The Art of Fitting ...

Hi all,

I stumbled across Rory's series after I decided I'd like some careful tutorials on coat making... Perfect! Thanks for the videos. Very enjoyable, helpful, and therapeutic. I've learnt a lot and I know that when I go through the second time there'll be all sort of detail that my mind subconsciously (and naively) discarded the first time round...

I'm a complete amateur, inexperienced, and to be honest not even sure if this forum is meant for random members of the public like me or an exclusive circle of coat makers by invitation only. If it's the latter show me the door... In either case, allow me to make a fool of myself in front of all of you who are clearly far superior to me judging by the other posts!

But anyhow, I thought I may as well ask for some advice and see if it took me anywhere. I've followed the videos as well I could up to the fitting. I live with a flatmate who gets annoyed at the sewing so I have precious few photos but hopefully they get the point across enough.

On the first attempt I ended up with something like this. Note the coat is for me so I haven't worried too much about neatness of basting stitches (except where I got the sense it mattered more). That's probably a mistake...

The front looked good to me and my flatmate didn't take another pic I'm afraid.

A couple of things haven't worked too well. One is that the sleeve head is pleating a lot. That's partly because I just haven't managed to get all the fullness in without that happening, also it's gathering at the back of the armhole, not the front. I wondered if this could be fixed by moving the pitch back, but I'm a little ignorant there.

The other thing was that there was quite a lot of excess fabric in the lower back. I judged this to be too much back balance – not sure if this was right. However the waist actually needs letting out slightly and I also tried stooping and it seemed to really solve the problem on the back so I thought it must be too long.

Didn't really know how to actually adjust for this, so I decided to experiment (not exactly the precision tailors are known for, I realise...) and just lowered the top of the back 5/8" to the chest line. I guess I'd then add it back in at the hem but I didn't bother at this stage as I just wanted to see what happened at the top. (Again, I'm sure this is bad practice but I'm not really sure what is better to do so I just gave it a try!)

It's ended up like this:

It's quite hard to tell but a lot of this is improved quite a lot. There's a lot less fabric in the small of the back. Obviously not ideal though!

The crease across the shoulders seems to have got worse. Is this an indication the shoulder width is too narrow?

I was also wondering about the vertical creases down the side of the armhole. I thought that could be to do with the ad hoc alteration though, the pattern pulling up the sidebody in a way it's not meant to be pulled up.

I'd'd be interested to know if the first step I took was at all correct and also if anyone is kind enough to help me out now with what I could try... Thanks in advance, Robbie

Here's the front and side view by the way:

PS if more photos are needed I can try to persuade my flatmate...