fitting and pattern alterations

One of the more challenging aspects of my job is drafting patterns to fit a variety of body shapes and fitting them to the individual.

Over the years you realize that almost no one is symmetrical, but some people are less symmetrical than others, sometimes from their occupation, sometimes from bad posture or habits (like carrying a heavy bag on one shoulder for years) some from injuries or occasionally a medical condition.

This week I fit a mock up suit on an actor/dancer who has scoliosis.

I had not measured him myself nor had I fit him before, so I drafted up a jacket and trousers to his basic measurements making no special pre-adjustments, figuring I would do that in the fitting.
Here is a photo of the my fitting adjustments.

I pinned out across his back as the left side is quite dropped, and on his right, I just cut the toile open over his blade.
(a good reason to make a muslin because you can cut it open rather than guess how much to add, and you can draw on it! )

Here is a look at it on a stand.

So, what to do?

First, I let it sit for a while, getting on with some other things which gave me a bit of time to think about it all. Then I made copies of the original pattern so I had individual pieces for his right and his left sides. Two back two side panels and two fronts.

I altered the left side of the pattern for a severely dropped shoulder/side. This entailed cutting from the mid back and mid front, angling down to the side back and front panel seam and closing out a good 1.5 cm there. the side panel piece was similarly reduced. (I will refit and see if this was enough of a modification.)

On the right side, I cut open the pattern down over the blade to the waist line. I cut horizontally at the waist line allowing the panel to spread apart the amount that I determined it needed in the fitting.

This opens up the back shoulder of course, and creates a large dart.

Now, this is going to be a striped suit. 

I laid the back patterns out on the fabric and had a look at what my options were.

The lower portion of backs need to be parallel, and could be, no problem. The CB at the neck needs to end up mid stripe or give that impression as well. I knew I might have to modify the dart placement to be as discreet as possible. 

I was not sure how this would look, but I chalked it out and pinned it up and I think it looks pretty good. At the neck, the left back ends up on a red stripe and the right back ends up with a full blue stripe! Win, win situation there! I did modify the dart placement slightly and I hope it becomes less noticeable once it is sewn

I am hoping that this does the trick, but I expect to have to tweak things a little bit more with some light padding here and there so I have my fingers crossed and onwards we go. The fronts need a bit of modification as well, but minor compared to the back so we will put the shell of this together and see what else needs to be done.

losses and carrying on

Six months since I last posted.,
2016 has turned out to be so very trying, in so many ways and I am hoping it will come around and settle down a bit. This I wrote a few of months ago, and it still hasn't settled down. Now I am looking for the end of the year to close this chapter.

I/We have lost so many people, friends, colleagues, mentors, individuals who have connected the past of our profession to the present and future that it seems overwhelming.
I started to list them and I had to stop.

Carrying on is what we have to do and in that spirit we continue on.

The studio is up and functioning, and I am hoping that the scent of scented candles will eventually go away in time. (this sentence brought to you from the department of redundancy department)
I am putting my hopes in time and Febreze unscented. It has been an enjoyable space to work in so far. The cats from the other space have been brought over and they are doing their job, keeping those pesky mice at bay. Jay's kiln is wired in and he is producing his beautiful work again. Andy and Rob are still organizing the wood and machinery and before getting back into the swing of things making cutting boards and such, they are building some very nice feral cat winter shelters.

I finished a project for a client that I felt was a bit of an experiment, making a suit long distance and doing the fitting over Skype. I am happy to say that it worked out quite well which is a relief for me. Here is the jacket in process. Silvia did a fabulous job with it, and I made the trousers and waistcoat.

The first studio project though was something sparkly, four jackets for Million Dollar Quartet. I usually do projects that allow for me to fit the actors but this time it was long distance and we did it with measurements and photos and a couple of cross your fingers and hope it all works out. Which they did, so a win win for all of us. Design: Cory Sincennes for the Citadel Theatre, Edmonton Alberta

Poor Elvis, I don't think I got a finished shot of that jacket. :(

I have a few more projects coming up and some pictures of some work that happened over the past six months. I also want to give some thought and discussion about training new tailor/cutters which is a topic that will be very pertinent in the near future.

Suits: the finishing details

Well, we are reaching the finishing stage for our suits. I thought I would share a few photos of the finishing details here.

Marking the lapel buttonhole, ready to go to the machine. You can see the way the under collar has been hand stitched onto the jacket and how the collar end has been finished

Here is a view of the inside of the back neck. I cut two piece top collars nowadays because a lot of the fabrics we use don't respond to being stretched and shrunk. This one actually is a stretch wool! A challenge to work with, but if carefully handled you get results like this.

A close up of the finished jacket front.

Here is a view of the top collar of a linen jacket, nicely matching at the centre back. This one had top stitching details on the patch pockets and the front edges.

Front view

Back view.















                                                             



Here is a silk, linen and wool windowpane check jacket with a notch collar and patch pockets.
This one turned out very nicely. I am not sure how well it will stand up to wear and tear, but for now it looks great.

This one needs a final press and we don't have a stand that shows it well. Wait! did I forget to put the lapel buttonholes in?
No, I think they're in, just very subtle. DB in a tone on tone stripe wool. I guess I will check the jacket tomorrow just to be sure.

This one is one of the last minute additions, in the fitting it went from a two button to three ( good thing we hadn't taped off the roll line and had the front edge still basted! ) a ticket pocket was also added at that time. This is a black wool tone on tone herringbone stripe. These shoulders have a flatter look that the other jackets, the seam allowances have been pressed open at the shoulder/crown of the sleeve, to give less shoulder expression. They have just a little sleeve head of soft lambswool instead of a canvas sleevehead.










Tomorrow, we have to get the last jacket wearable for Tuesday, finish a couple pairs of trousers and get back to finishing our doublets and robes which need to be loaded out by Friday. It will be another busy week, and I am looking forward to the deadlines being over!

Back to making suits

I had been working on a post to describe my job, but I was having a hard time writing it down in some kind of blog friendly manner. I think it will have to work on it a bit longer. The working title is "There is no Formula". I think I should get a plaque that says that and mount it on the door to our workroom. :)

Anyway, I haven't given up on writing it, but it will take some time to do.

So, instead, I will show you what I have been up to lately.
I am still in the land of the 16th century and making doublets and trunkhose- a pattern for a doublet toile is in the top photo.  We had a fitting of the toile and I am in the middle of marking the pattern alterations. This one will be made in leather- just waiting for the designer to buy it.


In addition to the 16th century, I get to jump ahead to the 20th century and make a few 1930's suits.
Hurray!
I have some great style and cutting references for this period in my collection, and I was happy to put them to good use.
We will be making seven suits for three different gentlemen, and the first one off my cutting table is this one in linen.

This is the real fabric, basted together like toile- so the pockets are not in, (I usually just thread mark the breast pocket placement, but Susy put together a little fake welt) the patch pocket is just a sample where Susy tried out different thread colours for the possibility of a machine topstitch detail.
The lapels are just quickly basted to the chest canvas, and there are generous inlays left for possible alterations. Luckily, I measured this guy myself so I was quite sure of the numbers, and it all went well in our fitting- not many changes at all.  The sleeves need to be lengthened, and the designer wanted a peak lapel, instead of the notch lapel I was trying to sell her. Other than that, we are good to go ahead, finish this one and get started on the other three for him.

 The trousers are high waisted, double pleated, with slant pockets, a grown-on waistband, and cuffs. They are lined in the fronts to just below the knee, and still need back pockets installed. For some reason I marked them an inch lower than they should be- slip of the ruler I guess- good thing we didn't put them in!
They look tapered from this camera angle but they are about 19  inches at the hem, wide, but not overly so. The hem width needs to work with the person's height and shoe size as well as the style of the period.

Almost finished or A rack of suits

Oh, we are almost finished the project!
I started bagging up the suits today. I tagged them and double checked everything.
It is very gratifying to have accomplished all this work.

We made five complete tail suits, which included altering the shirts, adding dance briefs and quick changing the bow ties by snapping them to the collars.
We also made 9 other suits, five of which were three piece suits, plus an extra pair of trousers.
We put period collars on the shirts, and quick changed some of them as well.

I put the last eight buttonholes in today as well, so that is done too.

I need to box up the remaining fabric, finish up my paperwork and arrange delivery. I am looking forward to seeing them worn when the show techs.

Next week I start back at my regular gig, and I will be working on three very different shows: Fiddler on the Roof, Mary Stuart, and Blithe Spirit. It should be interesting, and I will keep you posted.

suit fitting

Finally!

We've been waiting and waiting to get this suit fit, and today was the day.

The trousers are really too long, but that is easily fixable and since I had barely enough fabric to make this, I thought better too long than too short.

So this is a 2 button SB early 1930's inspired suit, and it is my favourite fabric so far of all the fabrics I have been given to work with. I don't know where it came from, but when they tried to order more, it was unavailable.

I had made up a quick toile because I didn't have extra fabric in case I goofed, so the fit is pretty good right off the bat. The sleeves need a bit of tweaking, they are cut with a dance gusset to allow more movement without pulling the body of the jacket too much.

Other than that and a tweak to adjust for his lower right side, there isn't too much to change, so finishing it shouldn't be too troublesome.

The difficult part may be finding buttons that we like in the correct size range. When waistcoats were more common, you could always buy four sizes of matching buttons: overcoat, suit front, waistcoat and cuff buttons. For quite a while now, the waistcoat has been out of style and that size of button almost non-existent. I can't remember what line size it is off the top of my head, but it measures 5/8". Since the buttons need to match, they will be a challenge to locate.

If anyone has a source for them I'd love to know about it. Remember they must be traditional suiting buttons though!

making progress on our suits

We are making progress with our suits and here is the one that I squeezed out of the smallest amount of yardage!

It has patch pockets and in the first photo you can see that we supported the wool where the pockets are stitched on with a piece of bias tricot fusible. I use fusible very sparingly, if at all, but this is one area where it makes sense to me to use it. If you didn't use fusible, a piece of silesia would be the traditional support behind the pocket stitching.

The jacket is now ready for the sleeves to be basted in for our fitting, which should be next Friday if everything goes as planned.

Once we have the fitting, I will mark any alterations for fit and change anything the designer would like changed. The sleeves will come out, the shoulders opened, since they are just basted. The collar will be taken off, and then the roll line is taped, and the lapels can be properly pad stitched. The fronts will be taped, the lapels and front linings put in before the shoulders are stitched finally, then we are on the way to being finished with this one.

Did I mention already that I love this fabric? Very period, good weight and drape, so it is very nice to work with.

Today I also managed to get the information on the sparkly part of the job, so stay tuned!

1930's suits

I am in the midst of making a variety of 1930's style suits for one of our upcoming shows.

This one has a single breasted waistcoat, with 2 pockets. The jacket is single breasted notch collar, hip pockets are patch with flaps, and one outside breast welt pocket, no vent and it will have a topstitched detailing.

The trousers are double outward pleated with slant pockets, a straight waistband, and cuffed bottoms.

I am getting a variety of fabrics to work with.

This fabric on my table happens to be a really beautiful patterned wool, that I like a lot!

It has some weight, which is nice for the feel of the time period.

I especially like the trousers of this time period to hang with some weight, so when the actor is tap dancing, the trousers hang and sort of move up and down rather than twist in the wind like really modern light weight fabrics have a tendency to do.

I have been trying to cut directly into the cloth rather than make a toile because our designer availability is limited. That is fine except in this case, I got barely 4m of wool for a three piece suit. It also had a chunk missing on one end so that meant a toile was in order so I could get a fit and then try to lay out all the pieces on the fabric in the most careful and frugal way.

I really didn't expect to manage it but I did!

I got it all cut out, then I realized they had shorted me on the lining as well.

Oh well, it is in Susy and Karen's hands now, trousers are ready to fit again and the coat and waistcoat are well underway.

I'll try to take some photos as we go.

This time of year always feels strange, because we are working ahead, but haven't had many fittings, the casts are just starting in to rehearsal, and the designers schedules are sporadic at best, but in another week or two the energy in the building will change and things are going to get a lot more hectic. Mark my words!

Extreme styles#2 Drape

These designs, available from Chicago Woolen Mills in their 1943 booklet should make you give your head a shake! There's a lot of online discussion about drape so this should add fuel to the fire.

Above you can see the basic drape model in full colour along with the description

NOTE: when ordering, observe that these DRAPE MODELS have extra wide shoulders, fullness across chests and in sleeve heads. They tailor best in the softer fabrics.

Not too extreme a look- broad shoulders, nipped in waist, strong and ready to take on the world kind of look.

Then we have these two pages of Extreme Drape Models for Young Men. Interestingly, they come with warnings that you may not order trousers wider than specified in the chart because of the War measures in effect, but wow, I guess the jackets were exempt- maybe they could lay them out with a narrower trouser and use the same amount of fabric as in a regular suit- I don't know.

Quite the silhouette though, don't you think?

I'm out of town for a week so I'll catch up with you later.

corset suit project

More camera issues- my batteries were dead the day that I had my first fitting of the "corset" I am modeling at the upcoming Creative Festival in Toronto. The only person with a camera handy was Linda from Farthingales (the driving force behind the project) who snapped this one as Jennie was just pinning me into the jacket.

I was expecting to be fit in a toile, but Jennie was daring and had cut right into the fabric for both the skirt and the jacket. I don't have a picture of the sketch to show you, but you can see the corset boning details and that she has cut some of the panels of the jacket and the skirt on the bias. The skirt will be getting some kind of detailing at the hem as far as I can remember. There will be sleeves. Honest.

The jacket will fasten at the front with regular buttons and holes and the lacing will be in the back. It was much too big in the waist, even after the lacing was drawn as tightly as possible, so I think she will be taking at least three more inches out there.

I will have to inspect it more closely next week at my next fitting as I'd like to have a better look at the way she is dealing with the transition between the laced section at the back and the upper portion with the collar.

I had a momentary Cinderella moment when she brought out the vintage shoes a half size smaller than what I normally take. They were beautiful and I squeezed into them without removing any toes!

This week-end I believe there is a meeting with the milliner who will create a hat to go with the look, and one of the theatrical jewellers has also made some jewellery crafted something to go along with it.

I saw some of the other corset projects that people were building and they range from true period corsets to very modern interpretations. Linda is showing the progress of a few here.

SB suit

This is not a very good photo (ok, its a terrible photo)but I am putting it here to remind myself at least, that I am happiest cutting suits and now that I have (with Lela's help especially) finished with the doublets and trunkhose, I will have nothing but suits to cut for a while.

This suit was made of a very, very lightweight wool-I could see daylight through it. It was skillfully handled by Karen -waistcoat, Denise-trousers and Silvia- jacket.

I opted for an interlining/flatmounting of washed and preshrunk silesia to give more substance to the waistcoat, and I lined the trousers fully both front and back, top to bottom. There is nothing worse than seeing stage light through the unlined back of a pair of trousers with fabric like this.

The jacket had a piece of bias cut silesia interlining in the upper shoulder area to mask the shoulder pad insertion but was otherwise constructed in the usual manner.

I didn't fit a cotton toile of this- I cut right into the fabric, for a skeleton baste up- and this was its one and only fitting after that. Small changes to make- trousers too long for instance but otherwise off it goes in a whirlwind. It would be nice to do this a bit more slowly- but that won't happen anytime soon I guess.

I will revisit this pattern since I will be making more suits for this gentleman this year- another SB, a DB, a military uniform, and a set of tails. Making this many suits for one actor doesn't happen very often but I am looking forward to it.

Striped Suit

Stripes.
I fit the jacket today that I think we have to stripe, but now the designer if feeling iffy about it. We will look at it again tomorrow I guess and hopefully move forward with a firm decision.


So, in the meantime, to keep you amused (and me sane), here's a photo of a different striped outfit that we made a few years ago. This is "Billy" from the show Anything Goes, dressed as a gangster. I loved this suit. We make a lot of interesting and unusual garments but I really love making suits and it was a lot of fun doing this bit of exaggeration.
Designed by one of my favourite designers- Patrick Clark.
(I wish we had a clip of him talking about Anything Goes because the set and costumes were fabulous, but that was pre web cast days here at the theatre. If you like, you can listen to him talk about costuming for a production of Oklahoma! here.
No we didn't create the stripes for this- the wool just came that way.

1960's suit toile

Our designer on this show arrived this week, and rehearsals started as well, so we're off! I didn't have a chance to speak with him about the design before I started this, so I did a mock-up or "toile" in a heavy muslin. It a nice double breasted early 1960's suit for a man with quite a barrel chest so it doesn't fit as nicely on the stand as it did on him.
Whenever I make a muslin that fits really well, I kind of kick myself cause I think I should have just gone for it, and I wonder if the designer thinks "why did you do a mock-up?" Then I stop and think about the fact that the design was single breasted to start and a phone call with the design assistant resulted in a change to DB just as I was finishing up the SB pattern, and what if the actor shows up 2 sizes bigger or smaller? or the pockets looked off?

Anyway, there were minor changes, so this one is cut out and the trousers are made already and the jacket is in process.