Both ends of the size spectrum

Last week I was able to get a couple of fittings on the Bekishe coats that we are making.
These are traditional long coats traditionally worn at weddings.
The designer wanted very soft construction and not necessarily a perfect fit, so these will get some breakdown later. They have only a single layer of hymo for support, no shoulder padding and they will only get a half lining to keep everything soft.
I was happy that they worked out so well. though one could argue perhaps too well, since the fit was pretty spot on.

We have four of these Bekishe and two of the Kapoteh to make in sizes from 36" chest to a 52" chest.

When I am cutting multiples, I prefer to have one prototype fitting to see if I have interpreted the style to the designer's satisfaction. Unfortunately, we didn't have that opportunity, so I was cutting right into fabric hoping that both the fit and the style were OK.

I don't grade my patterns up or down to get the different sizes. I just draft each of them as I go. Grading isn't a skill that I really have- I understand the premise but I really don't have practical experience with it. I tend to draft one pattern in which I work out the proportions I think I will use on the other sizes, ( the amount of waist suppression, the size of the panels at the waist, overall length, the amount of flare in the skirt) make notes and then draft each one separately. Drafting new takes less time than trying to teach myself a new skill set that may or may not be the best choice in the situation.

In the top photo, I am dealing with the smaller end of the size range and the bottom photo shows the larger.

The gentleman in the top photo I had never seen before, I just got his numbers and a photo to work from so I felt very gratified to have such a good fit.

In the bottom photo is someone I have made for before, but hadn't done anything like this for him. 

(you know, I keep certain patterns but honestly I rarely get them out and use them again, not that an eighteenth century coat pattern would have made life any easier)

The challenge for me was to try to quantify my draft in a larger size. 

Most drafting systems are based on a 5'8"tall man with a 36" or 38" chest and as you draft for sizes past about a 44" chest, the formula starts to go wonky. Things like the depth of the armhole and the width of the back neck.

That's when I think it comes in handy to be willing to adapt and adopt bits and pieces of knowledge as you go. It also helps to have a lot of experience, to lessen the worry when cutting right into the fabric.

I do wish I had more time to analyse things like this while at work, but for now I just try to scribble notes on the pattern as I go and hope that at some future time I can go back and look at it, and it will make sense. 

Tomorrow I have one more to cut out in fabric, and the linings and bits of the three I fit this week to cut so they can be finished. 

Then I can start my patterns for the next show. Onwards!

Shirt Rant

Shirt Rant
I have been lurking for a while in an mens internet clothing forum and it is an eye opener in many ways.
Since I am concerned in my day to day work with theatrical tailoring, most of the styling I deal with is more period than current. 
That isn't to say that I have had my head buried in the sands of style.
I have been watching the modern suit and it's changes.

How short can they make those jackets?  How narrow can they make the trousers? How ill fitting are most of these suits on your average guy?

It isn't limited to the suit either. The shirt, once a comfortable garment is now tightened and modified without consideration to the person wearing it or its function. Worse, it is marketed  as something you can custom order to your own measurements. Just fill in the handy chart. Now there are masses of guys who have been measuring themselves (a bad idea) and sending in orders for slimmer and slimmer fitting shirts only to find they cannot bend their arms or wonder why there is still some excess fabric not plastered to their bodies.

On the plus side, the trend of the suit and learning about fit and clothes that go beyond a pair of sweats or jeans and a t-shirt is commendable.
But, these guys have little idea how a garment should fit, no idea of the limitations of fit especially in the online MTM business, yet they order anyway only to bemoan the ill fitting product they receive in the mail. They just don't know what they don't know. If you know what I mean.


I have been tempted to put in my two cents when I see things like this, but I just don't think I have the time to try to explain and enlighten the masses. Heck, I can barely find enough time these days to post on my own blog! 

So, shirts:
A shirt is a washable garment to wear next to the skin that, historically speaking,  that acts as a buffer between the body with its oils and perspiration and the more expensive and less washable over garment.
It provides both coverage and style. 
A shirt should have ease through the body. (A shirt is not a fitted bodice)

How much ease? Well a close fitting jacket is typically 4" larger than the chest measurement overall, so a shirt should have more ease than that. I have seen drafts with as little as 6" of ease total to 10 or 12" and more of ease.
The depth of the shirt armhole is generally lowered to allow for an easier fit. 

The rule is:
The smaller a garment gets, and the less ease it has, the  more it needs to be shaped to follow the three dimensionality of the body.


The shirt has limitations in fit.

 The fit is achieved through the seams and occasionally, vertical darts in the body. The front of a shirt is straight. The neck point therefore is much closer to the CF line than a jacket neck point is. In a jacket, the shifting of the neck point away from the CF is basically creating a dart in the front. This, among other things, allows the armhole to be closed down in size, and be shaped more like the body it is on. 
Simplistically speaking, in a shirt, some of the armhole size at the front  is reduced by sloping the shoulder  but there is a limit to how much can be taken out before it causes a problem fitting the actual shoulder. Surplus fabric could be taken out below the pecs by a vertical dart, but unless there is a dart or a seam going either into the armhole or up through a front yoke or bib front,  a shirt will naturally have some excess fabric in the front armhole.

This is generally not a problem until you start reducing the chest ease excessively, and raising the armhole.

The centre back of the shirt is cut on the straight. There is usually a yoke that allows for some shaping in the back over the blades. The armhole can be reduced in the back by shaping the yoke seam, as well as by some slope of the shoulder. There is a limit to the amount of fitting and armhole reduction here as well, because in men, the upper back is often more developed than the chest. There is also a range of motion that must be accommodated . Movement of the arms is generally forward, expanding the muscles of the back, and this needs to be allowed for.
A shirt will naturally drape off the upper back and the fabric will not sit sucked up against the body at waist level.
A shirt can have vertical darts under the blades to reduce excess fabric in the body and provide a cleaner fit. I have read over and over the advice to just take in the side seams. This is not going to do it, especially if you have prominent blades or a developed upper back.

The last seams available for shaping on a shirt are the side seams.  You can use them to reduce from the circumference of the chest to the size at the waist but again, only to a certain degree. You have to increase back out over the hip though. If the hip is too tight, the shirt will naturally ride up and blouse out at the waist.

What about armholes and sleeves? Traditionally, shirt armholes were straighter than jacket or vest armholes and the  sleeves were cut with a flatter and wider sleeve crown. 

A shirt usually allowed the arms to be raised close to horizontal without pulling the sides up.
If the ease in the body is reduced, the armhole is both smaller and more shaped. When this is combined with an attempt to reduce the armhole size by other means, the sleeve is now in a dilemma. It still needs to be wide enough to encompass the arm and the expansion of the muscles in movement.  It still needs to allow for some raising of the arm so it still needs a relatively flatter crown to go into an increasingly un-shirtlike armhole. What happens then is that the sleeve looks strangely bunched up when in a resting position. If the sleeve shape is modified to be more like a fitted bodice, or jacket, you limit the easy raising of the arms. 

It just feels like a no win situation doesn't it? I don't think the MTM shirt sellers can really be totally blamed because they are just working with the numbers the well meaning customer inputs into the system. You just can't manipulate the pattern randomly either, it is much more complex than for example reducing the size at any one point. Perhaps they should be defining the fit parameters and what they can modify to an individual and maybe avoid the returns and remake requests they must get on a regular basis. 

My thanks to the anonymous photo donors for their willingness to ask for advice online. 

End of rant.

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.

Reece industrial buttonhole

I am starting out the New Year with the end of the current project in sight. I have to say it was difficult to peel me away from taking a well deserved break over the holidays. In fact finishing the project was looming ever larger in my mind to the point where I was feeling overwhelmed with the  thought of getting back to it.
In the end, once I started it wasn't as big as it had become in my imagination.

Today, for instance, I headed over to Evan's place to deal with the buttonholes. I have about 76 buttonholes to put into the various jackets and waistcoats, and I am going to use his Reece industrial buttonhole machine to do them.
I remember the days when we had to make the buttonholes by hand, and as satisfying as it is to do that, it takes time- probably a good 15 to 20 minutes per buttonhole once you know how to do them and you get into the groove. Luckily, we have acquired a couple of these machines at work, and they do a very good job and save a vast amount of time and money. Evan has invested in one of his own, which is the one I will use for my job.

This machine will make either a regular keyhole buttonhole or an "eyeless" buttonhole. It uses two threads and a gimp, and stitches a knotted chain stitch over the gimp.
The buttonhole is marked on the wrong side of the garment- usually by chalk marking a lengthwise guideline and a cross mark for the centre of the "eye".  I have thread marked the placement on these white epaulettes, as I don't like to mark up white fabric with a coloured line. The area around the buttonhole is stabilized by hand basting, after the marks are made.
The size of the buttonhole is regulated by a sliding mechanism with a wing nut on the right side of the machine bed. It will make buttonholes from approx 3/8" up to 2 1/2" long.
The gimp and lower thread feed up from the underside, and the needle thread is on top.
There is a cutting blade that automatically cuts the keyhole and a portion of the length, which I asked to have removed in case I don't get the positioning correct the first time. I can easily unpick the correct thread and pull the chain stitch out quickly in order to redo the buttonhole again.

The garment is placed wrong side up on the machine bed and clamped into position as you can see here. Once it is clamped in position, you engage the clutch and push the finger lever to start the process.
The spreaders engage and pull the fabric taut, as the stitching starts. The upper portion of the machine moves from front to back and returns as the stitching is complete. It is loud and fast. Under 5 seconds per buttonhole I would say.

Once it is finished, the clamps release and you pull the needle thread gently, then clip it and pull the garment out, catching the lower thread and gimp under the holder and then cut the thread, leaving a tail of threads hanging off the garment and also on the machine.
All that remains then is to secure the threads and remove the basting, cut the hole and sew on the buttons.

So, I did some today, and I will go over and do the rest on Monday and we will be 76 steps closer to finishing.

year end thoughts and photos

Year end? Where did the time go?

I had planned on doing some posting while I was guiding Lela through drafting and fitting body coats, but it fell by the wayside due to her mother's illness and subsequent passing. We did get through quite a lot of drafting and fitting but I didn't have the wherewithal to document it as I have done in the past.

These are a few of the last things we've been working on- the tailcoats with the Ballet gusseted sleeves- they don't hang as cleanly as a regular sleeve it is true but you can raise your arms! The fitting I did last week was for these checked trousers with a dark grey jacket. I don't know why I like the checked trousers so much, but I do! I guess they feel rather cheery and they stand out compared to the more sombre grey suits that we had been making.

On Friday, we collectively decided that it was time to put down the shears and needles for a break before Christmas. I have 76 buttonholes to do (by machine of course) so I got all those marked and basted and ready, planning on getting over to my colleague's place to have them done when I was just hit by fatigue and I gave in to it. They can wait until the New Year. I just need a break, so I am taking one, since it has been a very busy year so far.

I wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2013!

Tailcoat layout

I have been so busy these last few weeks. All I can do is check in here and show you what is keeping me so busy.

On my table is the last two of the five tail suits chalked out and ready to be cut.

I have an extension piece that is piano hinged to the length of my table so that it can be extended to allow 60" wide fabric to be rolled out flat. This is so helpful when cutting capes or other large projects. In this case, I am cutting five sets of tails so I can utilize the fabric better with it laid out flat. As you can see here, in one trouser length, I can also lay out the front, back and side panel of one tailcoat as well as the front of the next one. When I lay out the next pair of trousers, I can get the next tailcoat back, side and the skirts of two tailcoats. Once that is done, I can cut all the sleeves.

As of Friday afternoon, I had all five pairs of trousers bundled separately with all their components and all five coats in nice little bins awaiting sewing. I have all the period collar patterns made and cut out for the men's shirts, so for all intents and purposes, I am finished the major cutting work until I can fit again.

Monday I think will be a day off just to catch up with all the things I have been neglecting over the past month, then I have a week and a half of instruction with Lela to finish up her training. Funnily enough, we will be delving into body coats. I have a fit model lined up and think that a tailcoat and a frock coat are in order, as well as some period styling discussions. I am hoping we can document a bit of that process here.

That should take us into December and one or two more Ballet fittings before Christmas, then it will be after the New Year to fit all the tail suits before starting back at the Festival.

Where has the time gone?

Onto another project

 I haven't really been neglecting posting here on purpose, honestly!
I have been very busy finishing up the one project while getting onto the next one at the same time. It wasn't supposed to work like that, but it did and it was a bit crazy at the studio.

I have 9 suits and 5 tail suits to make and I had to get all the patterns made and everything cut into fabric and basted up for fittings in Toronto on Monday of this week.

So, I had Denise, Lela, Emma working on the first project and had to bring in Jennie to meet the deadline, with Silvia putting suit jackets together for the second project. As the first project wound down, the others joined in, and we got everything ready to fitting stage by Friday afternoon.

It is always a bit nerve wracking going into fabric based on measurements that you didn't take, and that can be over 10 years old! Really. It sometimes happens that a dancer is measured when they join the company as an apprentice, then as they mature, adjustments are made on the fly, but the measurement sheets aren't updated. I know it sounds like an easy thing to do, but it is often crazy busy, and well, it happens.







So sometimes I luck out like I did in my first fitting here, where the dancer was pretty close to the numbers on the sheet, just a bit bigger in the hips. I just have to take in a bit in the upper body above the waist and move the shoulder line in marginally. I have to tweak the trousers a bit for size as well.
Everyone of these guys noted how long the jackets are, which they are not for 1920, but in comparison to today's fashions they are.
I have to say that it is a pleasure to fit dancers- they have incredible posture and pretty ideal shapes overall. They usually have built up their trapezius muscles and lats, full seats and substantial quads, but even amongst those similarities there are still differences.
For instance I have a two dancers, both 6'2" one with a 35" chest and 27 1/2" waist and 37" hip,  the other is a full 42 chest with a 34" waist and 44 hips.
It makes for interesting and challenging pattern making.


Now that I am home from doing my fittings, I have to regroup, look at the measurements I took and go forward from here, taking things apart and remarking and getting all the linings cut.

 I plan to have Silvia, Denise and Emma back to sew next week so there is a lot to do in the next few days to get ready for them to return.

For tonight though, Happy Hallowe'en!