leather gorget

And now for something different. Onto the next show and its designs. The designs include making
some leather gorgets. A gorget being a leather or steel piece of armour worn to protect the throat. From the french word gorge, for throat. On a suit jacket you have the gorge line,  which is specifically the  seam line that joins the collar to the lapel.
















 I started by draping a shape in muslin on the stand. After that is done, I transfer my muslin to the table and carefully mark the seam lines and matching points before taking it apart and tracing through to paper. The I recheck the shape and walk all the seam lines so they can be sewn properly, correcting the lines at the top and bottom edges.
For my mock-up or toile, I found a scrap of heavy overcoat melton, fused some canvas to it and cut out all my shapes. The seams were butted together and zigged instead of using a traditional seam allowance. This keeps everything flat, and reduces bulk.
 I did a bit of playing around with possibly using cording as a detail as well as using wide twill tape to stand in for strips of leather. I'm not sure which way the designer will want to go, so for the next fitting, I will return with this toile, but I cut some leather for one side of it. This is a weight of cowhide suitable for boots, and I am not sure if it should be heavier. Well, I don't want to waste leather, so I will just leave it like this and see what the designer thinks. I'm sure this will get some decorative studding as well.

waistcoat, double breasted

It has been so busy lately that I haven't had much time to post anything other than snippets of what we have done, but finally the frantic pace has eased slightly, for the time being.

I thought you might like to see both the pattern and finished product of a DB waistcoat we made recently.
As you can see by the darting, it was made for someone who carries their weight in the front waist...in other words a corpulent cut.
The centre front seam carries some of the shaping in the dart between the panels, and the rest of the shaping is accomplished in a horizontal dart into the waist pocket.
Double breasted waistcoats will always have a slight amount of darting in the CF seam, or along the neck edge, but this one has a bit more than average.

The lapel shape is created by closing the dart along the neckline, then drawing in the desired shape on the pattern...OOPS, the collar pattern I photographed was for the other waistcoat we made for him. Oh well.
The notch collar version, I cut apart so there was a seam between the "lapel" and "collar" and the finished lapel in the picture below has a shawl collar. These collars are laid flat and caught into the shoulder seam, rather than having a collar with a stand that is attached to the back neck like the earlier Victorian style posted here.



The pin visible on the centre front is marking the placement of a hole for a watch chain. We carefully opened a small section of the seam, cut through the hymo, and opened the same small area on the facing seam, secured the stitching well. The other option is to cut an eyelet hole and handwork around it with silk thread and a buttonhole stitch, but I prefer to just open up the seam. The fabric then is not cut.
The back is simply lining, inside and out, with a belt or strap and buckle for adjustments.

another uniform...

Sometimes when working in the tailoring department, you can find yourself working on a lot of dark colours, so it is almost a shock to the system to suddenly have colour to work on!

Our uniform of a different colour had some inspiration from the New Years Day mummers parade of Philadelphia.
Mummers parade? Who knew?
Mummers in Canada are associated with a Christmas tradition mostly in Newfoundland of masked or disguised neighbours showing up at your door for merrymaking. So I didn't really have a clue about the parade in Philly.
Holy Cow!
Well this is just tame by comparison, but fun anyway.
The pants are orange by the way, with the yellow and red trim centered on a wide green stripe.
Oh and theres the sash and rosette too. And a gold and red decorated sword belt with a sword too. (Didn't have it to photograph as is was in the weapons lock-up).

Now that this is up and on stage, I am onto some understudy fittings with some extra costumes being built and the next show, which will not be as bright as this.

velvet smoking jacket

 Well, actually it is velveteen or cotton velvet. Much easier than rayon or silk velvet to work with when making a jacket.

I posted earlier about the inspiration behind this jacket here, and this is the version we are making.

I had cut right into the fabric for this, fit the basic shell, taken it apart and marked the alterations. I then cut the linings and facing, then the pockets and cuffs were made up and basted on. The sleeves are basted in and then we are ready to fit.

The binding trim that we got to work with is a knit! It is much wider than the original vintage trim, but so far it has handled well. I don't know about how you feel about velvet fabrics but they can be very tricky to sew. Not necessarily sewing two pieces of velvet together, because the naps grip each other,but sewing other fabrics to velvet. The depth of the nap can cause no end of slippage or bending as you try to machine sew linings to facings or trim to an edge.

The flat trim that is on the pockets will also bind the edges of the jacket, finishing off the lapels and hem. The cording is separate and will be zigged onto the edge of the flat binding.
On the sleeve cuffs we will probably attach the cording by hand, as it needs to go along the edge of the cuff, then form a clover leaf (which is outlined in white) on the sleeve itself then come back onto the cuff to finish off.



So we have a few alterations to make, dealing with a severely dropped right shoulder and corresponding sleeve length issue, then on towards finishing this for Thursday.  (it is sitting crookedly on the wrong stand)
I was sidelined Friday by some virus that was going around and I know that when I am back to work on Monday, there will be a line up of sewers with questions to answer and details to be finalized so I am off to get more rest.

sequined t-shirt and trouser

I realized I hadn't posted a follow-up to the sequined T-shirt post so here it is on the actor/dancer for a fitting.

The shirt needs to be slimmed in through the body, and have the sleeves shortened. We did put it on a dance brief that kept it from blousing up and out of the waistband as the dancer moved.

The trousers were Lycra and were able to be made without a fly opening. They had enough stretch to be pulled-on without excess fabric eased into the waist.
The leg length needs to be shortened. Again. One thing to note about using this type of fabric for loose hanging trousers is that without tension on the fabric around the body, the weight of the fabric causes it to lengthen more than you think it will. Having cuffs on them adds to the weight too. It also gets narrower as it lengthens, so that is another thing to keep in mind. Remember to cut the rise shorter than you do for regular wool trousers. (These are notes to self!) Of course who knows when I will have to cut stretch 30's trousers next? Could be years from now.

Anyway, if these were tights, you have tension in both directions and that lengthwise stretch is controlled and minimized. Of course it is difficult to predict so the only option is to cut them out and fit them to see.

finished uniform

Here is our finished uniform, minus the belt, which was being worked on at the time. 

I should also correct myself regarding correct terminology. I should have said Aiguillette instead of Lanyard when describing the braided cording on the right shoulder.  I was reading through "A Dictionary of Military Uniform" to clarify it for myself, as Alix the design co-ordinator called it by the proper name. Aiguilette "is a plaited cord ending with needles, points or aglets." 

According to the dictionary, in the description of lanyard, it says" the cord around the arm and under the shoulder -strap may be single, double, or plaited".

Since this is plaited with needles, it should rightly be be called an Aiguillette.

Next up in our uniform making this season is a uniform of a different colour so to speak. More about this later.....

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.