sewing tips: inserting jacket zippers

      I am sure that it is something many people already know, but for me I am not routinely inserting zippers into coats, but when you need to do it, you figure it out and get on with it. This sample represents a coat with a centered zipper, an offset facing, and has a Peter Pan collar. It was also quilted, but that is neither her nor there really, just an added layer!

Step one. My pattern is Nett so all the lines are sewing lines. I have my centre front stitched through the quilting and the backing. Press the seam allowances of the CF back to give it a light crease.

Measure from the centre of the zipper teeth to the edge of the zipper tape. That is 1.5 cm by my ruler. 

Mark a line on the CF body seam allowance  1.5 cm away from the CF. 

This is a guideline for sewing the zipper in. lay the edge of the zipper tape against the drawn line. Stitch the zipper in approximately .5 mm in from the edge of the tape.

Fold the CF edge back on the crease you ironed in. Check to see that the teeth are in a good position. The stitch line is 1 cm away from the CF line.

Next the facing. The next stitching line needs to be marked 1 cm from the CF. Mark a line 1 cm inward from the CF on your facing. This line will be sewn to the previous line of stitching you just created. 

You can work it out so you have a line to visually run the edge of the zipper tape against or you can just pin the facing in place and stitch line to line. 

The facing seam and the previous stitch line for the zipper are right on top of each other.

Done? Now you will fold back the CF of the body again and see that on the inside, the facing is now set back 1 cm back from the CF edge. 

Nice! If you have a stand collar where all the seam allowances will live up inside the collar you can go ahead and catch all the CF  layers down by topstitching, or if you are careful, and things look fab, stitch either just beside the facing seam through to teh fronts, or edgestitch the facing edge from the inside. 

If you have a collar such as I do- a peter pan style, one that requires the seam allowances of the neckline to be opened, then you must wait until the collar is installed before topstitching the CF.

 This type of garment has a fabric facing around the whole neckline. The only place the facing and body are attached at this point is the CF zipper insertion.

 Bag out/ prepare your collar as usual. 

Open up the front body and facing at the CF so they are flat. Match the CF seam of the under-collar to the CF of the body at the neck. Pin or baste it all around the neck.  Stitch*.  (*it just may make it easier to have one section already stitched while you pin and prep the top collar/facing neckline side). Pin or baste the top collar all around the neck line of the facing, pushing the seam allowances of facing/zipper seam away from the CF. Stitch.

As I said you can do this all in one go it you wish.

Here you can see what happens at the CF area. 

Trim, clip and press the seam allowances of the neckline open, on the body and the facing. 

Press and whack it with a hammer if it needs encouragement!

Turn right sides out and check the placement of everything.

Go back inside the facing at the neck and hand stitch or machine the opened neckline seam allowances together face to face.

I think you are done. 

Topstitch as desired.

One advantage to this is that all the seam allowances are not all concentrated at the CF which can get quite bulky. 

Childen's wear drafting and trying to find information

     I recently needed to produce a few garments for a child, and it occured to me that I had only one drafting book to reference for children's wear.

That book is the Winnifred Aldrich's  Metric Pattern Cutting for Children's Wear and Babywear. 

I have an older edition so out of curiosity I borrowed a newer edition just in case. I found there were  some changes to some of the basic drafts which made me wonder. 

Things like the calculations for neck width used 1/5 neck minus 2mm now its 1/5 neck plus 2 mm on some drafts.Were there errors in the older drafts or just typos? Strange.

     I wanted to find a draft for a one piece snowsuit. It is not a garment covered in the Aldrich book. The child would arrive after quarantining, go for fittings, alterations would be done there, and then be on camera two days later.   They didn't want a waist seam in the snowsuit, so I had to get it right the first time. I needed to find basic torso girth measurements for children so I could have some kind of reference point. "It shouldn't be difficult" I thought to myself....... Anyway, it sent me down a rabbit hole of internet searching.

I did finally find a study of children's measurements here, done in 1939. So I waded through all of this and got a number range for height. 

I called friends with children too! "how tall is your child? Can you take a measurement of his torso girth for me?"

What a run around for information! Oh I forgot to mention, all I received was height and a chest measurement taken by a parent. That is all I was working from. What a business! and let's not talk about the deadlines.

What else did I find? I found a snowsuit draft on a Russian website, which I downloaded for reference and I could follow along looking at the diagrams. My desktop translated the pages, except for the sizing tables!! because they are photos not text! Drat!

I was on Pinterest and I found an Italian children's cutting book. In Italian, of course. Again, I could follow along by "reading" the diagrams. But I don't think there was a one piece snowsuit draft there either. That book, by Antonio Donnanno is available here in English.

I decided to basically stick with the Aldrich using the flat overgarment blocks for jackets and the flat two piece trouser block, and melded them together so they looked right ot me.

Once I made the basic draft, one of the things I had to take into account was the thinsulate lining. My base pattern was for the lining, but the outer fabric layer needed to be bigger than the under layer. I think I read somewhere about re-calculating the draft for the amount and type of insulation being used, maybe it was on the russian drafting site, maybe on a german site....I can't remember now.

Anyway, in the end, I figured out how much bigger to make the shell and made a pattern for that too. 

It was lots of work mentally and then a lot of work just cutting and sewing them. (yes, plural! I needed to cut two of them) I think they turned out really well, The best part is that they fit. I breathed a sigh of relief. 

We did get stuck waiting for zippers to arrive, but all in all it went fairly well. 

The shutdowns have made getting supplies a bit more challenging! So many things are being shipped its a miracle everything gets to where it is going.

Christopher Plummer 1929-2021

 Such sad news yesterday that Christopher Plummer had passed away.

I made a number of costumes for him over the years.

I cut his costumes for King Lear 2002 that went on to Broadway later. 

Sewn and constructed as usual by my talented team

Designed by Clare Mitchell, directed by Sir Jonathan Miller.

This one was for Caesar and Cleopatra. 

Designed by Paul Tazewell. 

Photo by David Hou.