The inside edges of the welts are hand-stitched to keep the stitches from showing on the outside. And I try to be mindful that no one will see them anyway because they'll be inside my pockets.

And then I stitch the pocket bags together.

After all that work on the pockets yesterday, I looked at them again today and decided I want them to be a little wider. So I'll have to rip a bunch of stitches.

But the good news is it's always possible to make s *bigger* hole.

Well it's been a minute, but I'm back at the sewing table. Tacking the buttonhole lining in place makes it easy to machine-stitch the buttonhole box without anything shifting around.

#Sewing #Tailoring

And rather than redo the pockets, I opened up the pocket bag on the left side and added a half sized patch pocket inside. This will hold my keys without them falling down to the bottom of the larger pocket, where they'll be hard to fish out.

"Aren't inner fob pockets usually on the right?"

Yes, but people's dominant hands are usually on the right, too. This one's being made by and for a southpaw, and I know where I put my keys.

Whoops. Didn't align the markings correctly. The lining buttonholes need to be about 1/4" further in.

And this is why we check our measurements before doing final stitching.

The holes for buttons, stitched. It doesn't look like much with this dark fabric, but each has a rectangle stitched around the cut lines, to form the edge of the opening.

Then, with the aid of a hole punch, each hole is carefully clipped open along the line, and up to each corner of the stitching.

After slashing the button holes, I:

1. Pushed the rectangular linings through to the back,
2. Pressed, with lots of steam.
3. Turned the piece right side up and pressed again.
4. A detail shot of some of the pressed button holes.

#Sewing #Tailoring #LinedButtonHoles

And that's it for tonight. Next time, I'll fold the linings back over the button holes to create welts and tack them in place.

Then I'll attach the fronts to the back (I'll try to document converting the shoulder darts to ease) and attach the exterior to the lining around all the edges before I stitch the lining to the exterior at each button hole, securing the welts.

Getting pretty close!

Had a few extra minutes this morning to fire up the iron. Here's what I mean by folding the button hole linings to create welts: I press each side completely over the button hole opening, then fold it back and press again.

From the front, you can see how this creates welts, closing the rectangular opening and providing a back stop for buttons.

Right now they still look a little sloppy because they're just pressed in place. I will tack each one closed with a few hand stitches, and then press it again to neaten them up.

But not right now because I gotta get ready for work.

The buttonholes have been tacked, and are approaching their final form. I added an interfacing panel that's currently just tucked behind the button hole linings, to give the center front a little extra stability.

#Sewing #Tailoring

The promised converting darts to ease is still to come, but according to my handy list of steps, it's finally up next.

This thing is still in pieces, but believe it or not it's getting close to done. Most of the work here was "prep," as in, prepping pieces to be joined (darts, pockets, button holes). What remains is actually sewing pieces together.

The other thing I did tonight was stitch across the pocket corners - this both reinforces them and keeps them from becoming a gathering place for lint

And I pinked the bottom seam allowances while I was at it.

I'm going to nerd out about this. Welcome to my TED talk.

Ease is the term for the difference between the dimensions of a garment and the body dimensions of the person the garment is meant to fit. Ease is different from size: consider a pair of skinny jeans vs a pair of straight-cut slacks. The same person could own both garments in the same size and both would fit them, but the skinny jeans have a lot less ease, because they're more form-fitting.

#Sewing #Tailoring

Ease serves multiple purposes in a garment. To start with, unless a garment is stretchy, you need a bit of ease in order to move in it. This minimal amount of necessary ease is called "wearing ease" or "fit ease."

Ease is also a design component--consider the skinny jeans vs slacks again. The tightness of the skinny jeans and the straight vertical lines of the slacks are part of their design. Ease included for design purposes is called "fashion" or "style" ease.

The different types of ease don't actually matter here but now you know some garment construction trivia.

Darts are stitched tucks of fabric that shape a garment. When a tailor converts a dart to ease, they're creating a little extra space in the garment by not stitching down that tuck.

When we do this, we have to get rid of the extra fullness at the seam line where the dart would have been, or the garment won't line up right.

This is the lining of the waistcoat (it is self-lined, meaning the lining and fashion fabric are cut from the same cloth).

See that little dart at the shoulder? Shoulders are generally more rounded in the back than the front. Darts help shape the shoulder of a garment around that curve.

But in tailored suits, shoulder darts are typically converted to ease to avoid breaking up the smooth line of the shoulder.

Here's the inside of the same dart. You can see that it's pretty small--about 3/4" wide. So we don't have a whole lot of fullness to manage, which is good.

Larger darts, such as bust darts, are not typically converted in this way because there's too much extra fullness to manage.

For the lining, I just stitched the dart, cause it's not going to show anyway. But for the outside I'm being posh and converting to ease.

This process involves a bunch of steam and ironing, so I thread-traced the dart lines so I wouldn't lose the markings halfway through. Technically I didn't need to trace the whole line; since we're not stitching the dart we don't care where the tip is. But I wanted to keep it visible for illustration of this process (or: the tea hadn't kicked in yet).

Conversion time. First, I pin the back shoulder to the front shoulder, right sides together. I leave the area around the dart (about 3x as wide as the dart) open.

You can see how the extra fullness creates a gap. If I just ran it through the sewing machine like this I'd end up with tucks in the seam (and I'd break a needle. Don't put pins through your machine).

#Sewing #Tailoring

I'm trying to get rid of that gap to create a smooth shoulder seam. I have a few things going for me here:

1. The dart is small, so there's not much fullness to manage.

2. We don't actually care whether the *edges* of the pieces line up. We care whether they line up at the seam line, which is 5/8" from the edge, where the dart is even smaller.

3. Shoulders are sloped, so the shoulder lines are cut diagonally to the weave of the fabric, giving them a little stretch.

4. Steam. Lots of steam.

In this case, the fact that the dart is small and the seam is a little bit stretchy are enough to handle it.

I stretch the front piece a bit to equal up the length to the back, and baste them together:

Once I machine stitch it, I remove the basting thread and iron again.

Dart? What dart? I don't know about any dart.

And that's the dart converted to ease 🙂. Claire Shaeffer's books on couture sewing techniques have a great explanation of this process, with accompanying video.

#Sewing #Tailoring

Happy to answer questions, but I'm about to hop on a call so it might be a bit.

And that's probably it for sewing today, but I am SO CLOSE to done with this waistcoat. All that's left is stitching the lining to the fashion (outer fabric), then turning the whole thing right-side-out, stitching the sides together, and adding the buttons.

I'm very excited to be about ready to stitch this whole mess together. But first, I have a whole lot more basting to do: the lapels, neck, and armholes, and the front seam along the button holes to make sure they stay aligned.

#Tailoring #Sewing

Many commercial patterns will tell folks to baste certain seams, but they rarely explain WHY, so a lot of folks skip this step and go right to stitching the final seam lines.

Basting provides stability to diagonal and curved seams.

Woven fabrics are stable alone the grain lines- parallel and perpendicular to the edge. On the diagonal, they tend to have some stretch (how much will depend on the weave).

Yesterday, I used the stretch to convert a dart, easing 3/4" of fabric into a smooth seam.

When I stitch the lapels and armholes, however, the pieces are the same length, and I want them to stay the same length. I do not want the layers moving around because one side is stretching more than the other (and the way machine stitching works, one side is very likely to stretch more than the other).

So I baste to keep everything stable and aligned. #Sewing #Tailoring

So I had to step away to run some errands (there were girl scout cookies at the farmer's market, which I'm sure you all understand was a situation requiring my prompt attention). Back at the table now. Here's the waistcoat, basted and ironed.

I tacked the button holes to their counterparts with the button hole linings folded out of the way, so they won't get caught in the stitching.

Time to sew.

#Tailoring #Sewing

The work sure goes faster once all the prep is done. The seams are in, the basting is out, and everything has been ironed flat.

Next I'll use my seam roll to iron all these seams open - and then it's time to flip it right side out.

The side seams are still open because the fronts can only be connected to the back at the shoulders in order for me to turn it right side out.