Hi all again. I've already appended a conclusion to my fitting post but I thought I'd post some reflections in case anyone had any comments (and perhaps may help other first-timers!). I've also got a couple of questions for next time round – which I'm keen to get started on asap!
Here she is (I'm not a Barbour brand ambassador, by the way...)
There appears to be creasing on the lapel here but it that doesn't really appear in real life (and goes away completely when it's sitting over the chest).
Overall, I'm pretty pleased. It's wearable which is more than I was hoping for when I started.
The main problem I have is the fit over the back, which I've commented on in my other post. If anyone can help me with half back width measurement, please comment! It's not too bad at all though.
I have the dreaded teeth on the top collar. I think I spent literally 30 minutes stretching it – just didn't seem to work enough. Do some fabrics just stretch less than others? If this happens is there an alternative or does one just have to persist? Fortunately, it's invisible when the coat is on.
I got a gap in my pocket jettings like this most times I tried:
NB this happens at the first stage i.e. before the jettings are basted into place. I overcame this by basting them right together before sewing but I don't believe Rory does anything in the videos – it just seems to happen by magic, and isn't mentioned as a potential pitfall. What am I doing wrong?
I personally found making buttonholes much easier when I switched my mindset to thinking of each stitch individually, rather than as a 'row of stitches'. I spent a while thinking of the stitches as too far down the form-function scale. My buttonholes were then ugly! Seems obvious now though.
I personally found I had put too much fullness in the lining for felling. That wasn't a surprise as obviously you'd rather have too much. In the end I found it easiest to fell (invisibly) when it was tight enough to hold a line. This turned out to be the spots where I'd included the least fullness.
A note to anyone doing this for the first time – it's obvious now but don't cut the sleeve lining for the cuff before you check the inlay at the sleevehead. Rory mentions the seam allowance after making this cut, which works if you've not put it in the wrong place but leaves an unfortunate hole in the cuff lining if you haven't! Oops. On a similar note, I found I cut the lining too early around the armhole as when I added in the pleat it sort of messed the shape up. I felt it may have been easier – and I stress only because I made other mistakes – to wait to cut out this part of the lining until it was on the forepart. Not sure if this is a terrible idea or not! The other beginner's mistake I made was mistaking the cross marks I made on the facing tongue to be 'wrong side' marks. I then proceeded to fuse interfacing onto the right side...
I found the handcraft approach to lining so much simpler than trying to do anything involving turning things inside out. Yes, felling is laborious but I think you gain so much from putting everything where you want it and being able to do all your lining without carefully measuring and so on. Just generally, doing so much by hand really felt easier than doing it by machine in a lot of ways because of the control it provided. (Even if that control wasn't in the most expert of hands...)
That's it from me, as I say if anyone has any comments that'd be really helpful for next time!
For a first-ever coat, I'd say that's a very good job. FWIW, I certainly couldn't have done it on my own. When I took tailoring classes at FIT, we spent an entire term making samples of all the pieces that go into making a coat. I gather that when they had people go directly from the trousers course (the prerequisite) to a one-term jacket course, many of the students either couldn't finish or their results weren't good. It was incredibly boring, but it did help. When I took the jacket course after a delay of many years because FIT didn't schedule it, my jacket looked good but it was still far from perfect. And unlike you, I didn't have to draft and fit a pattern but was given one drafted by the teacher, who was a tailor, and we weren't taught hand buttonholes. We took our jackets to Jonathan Embroidery, an establishment in the NYC garment center that has a machine button hole making service.
Did you use the wool from the kit? It could be the photography, but yours looks like a wool with a hard face, like gabardine. Your right front dart, particularly, the top third, is pressed better than the one on the left. The right sinks into the material and is as unnoticeable as a dart can be when pressed in that kind of wool. The left is more prominent. We were always told that beginners should use softer, spongy wools like tweed because they are more forgiving. They are easier to press and mistakes in pressing can be removed more easily. If you have to remove stitches, the holes disappear with a bit of steam.
I also prefer doing the lining by hand, it makes more sense to me. But as you say, the felling has to be neat. The first jacket (not that I've made so many) I ever made was a production-style women's jacket. We fused the wool by taking it to a garment center place called Quickfuse and bagged the lining. It was suggested that I experiment with the lining sleeve hems. I did one by machine and the other by hand. The machined one looked better because my felling wasn't good enough at that time.
I've had that issue with the lining on the jetted pockets. In addition to basting the jets, it helps to pull on the prong when sewing over the base of the triangle. If you turn the pocket to the right side and pull you can check that it's working. If it's a real problem, you could baste it in place (use real basting thread that breaks easily), machine sew over it, and then remove the basting thread.
It's also possible to sew down the prongs by hand, but I think the consensus is that using the machine produces nicer pocket ends because of the rigidity of the machine stitch.
To distinguish the wrong side from the right, I'll often hand stitch an "X" with two horizontal stitches at the top and bottom on the wrong side. On the right side, it looks like "=." I don't know if that's understandable from my description. You leave short tails and when you no longer need the marking you pull it out. It's a good thing to do if you aren't going to do all the work in one day; chalk can rub out.
For me, the "secret" is to do lots of samples until I can do a presentable job. I may not be able to do it perfectly, but at the least I want to see a significant improvement. When I took classes, my approach sometimes used to get me into trouble because I'm a slow sewer and did most of my work on the FIT industrial machines, which meant a trip down there, but it made the most sense to me to keep working at it instead of just pushing ahead. It was the act of repetition and experimentation with different stitch lengths, threads, interfacing, and materials (we bought our own, so they were never exactly what the teacher was using) that helped me learn and improve. Obviously, there's no time pressure with self-study.
I completely agree. Making sampels before moving to a main project was/is a central aspect of my tailoring education. It has both the benefit of giving more practice as well as making you feeling ok with making mistakes. I was always afraid of ruining projects and ended up never starting them in the first place. Sampels can be a great tool to make you more confident! :)
Also great work Robbie!
@Isaac Källström
I understand. High standards are essential but perfectionism can kill you. I've suffered from it myself.
It doesn't solve the problem of the time, effort, and expense involved, but in some ways it is comforting to me that the answer often is intelligent and deliberate (not mindless) practice. It may not turn you into a tailoring genius, but you can certainly become proficient. I once took a couture class with a custom dressmaker. He would bring in samples of techniques he had tried before working on full garments. He brought in scores of samples and he probably had thousands in his studio. I envied him the time and the money to work that way. But of course not only could he afford to do that, he had to because he was a professional and always needed to produce the best quality work. Tailoring has its challenges, but the range of fabrics used in couture is even greater. He had to see how the fabric reacted before committing.
He also bought much more fabric than he thought would be needed in order to use it for samples and in case he had a major problem. In tailoring and other sewing classes I would try to do that myself. Once I made a jacket and messed up the jetted pocket. (Ugh). Fortunately, I had enough extra fabric to cut out a new front.
Thanks for your comments!
I have a bad attitude to learning new things – basically I need to get myself interested enough for long enough the first time round until I know the interest will stick. In this case, I knew I had to finish something or the interest would fizzle out. There's a limited timeframe with this. At the fitting stage I almost gave up (as Rory predicted I might in his comments on my fitting post...). If I had tried to get it right for too long I knew that it would never have gone further than that. I suppose I saw this first one as a 'practice coat', although I did make it with a fabric I'd at least wear!
For this reason I didn't use the expensive fabric in the pack. Instead I got some end-of-bolt fabric from these guys who run a shop near where I work (in the City of London). I guess you could say it was a compromise. The nice stuff is still sitting in the box waiting to be used... I'm a little scared of using it though until I know I can at least get the pattern drafted well enough that I can fit it. I'm glad in retrospect I didn't use it this time, as I'm convinced my back measurement was wrong. This stuff is soft enough, I think it's just my photography. So I have no excuse for not unpicking that pocket... to be honest I think I just couldn't be bothered. No-one's going to see it after all... 😇 It's also much darker than the photo makes it out to be! But perhaps I should start photographing my own work to hold myself to higher standards... Would you say that softness could also be the culprit for the teeth in the top-collar?
The general idea of pressing is one of the hardest things to understand just from videos. I don't think I've quite 'got it' yet. But I see what you mean about the dart. Those were pressed in my rookie days!
It sounds like what I really need with those pockets is just a little more patience. Perhaps I'll try doing a sample and if I run into trouble again I'll come crying for help. Thanks for the tips!
Now I know what I can be doing while waiting for deliveries of fabric. Making jetted pockets, making buttonholes, and felling scraps of lining to scraps of fabric! I guess it really is a case of slow and steady wins the race.