I’m currently at the step of sewing darts into the waist coat. In the video Rory sews a small piece of fabric into the dart tip. Is the purpose of that fabric just so you have something larger to press the seam allowance flat?
Thanks!
top of page
bottom of page
Well said!!
You're absolutely on the right track! The tl;dr is: The piece of fabric makes the dart look like it has been pressed open all the way to the tip.
However, it might be nice to understand the principle behind how this works, so let me try to go into more detail. Basically, a seam looks flat (from the outside), if there is an equal amount of bulk either side of the stitching. The most simple way to achieve that is to press a seam open - but in the case of a dart, we can only press open the portion we have also cut open. This is where the extra piece of cloth comes into play. The tip of the dart gets pressed to one side, the extra piece to the opposite side, thus creating the same amount of layers/bulk on each side. On a related note, this is also why it's important to use the same cloth (or at least a very similar one) and not something like pocketing. You really want the same thickness either side. I hope I haven't made it sound overly complicated, but it is really very simple once you have done it once and seen the result. I found this quite useful when making a coat with a one piece front. If you are in doubt about the placement of the two darts, or if you just don't want to cut them open - well, you don't have to. You may simply apply this principle to the entire dart, by sewing in an additional, longer strip of cloth.