Posts tagged: 9671

The first time I sewed with a lining fabric I had a very difficult time. This was because A. I wasn’t using the proper needle, and B. I was expecting this slippery fabric to behave like the quilting cottons, flannels, and corduroys I was used to.  Now I know to install a microtex or sharp needle, stitch slowly, and take advantage of the sewing machine’s table for fabric support.  Sewing with the Bemberg rayon is as easy as anything else, now.

Apologies for the low light; this was sewn in the evening in my mother’s very dark Victorian-era house.  I sewed bias tape at the lining sleeve hems before applying them, as well:

Since the jacket hem and lining hem are hand-stitched, I was able to join the lining and shell sleeves by machine, which is my preferred method, before turning the jacket right-side out.

A traditional lining leaves the most gorgeous finishing on the inside of the jacket:

Topstitching around the jacket hem, front placket, and collar yields a semi-formal look:

Finally, it’s time to sew on the three buttons.  I love sewing on buttons.  I use a method outlined in an online class I took from Susan Khalje.  I double-thread the needle, then iron beeswax into the four strands.  I only have to dive through the holes in the button twice, before wrapping a shank and then tying an invisible knot:

All finished!  The suit hangs up and awaits my daughter’s arrival home from camp.

Who knew?  Yes, the linen, batiste, and Bemberg rayon made for a deliciously light, cool garment with a casual construction; however, by the end of the whole event I was ready to move on. To be fair, this wasn’t the linen’s fault or anything else: it was more likely that creating this in two different sewing rooms in two different houses- and moving our family while I was sewing it – left a sour taste in my mouth.

Before I changed my Juki needle and thread to those appropriate for the Bemberg rayon of the jacket lining, I decided to construct the pants from Burda 9671.  Compared to the structure and more formal details of the jacket, these are a breeze; topstitched patch pockets, no lining, and only a simple yoke and fly front.

Pockets – kids need them!  I applied all the pockets of both the jacket and pants on the cross-grain, to provide subtle design interest:

My favorite pants for children use a flat, fly-front, and are coupled with some elastic in the back waistband.  Kids grow and move a lot – the flat-front is stylish and removes bunk at the waist and hip, but the back elastic provides longer wear.

I owe much of my enjoyment in sewing a fly-front zipper to Sandra Betzina’s video tutorial, hosted by Threads magazine.  When putting a zipper in pants, I do as she suggests and ignore the directions entirely in favor of her approach – which has never left me astray.  The only thing you need for your pants is a fly extension on both left and right side; anything 1.25″ or wider will do.

I rarely buy new zippers; you can always find wonderful colors and types in local thrift stores.  You can also tear out zippers from worn-out pants – the sturdy twill construction of the tape wears very well!

In applying the waistband I do the following: interface the waistband piece, finish the raw edge of the wrong side of the waistband (I used red bias tape), sew the waistband at the waist edge, right-sides together, trim and grade, flip, press, hammer out the bulk at the facings, and topstitch:

Finally, it was time to construct the buttonhole and sew on the button. I have used a handful of buttonhole methods in my time, but for machine buttonholes my favorite has been my 1950 Singer Centennial 201-2 and its attachment:

Finally, the belt carriers are made, stitched to the front of the pants, then hand-stitched at the back (this latter detail I decided on in favor of the pattern’s instructions to machine stitch from the public side of the waistband):

Next up: finishing the coat lining and coat details!

Once the pockets for the coat were ready, the front of the jacket needed darts, and then pocket placement. I attached the jacket pockets with a fell stitch, in order to disrupt the jacket front the least amount possible.  Here we see the backside of the top pocket as applied:

The pocket from the front looks thus:

Note in both pictures above you can see, at upper right, the tailor tack marking sleeve positioning.  I use a DMC embroidery floss to transfer pattern markings to the garment.  In a fabric with less potential to ravel I might use scissor snips at the seam allowance markings, bit I did not want to do so for this loose-weave linen.

It is essential with this weight of linen that proper underlining and / or interfacing are applied; there is no way the fabric alone could support a sturdy, straight-looking pocket without it.

I kept the brown silk basting in the jacket seam allowances throughout construction:

Here we see from lower left to upper right: center back seam (serged and pressed open), Raw edge of armscye shoulder, and the collar (not yet pressed and topstitched).

After the shell of the coat was finished, it was time to construct the sleeves.  I made a small sleeve head to support the sleeve at the shoulder, using wool:

The sleeves were then finished and pressed carefully:

I join set-in sleeves by handbasting them. It is so much easier to then spread out any ease and machine baste – or, if I’m sewing a rather heavy coat, I simply stitch them in by hand.  I then trim, grade and press.  Next up: sewing the lining, applying it to the shell, constructing buttonholes and buttons, and handsewing at sleeve and jacket hems.

Despite all the work that lays ahead, the garment is starting to take shape!

Continuing the photo-journalling of Sophie’s linen jacket – you can find the previous post here – I enter a long phase of handsewing as I underline the garment pieces and line the jacket pockets.  For those new to sewing, underlining is essentially using an additional fabric (or fabrics) beneath the pieces of the shell of the garment. This is done to add body and structure to the garment, and allows – in my case – the freedom to use the exact fabric I want for a garment that requires a bit more weight to it. You can underline all or part of a garment.

This means for each piece of her coat, I need to attach an identical piece of underlining. A word about underlining: there are rather elaborate and time-intensive traditional tailoring methods to apply it. Given this is a child’s project (and therefore will be outgrown soon) I wanted something relatively quick yet sturdy. In the past I have accomplished underlining using a serger, a sewing machine, a machine with walking foot, and by handstitching. Attaching underlinings by machine (top example in picture below) and using the serger (bottom example) worked fine for the pockets. But due to the lightness of the linen and its slightly open-weave tendency to distort, I have elected to do the majority of underlining by hand. In my post title I use the word “boring”, but it’s actually quite lovely to sit and watch a video or listen to music while handsewing, and a welcome respite from all my time on my machines.

When I am finished with the mini-Herculean task of underlining I will then mark the pattern pieces with tailor’s tacks* and then, finally, get to construction seams by machine.

There are a total of seven patch pockets in the blazer and pants set.  All pockets were interfaced along the facings; the blazer pockets (three in all) were also lined.

Besides diagnosing the appropriate weight for a project, I don’t know much about interfacings; I often use what is available to me at my local Quilt Shop (which is, sadly, the only local business besides Walmart I can get any sewing supplies).

I am still deciding what color thread to use for the topstitching on this project – a muted grey to fade in, or the off-white shown above?

At the end of the day, besides a careful pile of underlined garment pieces (with still several more to go), I did have my seven pockets all finished:

I am using the last few days of my sewing studio in style: sewing my daughter a linen traveling suit for entry in Threads Magazine’s “Express Yourself in Linen” sewing contest.

It’s funny; I’d just “discovered” linen recently for my own sewing as I’d attempted a few projects from a fiber-dyed neutral brown.  I’d decided linen might feel cool and breezy but wrinkled unappealingly and made everything sacklike – fit only for for casual clothes my kids would summer in.  I then happened upon the Threads contest which featured this lovely article by Susan Khalje (I took an online handstitching class from Ms. Khalje – she is a fabulous teacher and a skilled couture artisan). The contest came just in time, because I’d loved the linen but had treated it clumsily.  Time to try again!

I’ve decided to make my daughter View A and C of the Burda 9671 pattern – a blazer accompanied by stovepipe-legged, zip fly slacks.  I’m going to alter it a bit to fit her long, slim build – but not too much, going for a loose, 20’s style travel costume (hopefully accompanied by a handknitted cloche).  My daughter is getting old enough to venture off in the world by herself – and also travels with her grandmother quite a bit – and she loves traveling by bus or train.  I’ll create an ensemble so she can do so in style!

First I measured my daughter – at 130 cm she is about a size 128 (US size 8).  Her waist at 20 1/2″ corresponds to an 86 cm, or 18 month size.  I decided instead to insert darts or pintucks into the shoulder of the 128 cm blazer, and go with a 128 cm pant, using a size 110 cm (or US 5) waistband and back yoke, with pleats and darts in the front and back of the larger leg pieces.  With the aid of the belt and careful hemming the garment should fit her for a while – the coat and slacks with a loose design around limb.

The last few days I’ve spent pretreating and pressing fabric, then tracing tracing tracing:

I lost track of the number of pieces I had to trace.  I sat at my glass-topped table and painstakingly ironed each pattern piece, traced it, refolded the original pattern, and at the end of the process slid them all back into the envelope in numerical order.  With the summer wind, the sounds of my neighbors, the accompaniment of my wee kitten, it was a pretty pleasant affair.

Next I cut the batiste: this is the fabric with the most large pieces to be cut, so I wanted to make sure my three yards was adequate.  As it turned out I had plenty left over.

For the pocket underlining and lining, I cut from a light grey cotton very similar to the batiste (a gift from my friend Shasta).  This way the vibrant red won’t show on the outside of the jacket, at the pocket seams (I will show you what I mean when I stitch the pocket.

Above you can see my pre-treated interfacing in the foreground, hanging off my ironing board.  I only recently discovered one must pre-treat interfacing for the best results.  This is easy: I simply washed the interfacing in lukewarm water, gently squeezed it, and hung it to dry.  I’m using a lightweight interfacing for the project to help result in as light a lined jacket as possible.

After cutting the pieces of batiste and interfacing, I moved onto the linen. Lightweight linen will shift easily; I found finding an individual grain line in the center of the yardage, folding and gently straightening, then looking down the lengthwise grain of the folded yardage to be an excellent way to get a good layout.

After cutting the linen and the Bemberg rayon lining (for the upper- and under-sleeve, the two side panels, and the front and back pieces) I carefully fused the interfacing to the collar pieces, pocket facings, front facing, back neckline facing, and slack waistband.  I then pinned together the linen and batiste.

By the end of all my cutting if you were to come in and muss my careful piles of pieces you’d be mussing a total of seventy-four pieces of fabric including the shell linen, red and grey underlinings and pocket underlinings, the interfacing, and the lining.  For those who don’t sew, most of these were cut on the fold, so it was much more like cutting thirty seven indivudual pieces.  Needless to say, even with a new rotary blade, my wrists hurt a bit after all this.

The next steps will be to attach the underlining and the linen, then to serge-finish the edges for ravelling.  Traditional tailoring techniques would have me baste each pair together, fold the piece around a magazine around the grainline (to represent the cylindrical nature of torso, arms, legs), and reposition the underlining accordingly, then hand-baste throughout the piece.  This time-intensive effort does not seem necessary given the lightness of the jacket; we shall see how the results reward us.