My new-found romance with tailoring

This weekend I made my first attempt at tailoring, and I'm in love!  Gertie's tutorials are freakin amazing, and I know I wouldn't have had the confidence to undertake a project like this without them.

So here's what I did: after pre-shrinking my wool in the drier and cutting my pieces, I finished the edges of the bodice pieces on my serger.  I'm lining both the bodice front and the side with hair canvas, as Gertie suggested.  But since my particular hair canvas is very stiff, I decided to cut all my interfacing pieces on the bias to soften them and give them more drape.  (I got this idea from Couture Sewing).

I assembled the coat front as Gertie describes: first, I basted the hair canvas to the side front, then sewed the front princess seam and trimmed away the excess hair canvas from the seam allowance.  I'm planning to use a double-topstitch, so I pressed the seam open but didn't do any of the catch-stitching that Gertie mentions.  Then, I added the interfacing to the front piece.  I taped the roll line, then basted the front interfacing in place below the line.  I haven't tried the pad-stitching yet, but that's what comes next in the process.

I expected the hand-stitching to be much more tedious than it was.  It actually went pretty quickly, and the results look totally bad-ass!  While I can't say anything about the finished product yet, I'm totally geeking out on the process, and thoroughly enjoying myself.  I see lots more tailored jackets in my future!

Unfortunatly, I realized this morning that I should have done my bound buttonhole first, since now that entire area is covered in hair canvas.  Oops!  Since it's the left side, which won't show when the coat is buttoned, I've decided to leave it as-is and do a regular buttonhole.  But for the right side, which will show, I definitely want a bound buttonhole.  So I guess that's what I'll be tackling next!

Provisioning for Lady Grey

While I work on the low-back dress, I'm also getting my Lady Grey coat project ready to go.  So far, I've traced the key pattern pieces and made my first muslin:

Between the lighting and the fabric, it's difficult to tell what's going on in this picture, but over all I'm pretty pleased with the fit.

(If you're curious, that's an upholstery fabric printed with binary code that we picked up at the Herman Miller outlet in Zeeland, MI.  I picked it because it was a heavier weight, but I'll use regular muslin for my next test garment, on which I will want to mark the roll lines for the collar, as Gertie describes here.)

I cut a straight 6, which is a bit snug, but I'm still loosing weight, so I wanted to account for that in the sizing.  It buttons now, albeit without much ease, so I can wear it as soon as it's finished, and the fit should become more graceful over the next few months.

There's only one fitting alteration I'm planning to make: shortening the front of the coat, which was too long and bloused away from my body.  (Gertie also describes making this alteration by taking a wedge-shaped section out of the bodice front and tapering to nothing at the front princess seam.)

I'm also planning to remove about 12 in. total from the lower edge at the side- and princess-seamlines.  The pattern is very full at the hemline, and I think that I can tone it down a bit without straying too far from the original style of the coat.  I also think that a little less fullness at the hip will flatter my shape better, and be more versatile overall.

In the meantime, I've also been gathering my materials.  I ordered this wool tweed (on sale!) from Denver Fabrics/Fashion Fabrics Club/whatever they're calling themselves these days.  It arrived last week, and it's exactly what I wanted.

This will be my first tailoring project, so I'll need some new supplies.  (You can see Gertie's supply list here.)  I was surprised to find silk thread and weft interfacing at my local JoAnn's (not even the superstore!), and I also bought a few yards of cotton flannel to interline the coat for warmth.  At our last sewing meet-up, Melody accepted the remaining 2 yards of my binary fabric in trade for a nice-sized piece of hair canvas, so I didn't need to buy any, which was awesome.  I'm also viewing this project as an excuse opportunity to finally buy a pair of pinking shears, but I definitely need to wait till I have another 40% off coupon for that.  And as you know, I now have an excellent set of pressing hams.

I'm planning to start on this project in earnest as soon as I finish the low-back dress, which is nearly complete.  Here's hoping I'll have my second muslin finished and my fabric pre-shrunk before the thanksgiving madness begins next week!

Beignet-Inspired Skirt: The Ethics of a Knock-Off

I've been making slow but steady progress on the next element of my Up North wardrobe, an ivory cotton sateen skirt, in the style of Colette Patterns' "Beignet".  I've been thinking about making a skirt like this for a while--I'd like to think I came up with the idea on my own, before I saw Colette Patterns' summer version of the skirt, which is also ivory.  But given my track record on having original ideas, I'm not so sure!

Once I got serious about this project, I found myself faced with a dilemma--to buy the "Beignet" pattern, or to draft my own.  Colette Patterns is a small, independent pattern company, and Beignet, like all its patterns, is the original design of the company's founder, Sarai Mitnick.  I try to support these sorts of businesses whenever I can, and I've heard glowingly positive things about Colette Patterns in particular.  Their designs are distinctive, their patterns are well-drafted and high-quality, and their instructions are clear and complete.

That said, Beignet is a very simple skirt to draft.  That's not to take anything away from it's design, which is original and compelling.  But structurally speaking, once you've seen it, it's pretty clear how one would draft it.  In fact, it seemed to me that altering the skirt to fit my proportions would potentially take just as much time, and yield less consistent results, than simply drafting it from scratch based on my personal sloper.  In the end, that's what I decided to do, but I'm still pretty conflicted about the decision.  So, I'm writing up the project on this blog, but only with several statements by way of a disclaimer:

1. "Beignet" is Sarai's original design.  She deserves all credit for this classic, flattering and versatile skirt.
2. Although I drafted my own version of this skirt, I won't talk about that process here.  I'll stick to discussions of the construction process and how the skirt fits into the planning of my Up North wardrobe.
3. If you like the look of this project, you should absolutely, positively buy a "Beignet" pattern from Colette Patterns!

Ok, now that I've got that all cleared up, here's an update on how the project has been going so far.  Frankly, it's been a slog.  I've got no sewing momentum right now, but I'm trying to make progress, since I have one or two more projects in my queue that are definitely for summer, and won't transition well into fall.  (This skirt is one, and my magenta ruffle-front blouse is another.)

I'm also not totally thrilled with my fabric choice for this project.  The fabric I picked is a stretch bottom-weight, but it's semi-sheer even with the lining, and you can definitely see the interfacing and the seam allowances (and sometimes, my underwear!) through from the outside.  I've also made one or two dubious construction decisions that I find myself second-guessing, and I'm dreading making all 12 buttonholes on the front.

What's more, I'm changing size right now in all sorts of weird ways (marathon training is at least partly to blame), so I keep making fitting alterations on the fly.  I'm already sewing at the tail end of the season, and while I'd usually be o.k. with stashing a project like this in my closet for a year, I'm not at all confident that this skirt will fit me next summer.

So I'm trying to soldier through and finish the skirt soon, hoping to get at least a few wearings out of it this year.  But given my frustrations with my fabric, I'm seriously reconsidering the summer jacket I had planned to make from the leftover piece.  On the one hand, a wardrobe doesn't really seem complete without some sort of "topper."  But on the other hand, it might not be worth the grief of working with this fabric.  Would a jacket like this look terrible if the darts & seam allowances showed through a bit?  Should I give it a stab, or run screaming?  What do you think?