood the theory, I understood the practice. But could I actually carry out the alteration? No I could not. I faffed about for ages and had to have masses of help and about ten explanations before I got the alteration tacked into place. When I came to sew the alteration in permanently last night both sides looked a bit odd and one side had come untacked part way down triggering a brief panic attack and a need for cake.

The alterations at the fitting are done on only one side of the garment, so I spent much of Monday transferring the alterations from the right side to the left side of the jacket. To transfer the markings from the altered side, the jacket was folded in half at centre back, right sides inwards and all the outer seam allowance edges matched up and pinned together. Sort of like the photo below. (sorry for the poor photo but hopefully it gives the idea).

I also pinned through some of the seam allowances on the rest of the jacket to keep it all neatly together. Then, starting at the outer edges, I stuck pins through from the altered side to the unaltered side, wax chalked between the pins, placed pins on the unaltered side in a smooth line and tacked the line into place on the unaltered side. The two sides can then be lined up again and pins poked back through to make sure the tacked lines are in exactly the same place on both pieces. The principle is the same for seam alterations. I put the two seams together and ensured the seam allowances/tacking exactly matched so the jacket was totally the same both sides. The armholes were done the same way. Initially the front canvas remains in the jacket, just until the front alterations have been transferred as you don’t want to disturb any of the alterations you pinned out. However, once the lines have all been successfully transferred on the front, the canvas comes back out again so that the jacket can be permanently sewn up and the seam allowances trimmed and pressed.

Homework for this week is to sew the peplum seams and the main vertical jacket seams permanently cut the fabric belt section and a length of canvas to support it, and attach the belt and canvas together with tacking in self colour thread. I was very lucky. Apart from the back seam that had to be altered a bit, all my vertical seams remained unaltered so I was able to take the flat tacking out and sew the seams straight away. It was slow though as I didn’t want to have to pick the tacking out of the completed seams so I took a few tacking stitches out at a time just ahead of my machine foot, sewed up to the next tacking stitch, then removed that and sewed a bit more of the seam.

It would seem that next week we will do the collar, the lining and the in seam pocket and flap. The collar is drafted from the jacket, the collar pattern piece is not used.