Canada Day and work

We are a bit behind the eight ball these days, trying to overcome the loss of productive hours when we were stalled on two shows about six weeks ago.

Ok, we were/are really behind schedule to the tune of about 300 sewing hours and I can't say how many cutting hours, so, after a meeting with my boss, I have gained two more stitchers for the next two weeks. I also managed to pass on one of the six outfits that I was assigned to someone else too, so I feel a little less pressured.

Since we were behind, we worked on Canada Day, but we always make time to celebrate. We've hosted so many parties in our room that we have the set up and clean up so organized that it takes mere minutes to accomplish. Cake, strawberries, punch and friends- what could be better?

Now for the work,

Here are a few pictures that I grabbed before leaving work today so you can see what is keeping us so busy. The silver dupioni coat is going to get an overlay of the beaded dupioni, and I have a fitting tomorrow morning with it, and the green coat I will also fit tomorrow, so it can then be trimmed up and head toward finishing.

These coats are challenging because each fabric requires different treatments to get the shape the designer is after and to keep that shape, while remaining as light weight as we can make them. The dupioni is paper thin so it was flat mounted onto a thin but very crispy sew-in interfacing cut on the cross for maximum resistance to folding flat in the pleat area. I then interlined the complete skirt area with a horsehair canvas cut on the cross as well.

The green coat is an upholstery fabric and on its own has quite a bit of body, so I didn't have to flat mount it completely but cut interfacing through the skirt area to keep it from collapsing onto itself.

I may need to stitch in some wide crin ribbon in the hems, but first things first- get it on the body, fit, altered and all the trim figured out.