perspective on home sewist issues

 Time seems so fluid these days, I can't believe a month has passed since I last posted.  

I was thinking the other day about how the pattern making process is a mystery to a lot of people.

I don't take the process for granted, yet I am at a different vantage point regarding pattern making than the average or even experienced home sewist.  I have almost 30 years of experience doing this, intensive years of learning how to draft, how to fit different bodies and how to adapt the information provided (measurements and design) into a paper pattern. 

There is always something to learn, problems to solve, and I enjoy that aspect of the work. In the absence of a lot of work (Covid issues),  I have tuned in more to the home sewist platforms and their particular challenges. 

Yesterday I read a post on Instagram (blog post here) about a sewing wiki. I found it interesting that these two women were considering this, but I think they have made a wise choice in not going forward.  I cannot imagine trying to curate the information! The thought makes me ill 😉. 

The internet has opened up a lot of information to so many people in such a positive manner, but unfortunately it also has let loose a lot of misinformation. I think it is mostly misguided, not malicious in any way. I think there has been a generational gap (or two) of knowledge and learning in the area of pattern making and sewing, and now that the art and craft of it is seeing a resurgence, the gap is showing.

 In the age of social media and the loyalties it engenders, I have noticed a certain interesting embracing of failure. It sometimes seems that people identify with the struggle and sharing the struggle, often to the point of dismissing or disregarding sound advice. I am all for figuring stuff out on your own, but why not accept good advice or pointers in favour of failure?  Eventually with time you may realize that you have been reinventing the wheel.

I guess I am just seeing it from a much different perspective than most.

Anyway, I could go on and on about it all, but I am sure that would be too much for both of us. 

I was going to post about my coat pattern here today, but this is already too long. That will be another post.

I would be interested in your opinions on this, 

cheers.

bathing suit sewing tips- a bagged out edge with elastic

Okay, so apart from the basics of getting the swimsuit and lining cut out, there was a small sample to be made.

On the neckline of the bodice, the elastic is applied differently than on the other edges. The front neck edge does not have a visible zig or cover stitch holding the elastic in place. The lining is used to bag out that edge. It is the left edge in this photo, where you see the zig on the blue lining.

You can see here, that the neck edge is bagged out but the armhole edge has a visible zig stitch 

I made a sample before starting.

For the sample you need a piece of the fashion fabric, a piece of lining and the elastic. I thread marked the line in yellow so you can see it. 

The lining and the fabric are placed right sides together. The elastic will be serged to the two fabrics, keeping the one edge of the elastic right against the line that is marked in yellow. 

You could zig it on if you do not have a serger. 

Here you can see that as the lining is turned to the inside, the elastic edge stays along the yellow thread line, which of course, is the finished edge.   

It all nice and neat. 

The final step is to control the edge by understitching. I am going to zig the elastic to the lining and in doing so, that will keep the lining and elastic in place on the inside of the garment.

The layers are opened up and laid down flat (sorry no photo of that!!)

The lining and elastic seam is under the foot and the fashion fabric is to the right of the foot while you are stitching. 

This is when you can test your machine for the best zig width and stitch length, as well as to see that you need a new needle! (Boo, skipped stitches are not good!) That is why a sample is a good thing to do! Identify issues before you work on the final garment.

Remember, the face of the fashion fabric is not caught in the zig, and when it is all laid in place, you get this nice clean edge. 

This, by the way, is the same technique I use on a tailored trouser waistband. Instead of bagging out  the top edge of the waistband, I do a variation on this, using the waistband canvas in the place of the elastic and it offsets the seam between the wool and the silesia. 

I will have to look for a photo of the technique used on trousers, I am sure I have one somewhere.

Cheers!

Cutting cloth with one way design

Well, first I need to say that I am just crawling out from under one of the most trying times at work.
I shall not go into it here but suffice to say that management errors have left our department with crippling amounts of overtime.

Hence the lapse in my best laid blogging plans.

Back to the topic at hand though.
The designer makes 99% of our fabric decisions, and although the cutters are sometimes asked their opinion on whether it is suitable or not, usually it arrives on our table and we work with it.
Many fabrics don't pose much of an issue. The easiest are plain fabrics without a nap or one direction design- think a good plain woolen cloth. You can top and tail the layout of your pattern pieces (this means you can turn a pattern piece upside down/top to bottom in the layout) taking advantage of every square inch of the cloth and being quite frugal in its use.

Up the ladder from the basic could be a cloth with a woven pattern in it- a symmetrical or balanced check or stripe. The challenge is to place your pattern on the cloth keeping in mind the centering of the garment on the woven pattern in the cloth, and matching the pattern where needed at centre front and back and sleeves to body. You can still top and tail the layout.

Another rung up the ladder might be velvet (or corduroy), a definite one way fabric. I remember as a teenager, cutting myself a pair of overalls in corduroy, and being completely stymied by the fact that one side of the body looked dark and the other side light. I knew nothing about "nap" and I don't think I ever finished them as I was so confused.
We often cut velvet "nap- up" for the stage because it usually reads as  a richer colour than when cut nap down. You must cut your pieces all in one direction- you cannot turn a piece upside down to fit better on the layout because it will end up a different colour than the rest of the garment. You can turn a pattern piece over, only as long as up remains up. These fabrics often have a fair bit of wastage depending on the garment type.

Next up could be asymmetrical/unbalanced or one way printed or woven designs. These could be plaids, florals, uneven checks or uneven stripe combinations. These fabric designs cannot be "book matched" at the centre front or back.  When they are folded in half, right sides together for cutting, the design in the fabric does not lay matched atop each other.

I have run into uneven or unbalanced cloth a couple of times this year. Twice with suitings and once with a velvet floral. I had no problem making the decision of how to cut the velvet but I started wondering about the options for the stripes.
Here is one of the striped fabrics:

 

It made me wonder about whether I should cut the jacket as a one way design or not. I could conceivably cut the yardage in half lengthwise, and turn one layer of the fabric to make it symmetrical. Hmmm....I didn't do that in the end, but it did make me wonder if doing so was a "thing" or a no- no.

Here is a visual of what I mean. Imagine that you are looking at the centre front of a jacket- does it look better as a one way pattern or symmetrical? Chime in by all means!

Here is an example of an 18th Century style waistcoat in the floral velvet where you see the one way fabric in the cloth and how I have laid it out so the pattern continues uninterrupted at mid centre front. It requires enough fabric to do this and there are a lot of offcuts, which I used for the facings and such so as not to waste fabric.























Of course, it also takes a bit more time when cutting out cloth like this as you have to be quite careful to make sure that all your pattern pieces are oriented the same direction. The tricky bit is with pattern pieces like trouser backs and undersleeves. These pattern pieces are developed from the trouser front and top sleeve respectively. They "face the same way" when they are drafted.
In laying them out on the cloth you must make sure you flip the trouser underside pattern and the undersleeve to maintain the directional patterning at the side seam in trousers and of the sleeve.
that sounds complicated so here is a quick sketch of what I mean.

Okay, I think that is all I can muster up in the bad drawing department this evening!

It is certainly a lot to keep in mind while cutting things out!

fitting and pattern alterations part 2

I thought I would follow up a little on the fitting and pattern alteration post where I was dealing with pattern alterations for scoliosis.

I had to make three different garments for this particular person, all with different patterning requirements.
We made a suit, a bolero and a 1950's style casual jacket. (with a quick change (11 seconds) front panel held on with magnets but that is a whole other bit of business)

With the bolero, I have created a seamed panelled back as it gave me more control over the fit. This garment does not have shoulder padding, whereas the suit jacket does.

I have laid the left body pieces over the right sides to show the differences in the two sides of the body.
I did end up lowering the armhole on the left side of the body as compared to the right.
I think you can see how much lower the left is at the shoulder, as well as the difference in width that was required on his right side at the upper blade area.


I have found this to be both a challenge and an interesting learning process.
Tomorrow I will try to lay out the pieces for the 1950's casual jacket which has a yoke as well as panel seams.

In terms of the suit jacket back, here it is in a finished state.

I think the comment about adding a dart on the left shoulder to make it visually more symmetrical was spot on but I left it as is because I had no time to re cut and reconfigure. If I had time to do it over, I would have tried to transfer some of the left horizontal drop into a shoulder dart rather than take it up with a shoulder pad.
Of course this stand does not reflect his actual shape so there is an air space on the right blade.

One of the job challenges is letting some things go, because we have such time pressures.
He was very happy with all the pieces we made, the designer is happy, I have learned something so I am happy too.

No time in the fittings to take really good shots for a blog, I make do with photos taken for the designer's references. :)

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.

reducing bulk in seams

This is a bit of a long post!

One thing I find challenging in building period costumes is how to deal with multiple layers and the resulting bulk in seams.

In this mock up of a doublet I had to figure out how to deal with the bulk of seam allowances that could end up in the armhole.
How much bulk is too much- when does it get difficult to sew and more important irritating to wear? Lets talk about the armholes first.
We have the body of the doublet which is a sturdy cotton duck with velvet flat mounted over it. The doublet will also have a lining in it. Three layers in the body armhole.

There is a long under sleeve that will be in velvet. It needs to be flat mounted on a lightweight cotton to keep it stable, as it will get trim. There will be a lining in the sleeve as well. Three layers in the under sleeve.

The small puff sleeve goes over top of the long sleeve and it will remain unattached on its bottom edge-
This puff consists of a base shape in cotton, onto which we sewed a few rows of gathered netting to create the rounded shape. Over the netting, there is a gathered layer of fabric- lets call that the pouf.
Then, over the pouf are panes, each of which consist of a base layer of cotton silesia, then a piece of fusible cut to the finished size of the pane. The velvet will get flat mounted on top of this. Each pane will have a trim applied to the long edges, and then each pane will be lined.

So that is two layers for the base and pouf, then panes have silesia, velvet, and lining, plus trim.

So that is a lot of fabric into an armhole.

I went on a bit of a search at work and saw a number of different techniques dealing with this issue. On some ladies garments with paned sleeves, the panes were bound off with one continuous binding, and the binding was hand sewn to the outside of the armhole. This kept quite a flat profile to the top of the sleeve as the panes do not have to curve up and over.

I liked that but thought it might be not strong enough for this costume, but it did give me an idea!




Here is my idea sample:

What I did was cut a piece of bias and sew the panes to it by machine. I then wrapped the bias around the seam allowance of the panes and stitched it down.

Turn this around and lay it over the sleeve and you get this:

So, now I have eliminated all the bulk inherent in the panes from going into the armhole. Yay! 

The bias was cut from the same material as the pouf, so the binding will just disappear. The bias is stitched to the sleeve base along the sewing line. This does not mean that sewing this sleeve in will be made any easier, because it must be carefully stitched right up against the edge of the binding, but it does eliminate bulk.

The view from the bottom- all the component layers are caught together and bound off in matching velvet.

Just a look at the sleeve from the side. 

and lastly, a fitting photo before all this was figured out! 

Prominent chest - pattern changes

While browsing through a sewing forum, I noticed over and over the plight of adjusting a pattern for a full bust. There are many solutions offered both online and in many of the sewing books, yet many people still struggle with making sense of it all.
Here's a little sample of what I did to deal with a garment that needed more room in the chest, but fit well in the front length, armhole, neck and waist.
Whereas in women's wear, darts are an accepted way of dealing with shape, the challenge with men's costuming is often how to hide the shaping in a garment, in order to keep the traditional construction format.

I recently fit a doublet and while pinning it up the centre front, I found that it closed on the line at the neck and at the waist, but at mid chest, it would not.
It went off the line there by 1.8 cm.
The person I was fitting had a prominent pec area, and that was the cause of the gap. What often happens with a full chest is that there is a lack of length and width.

I had enough length in my pattern for the full chest so I am only correcting for width.

You can see that the pattern CF line is not straight, but it is curved already from the mid chest to the neck. This is basically a dart, which is masquerading as the CF seam. I did not wish to increase this CF "dart" by just adding the extra at the CF line and tapering it off to the waist and neck. 

Now, I split the pattern vertically through the mid chest, and separate the pieces half the amount of the gap. I need this much more at the mid chest level but in splitting the pattern I have made the neckline  larger and have increased the length of the side front seam. I don't want that, and so I need to modify the pattern further. I need to close the gap!

So, here you can see that I have made two cuts in order to further modify the pattern. One is at the chest level, and the other one is cut diagonally from the side front seam to the mid chest. 

I can now bring the neck back to the way it was and also close the gap in the seam. What happens though is the CF opens up and gains some length, and the side front seam also had a small increase.

Depending on your fabric and method of construction, you may be able to ease in those small increases. 

Here is another option. This time only the horizontal cut at the chest level is allowed to open up as the neckline and seam line openings are closed. The increase in width at the chest is maintained, the neck and waist are kept as they were. 

I am making doublets backed on cotton duck so easing is not easily accomplished, so I opted for this method in the under structure of duck, and used the previous method for the fashion fabric layer. 

The horizontal dart is cut out completely and the raw edges are butted edge to edge and zigged closed with a strip of fusible tape to reinforce the join. The outer fashion fabric is applied over the shaped duck, carefully maintaining the shape you have created as you do so.

Trunkhose: thinking it through

There are a lot of things to consider when making Trunk hose.

How to get the shape or silhouette you desire is first and foremost, and how you are going to put them together is another. Bulky seam allowances and overall weight come into consideration as well. How are they going to close? How do you marry the support structure and the outer fashion layers successfully?
Remember there is no one official way to achieve this- experimentation is key!

In the distant past, I remember seeing cutters constructing the trunk-hose shape by stitching rows of gathered tulle onto a fitted trouser base much like one would when constructing a tutu, then shaping the silhouette by trimming the tulle.
Quite a lot of work to prepare, but a very sculptural approach as you cut away the tulle into the shape you desire. It is like giving the tulle a haircut to get the shape!
If the tulle is stitched densely the shape is firm and stays firm for many years.
Once the shape is achieved the cut edges of the tulle can be a problem with abrading the covering fabric  so either the tulle usually needs to be covered or the pouf fabric needs a backing.
I think that approach works well for a pair of the very short Elizabethan trunk hose, the amount of area to be covered is small and the density and weight of layers of tulle is minimal.

If I am making a larger volume trunk hose or slop style I usually start with a fitted base pair of breeches.  How fitted they are depends on the look you are trying to achieve, particularly in the placement and fit of the canion area.

Here is the base front for the really large comedy breeches. I have marked in a line below the waist where the top hip roll may sit, and also lines mid leg for the crin ruffle. Closer to the finished length, I mark the area where the grosgrain (we are cartridge pleating the lower leg to grosgrain) will come to and where the lower edge of the crin will come to. I offset the crin from the waist and lower leg seam to eliminate bulk in those seams.

Here is the crin sewn to the mid leg lines. I think we decided to move them closer together than where I had originally marked after seeing how it looked on the stand.
The base will be made with a zip front closure and you can see a waistband has been sewn on with the finished side to the inside.

We tried a gathered single layer of heavier crin at the waist here, but it didn't give much of a "shelf" so we gathered up that loose edge and made a "hip roll"

You can create "hip rolls" by cutting a rectangle or oblong shape of crin to start. Cut the crin double the finished width  you need. Serge the cut edges of the crin. Sew gathering stitches along each long edge of the crin. Use a heavy thread like Bell thread in the bobbin to reduce thread breakage and frustration!
Gather the long edges of the shape down to the size you wish and sew each gathered edge to a piece of twill tape. You can then sew one twill tape edge to the base, and sew the other edge below it in a parallel line. If you sew them close together you get more horizontal distance and rigidity and further apart will give a more gentle shape and support. Crin comes in different weight, so that can be used to your advantage if you use the heavier for the area that needs more support, and the lighter for less.

We have found that sewing the crin into modular forms is easier to move around to create shapes.
I think that sewing the crin directly to the fitted under base can be a nightmare to modify or alter, so we are trying to attach it first to twill tape, then sew the twill tape to the base. if you want to move a layer up or down, it is a simple matter to unpick it and sew it elsewhere.

I also like to use the light crin as an overall under layer/pouf to both give shape and to protect the outer fabric. You can see that it has been sewn on so that it rolls up and over  for a bit more lift. you can see that there is still an inch of space there below the waistband as I want to leave space for the seam allowance of the fashion fabric once we get to that layer.

At this point, we draped the mock up leg over the shape to see if this was heading in the right direction.
I darted (horizontally) the large piece of crin at the front and back edges at the level of the mid leg to reinforce the shape and to reduce excess length in those areas.
We will tack the mid leg riffle to the out bag so it doesn't fall down. I think if this needed even more support I could sew in a horizontal piece of nylon boning to support the circumference, but I will wait and see what the designer thinks first.
It is a good idea as you are going along to think of what you can do to make changes if required. Not everything works as well as you might hope the first time so have a strategy!

Once one side is good, we do the same to the other side and then sew the two legs together. This pair is going to get big fast! Sideways through the door big.

Trunkhose part 1

I think I am bored with the weekly pictures of my table, are you?
We will just continue on with some other items then shall we?

Trunkhose.
 I leave it to you to look through the Internet to your heart's content for images. 
a disclaimer: I am not in the business of pedantic historical reproduction. I am interpreting a designers vision in modern fabrics for a specific theatrical purpose.

Not my favourite garment to make.
You may think it is strange for someone who works in this milieu but there you have it- I confess to not enjoying making them. I think it is because I have never had the luxury of time to dissect what I am doing and why. They have turned out well enough in the past, but now I have to make some more and I am determined to document what I am doing and why, and maybe learn to love accept them.

First thing first- there are many ways of approaching and constructing them and I have made them in a number of different ways over the years. Luckily for me, I also have access to the past. I mean a costume warehouse of 60 years of costumes, so I can and sometimes have a critical look at what cutters did in the near and not so near past at work.

So the first thing I have been doing is to draft up a pair of breeches that will provide the base of support to build the trunkhose on.
Trunkhose for the theatre need support structures (most of the time) to maintain their shape and silhouette. The shape varies from shorty short Elizabethan trunkhose to round "pumpkin pants" to teardrop shaped fully padded versions, or just enormous unpaned slop styles.
The support they need is both vertical and horizontal. Vertical control keep the length of the outer layer in place. If you just made longer breeches and pushed them higher on the leg, you create a shape but what keeps it from slipping down to its former position?
Horizontal control of the silhouette is often needed to maintain the shape after the vertical length is controlled. What will help them hold their shape over the long term? If there is no support, over time and wearing and dry cleaning they tend to collapse and droop, and that may not be what you want to happen.

This is a rough start to the process in these photos. 

In a perfect world, I would have a separate fitting for the under breech, but time is precious, so I generally mock up only one leg of the truck hose, allowing me to fit the under breech and give the designer a look at a rough silhouette of the trunkhose on the other leg. 

I have a very large "comedy" pair of breeches to make as well as this paned version, so I will try to be diligent and document the process for each of them over the next few weeks. 

Stay tuned.

Step one: measurements

I have been so busy at work but I knew that I must get started on the prom dress before it turns into a problem, so the first step is measurements.

I cannot stress how important measurements are.
Good measurements.  Accurate measurements. Many measurements.

This means that you cannot take your own measurements. Get a friend to help.

I thought I should go over the list of measures I take and tell you why they are important.
Wear the undergarments you will normally wear under the clothes to be made.
For men, wear a snug t shirt, non bulky trousers if possible, for women, a camisole and tights/shorts, or non bulky trousers. Take measurements in stocking feet, and measure to the floor where indicated.

Pin a piece of elastic or a twill tape around the waist, this is non-negotiable.

These are the measurements that I take. Measures specifically for women will be noted in red.

height: taken in stocking feet. Useful for comparison with other measures, and in proportional formulas.
weight: useful if sending measurements to someone who hasn't seen you in the flesh
neck: taken close to the base of the neck
bust/chest: taken over the fullest part of the bust, tape level, and for men, make sure  the tape does not    slip down in the back.
ribcage: taken under the bust
waist: for men, at the navel, where the waist tape should sit. For women it is usually slightly above the navel, usually where the torso is the most narrow.
hip: around the fullest part of the hip for men. For women, take an upper hip and full hip measurement.
across front: this is taken horizontally above the fullest part of the bust, from the crease of where the arm joins the body.
bust point to bust point: distance between nipples.
front length: from the base of the throat to the waist tape.
across back: horizontally mid back from the crease of where the arm joins the body.
back length/nape to waist: from the nape of the neck to the waist tape. The nape is the seventh cervical vertebrae and can usually be seen or felt.
nape to back of knee: feel for where the knee bends
nape to floor: in stocking feet
nape to shoulder: feel for the bone in the shoulder socket.
nape to elbow: taken with elbow slightly bent
nape to wrist: over the slightly bent elbow to the wrist bone on pinkie side of wrist
nape to bust point:  generally for women only
nape to waist front straight down over full bust: useful as a balance measurement
nape to CF waist: useful as a balance measurement
shoulder width from neck: from the side of the neck to the bone in the shoulder socket
bicep: at fullest part of arm, flexed
forearm: a few inches below elbow
wrist: around the wrist
waist to knee: measure from the waist tape to the level of the middle of the kneecap
waist to floor/outseam: measure from the waist tape, to the floor in stocking feet
inseam: from crotch to floor in stocking feet
thigh: at fullest point
below knee:  in the hollow below the knee proper
calf: at the fullest point
ankle: around the ankle
girth short: from waist centre front through the legs, to waist at centre back
girth long: from throat, between legs to nape of neck
bra size: useful for determining proportional bust darts

additional:
some tailors will take a measurement from shoulder point to shoulder point, and some take a measurement around the whole body at the shoulder level, so it encompasses the bulk of the arms.
rise: some take it by seating the person on a chair and measuring from waist to the chair seat.
glove size: over the knuckles with the hand clenched
Bowed legs: check for bowed legs or knock knees by asking the person to stand with their feet together, and look. Measure the bow if it is severe.
Stance: best seen in photos but check posture when the person is relaxed, do they stand slumped, or hip forward, or erect?
Seat: do they have a flat, average or full seat? again photos help.


questionable:
any measurement that doesn't have a definable fixed point to start from, such as side length from underarm to waist, or measuring to end at an approximate position such as a side seam.
Measurements such as these cannot be used with any accuracy when drafting or even checking a commercial pattern.

very useful and recommended:
three photos, hopefully in good light face on, in profile and the back.
These are very useful in seeing figuration like shoulder slope, sway back, hip stance......and most helpfully, disproportion. If the person carries a lot of weight a photo helps to determine where their weight is distributed.

I think I remembered them all!
This may seem like a lot of measurements but they all have a function in draftting. You can also use them to check a commercial pattern.
Proper measurements will enable you to get closer to your desired fit right from the start. There will always be tweaking of a pattern but good measurements and the interpretation of the measurements will hopefully eliminate major alterations.

In my mind's eye...

I had a call from a former co-worker the other day, and it set me to thinking about drafting and how we want to follow the instructions given, plug the numbers into an equation and presto, at the end of the day you will have a pattern for that garment you see in your minds eye.

Well it just doesn't work that way, does it?

Anyway, my friend was making costumes for a community theatre group and had to make a frock coat for a gentleman with a 58 inch chest and a 64 inch waist. Yes, a challenging figure to draft and fit for. So, he picked up his trusty photocopy of the MTOC, (that he hadn't used in years)  and started to draft a body coat for this gent, plugging in his numbers and diligently following the instructions. Then he got to the point of knowing that it didn't look right and he called for help.

After dinner, over to my house he came with his draft, and his book and his frustration with it all.
What can you do in a situation like this?
So we sat down, and I tried to help him, without referring back to the original draft, because I knew it was trouble. Did he have a full set of measurements, no. Balance measures, no.  Photos, no. OK, so we are just winging it here, so I started drawing on his paper  correcting where I thought it was wrong, and offering encouragement where I could, without completely overwhelming him with information.

The point to all this rambling is that I wished I could help him visualize the shape of the person and relate it to the pattern lines on the paper. This is where photos are so helpful because they can indicate things that you may miss in person, or at least sometimes give you a bit more of an objective viewpoint- a bit of distance in a way.

The numbers are just numbers and they don't always indicate where the shape is. One of the most difficult shapes being the very large- because people don't gain weight in a proportional manner.
The drafts for these sizes often apply the extra sizing in one area- the centre front.
As you can see by my drawings, in profile, adding to the CF  looks like it would work, but when you see the shape straight on, you realize that the body is more complex. In this case, the pattern needs manipulation at the sides as well. In reality there are many pattern manipulations that could be done for this body shape, I am just simplifying to make a point. I will point out again and again, that it is so much easier, to have fabric to pin away rather than have to rip open and repin or guess how much more is needed. I don't advocate making a huge shapeless garment but don't be too skimpy either.

Is there a one size fits all solution? No, sorry.  Since each body is different, I do think that visualizing the body shape in three dimensions helps to understand how the fabric will go over it. I guess it is more like sculpture in a way. If you can see the shapes in your minds eye or drawn out on paper, you may have a better chance of success when applying the numbers, or feel freer in deviating from the formula, when things are not working.

In other news, I am making progress on my instructional booklet project, I think I have much better quality now in the photos and like any teaching project, I too have learned a few things along the way!

stooped back pattern adjustment

In response to Heidi's comment, I am posting the changes I made to the pattern for a stooped back.
In the top picture is my initial draft where I opened up the centre back a full 2.5cm (1inch) as well as adding 1cm at the armhole. This was the pattern I used for my toile in muslin.
The lower photo shows the original pattern laid on top of the adjusted pattern after the toile fitting. I have added more length in the back right across the pattern as well as some extra on the CB line.
I don't think I laid them out for the photograph as well as I could have. I wanted this for my own records in case I have to make something else for this gentleman. Next time I will try to get a photo of the whole back to show all the changes. For instance, I had to adjust below the waist for a flat seat so there were many small adjustments at the fitting, that may not be reflected in how I lay this out for the picture. I didn't take photos of the pattern fronts, although I did keep the pattern for future reference.

Nett on the patterns means no seam allowance. I will often remove the seam allowances when drafting a figure like this, as I find it easier to lay the pattern pieces seam to seam to check the seam lengths and to make style line adjustments.
It was a challenging figure to deal with. I wish I had more time to finesse things, but we are pushed for time and I had only a toile fitting, then one fitting for each outfit as a baste up in fabric, and I don't think there was time for another after that. It is a bit nerve wracking at times. I did pad up a stand after the toile fitting, to reflect the changes we made, so that helped quite a bit in the process.

Striped fabric and shoulder darts

One of the most difficult figure issues to deal with is the stooped figure. In a recent situation, I had made a toile jacket for an actor and I knew that his pattern required some modification for a stooped back and rounded sloping shoulders.

I hadn't made anything for this person for a number of years, and I was surprised to have to open up the back another inch to get the jacket to fit properly. That is a full 1 and 3/4 inches additional length in the CB!

This is also supposed to be Edwardian so I cannot mask it with extra large shoulder pads either. Now, in a plain fabric such as his black cutaway jacket, I can just lay the pattern out as is, but when there is a stripe, that must be dealt with differently.

The CB neck must be in the middle of the stripe pattern, and if I laid the pattern out as is, I would have quite a bulls eye effect in the upper middle part of his back. That isn't a suitable option. If I straightened the CB by opening up more ease into the shoulder, I would end up with too much for the fabric to handle and if I opened it into the armhole, I can't ease enough in to make enough of a difference, so the other option is a shoulder dart.

Shoulder darts are quite common in women's wear but I have to say that I personally have never seen one in a man's jacket. I was so happy to see a reference to darting the back shoulder in a post on The Cutter and Tailor forum a couple of years ago, and ever since then I feel like I have some back up when I am required to do it for difficult figures. Especially difficult figures and striped fabrics.

The trick as far as I can tell is to not interrupt the main stripes in the dart. The dart end on this one needs to be moved just a tidge to the left, to follow the stripe edge exactly, but overall you can see the effect. The dart really isn't that noticeable when all is said and done, and the benefits outweigh any negatives as far as I am concerned.

You would not know this just from looking, but I will tell you, the other issue I had to deal with here, is the fabric. It actually is a one way design. As woven, the white stripes are on the one side of the stripe right across the width of the fabric. I had to make a choice. Either the stripes would travel around the body, always to the left for instance, or I could fold the fabric end to end and make it symmetrical, which is what I did. Great, so far so good, except when it comes to the collar. The collar is one piece, no seam at the CB. So the stripes travel one way only. Merde!

So unless I seam the top collar CB that is what will happen, and I have to decide soon.

Any thoughts?

............

We are probably the only ones who will notice or know. The stripe is subtle, and if the audience is that engrossed in the stripes on a jacket, then the play needs some help. I won't be putting a seam in the top collar.

I'll post the pattern modifications in a future post.

trim trauma

We were running out of the trim that we used on our uniforms and I bet you didn't know that trim is getting more and more difficult to source. Like many products that we use, many manufacturers, especially in North America have downsized or gone out of business completely, which leaves us in the lurch.

So, it's a long story but the buyers found someone who was able to make us more trim.

When you try to get a replica of something made, you know that it is never going to be exactly like the old product, but live in hope that it will be close.

Well the new trim came in this week and it wasn't until today that we had really had a go at using it.

Not so good.

I really never thought much about how trim is made, and really, if it works for us, it works, and we use what we are given.

The new trim doesn't want to bend nicely. Yes it is a different colour but we can live with that I guess, but it is uncooperative. Why?

Well the base or interior of the trim tells the story. The old trim is created over a flat 1/4" wide woven braid that is very flexible as you can see in the picture.

The new trim has many many strands of coarse thread bunched together inside. It does not like to bend. The strands are really tightly packed. I was able to cut a length of trim and painstakingly pull out 6 or 8 strands which made it more flexible but still isn't as bendable as we would like.

Sigh..........but now I know.

interpreting measurements

Sorry for the long delay in posting, these past few weeks have been very intense and busy but now I am back home from my teaching gig, just in time to feel the Christmas rush coming at me!

I was spending this training time going over the drafting of body coats (tail-coats, frock and morning coats) and one of the first things we needed to do was measure our fit volunteer.

Thank-you, by the way, to all our fit volunteers- it can be a bit unnerving to stand there while we poke and prod and talk about you objectively.

Most of the time, we are given measurements that are taken by someone else, and could be quite out of date, so our job is often made more difficult by the lack of information.

Even if you yourself take the measurements, it is difficult sometimes interpreting them when making an individualized pattern or even modifying a block pattern. We are always pressed for time and it is difficult to spend time analysing the figure you are measuring in the 10 minutes we are allotted for measuring. That is where photos come in handy.

But we must press on, as we may be preparing costumes weeks in advance of actually having the person on site, so you must be a bit of a number detective to make your patterns.

Once the measurements have been taken, the issue of how to interpret the individual measurements is one that many people struggle with.

In this instance, the nape to waist measurement as taken was 18 1/4". OK, you think, so what? Well, when you are drafting you generally keep in mind some proportionate formulas such as the nape to waist measure is generally 1/4 of the man's height. In this case that worked out to 17 1/4". A full inch less than the taken measurement. The question was which number was correct?

The answer is that both are, but lets go backwards a bit.

I recommended drafting to the proportionate waist length to start. Then think about why the other number is longer. In this case, the contour of his back makes it longer. Why- well, like many men he is at the gym working out and the building up of the back muscles is a very common occurrence. The trapezius muscles are large and they bulk up easily.

So, to apply the extra measured length on the draft by marking the waistline at 18 1/4" from the nape, and drafting everything else in relation to that length of waist would be a problem. The length needed in the draft is above the scye line not below it. You have to put the fabric where the body needs it.

To demonstrate we just cut a proportionate coat and put it on him. What happened? The centre back waist stood away from the body. There were drag lines running from the blade toward the side waist and the front of the coat was pushing against the front waist area.

To boldly show how much and where the extra length in the back was needed, I had my student cut the coat straight across the upper back. Gently then, don't cut his shirt!

Lo, and behold, the coat dropped an inch at the centre back seam and a full 1/2" at the armhole.

We then pinned in a strip of fabric, so it was held together. The drag lines disappeared. The back waist dropped into his body, and the pressure on the fronts was released.

The other thing that happened is that slightly more width was needed across the back- I'm not sure the original measurement was accurate to begin with, but since the body is three dimensional, an increase in one dimension- length, corresponds to an increase in the opposing direction too- width.

It is always fun to do this. Of course you wouldn't just cut open a real coat and waste fabric, but for teaching it is the most direct method to illustrate the point!

jeans draft front

So I have drafted the fronts of the jeans, as instructed.

Beginning with the crotch or "fork line", at "0".

0-1 is the rise , less the waistband which I decided was 1 and 1/2 inches deep.

the instructions progress logically until you get to

"draw the fly seam"

Looking at the illustration of the draft makes this instruction confusing.

So I left it for a moment and went to the next few instructions

0-8 to find the hip point

9 from 7 to get the waist point

11 is 1 inch above the fork line and 1/2 inch from the fly seam grow on fly at point 10-11.

Ok so this is irritating.

There is 1/2 inch seam allowance allowed, so you can see the dotted line inside the lower area of the fly line that is drawn from 6 indicating the seam allowance. At 11 it turns abruptly into the solid line from 11 to 10.

10 is 1/2 inch in from 7 so one assumes that is seam allowance.

Then you see the fly line from 6 running into a point above 11 in a small dotted line, that seems to run into the line 10- 11 as well.

It makes it very confusing to determine where the centre front line is if you didn't want a grow on fly.

The abrupt angle formed at 11 isn't pleasing to me either.

I am very opinionated about drafts and I think they should be clear.

This one doesn't get any marks for clarity.

What else can I say at this point? I think that there will need to be some truing up of angles at some point, but I will draft the back next ( I think there is something odd going on there as well), so I'll go onward and try to make sense of it all at the end.