A closer look at my Sew For Victory suit...

Hello there my lovely readers! Let me start by saying thank you so much for all your lovely comments on my suit for Sew For Victory, I'm so glad you all like it! When you've spent such a long time on a project it's really nice to see it being appreciated, especially seeing as it's still a bit too cold in the UK for me to wear it out!

Anyways, my post today is for all you tailoring buffs who want a bit of a closer look at my creation. Now this jacket fairly simple by tailoring standards as it doesn't have a collar - so no roll lines or pad stitching to think about - or any pockets, so it definitely didn't feel as involved as my cape, but it has some extra little twists that I added to challenge myself. Take a closer look...

What you can sort or see sandwiched in the top of my sleeve there is one of my very own homemade shoulder pads! These were a really cute touch and I love that they're in the same fabric as the jacket (even though you can't see them now the jacket is finished!). The instructions for these shoulder pads were included as a part of the pattern, and they basically involve making a sort of fabric taco and filling it with stuffing - simple! When tacked into the sleeve it gives just as much support as a shop-bought shoulder pad, only I got to control the size and shape of my shoulder pads exactly. It was a nice touch and I love how they make my jacket feel more authentic, even though I'm the only one who will know that they're there!

Yes I really am that much of a glutton for punishment that I made all the bias binding for the jacket myself in the same fabric as the skirt, and I also stitched it on entirely by hand. Clearly I need my head examining because it took a LONG time! I just wanted to make sure it was perfect positioned along the edge of the jacket and didn't become too bulky - sewing a wool bias binding to a wool jacket creates a lot of extra bulk I can tell you! - so the precision of hand sewing seemed like the best option. 

If you read my blog regularly you've probably noticed that I have an obsession with perfectly matched plaid, and this jacket was no exception! Every single piece of fabric was pinned (using this method) before cutting and I basted every seam before sewing just to check that the alignment was perfect. This did mean that some seams were re-sewn quite a few times, but the finished look is worth it I think. There's nothing that bugs me more than a spot of non-matching plaid in an otherwise perfect project! I really think I need to take a break from plaid for a while...

Speaking of hand stitching, I also inserted the lining entirely by hand, something that I've never tried before, and I really like the finished look! I think that sometimes hand stitching can give a much more delicate couture look to sewing and I love that. Plus I find hand work incredibly relaxing :)

 And I just had to share my sleeve insertion with you. I cannot tell you how proud I am of these sleeves, not a pleat or a pucker in sight! I usually use gathered stitches to ease in a sleeve, but this time I used this method of Gertie's involving strips of bias but fabric and it worked like a dream. It was the easiest and most stress free setting in of a sleeve ever, I throughly recommend this technique to anyone who struggles with sleeves. Plus the bias strip gives extra support to the sleeve so there's no need to add an extra sleeve head either. Bonus!

And that's about it for the closer look at my jacket, other than that it's all pretty basic, so I won't bore you. But for one last bit of fun here's the fancy finish to the hem of the skirt. It just makes my think of the uniform I wore to Brownies as a child!

Bye for now!

Katie xxx

A Cape Adventure #6 - The Big Reveal!

Hello there my lovely readers! The big day is finally here, it's time to reveal my cape in all it's plaid wooly glory, take a look!

My Sweetheart and I had a lot of fun trotting about the town near our new flat to take these pictures, and I think they've turned out pretty well! Plus, even though the weather was grim, I was nice and cozy in my wooly ensemble :)

Out of everything I have ever sewn I have to say that this cape is definitely my proudest achievement. I really wasn't sure if I would be able to do it justice considering my complete lack of instructions, but it's all come together better than I could have hoped in the end! I am in love with wool and in love with tailoring and I cannot wait to start my next project!

Thanks for following my cape adventure, I hope that the reveal was worth the wait! 

Bye for now,

Katie xxx

A Cape Adventure #5 - Finishing touches, the lining and the skirt!

The end is finally in sight my lovely readers, it's almost time for the big reveal of my finished cape! But first let me show you the last few details of it's construction, if you can stand it!

First up, I forgot to mention earlier that during the construction of the cape I added a back stay piece, as you can see below:

This back stay was made of muslin and was stitched to the back piece to give the cape more structure. From then onwards the back stay and back piece were treated as one. I also finished the lower edge of the back stay with pinking shears to avoid any extra bulk. 

Next up is the lining of the cape. I used a lovely cotton sateen for the lining as I love using natural fibres for linings, it's so much nicer against the skin! The original pattern didn't call for a lining, so I just used the back and front pattern pieces as a guide and drafted my own lining pieces. The main difference that I added to these pattern pieces was adding an inch to the centre of the back piece (meaning I added two inches in total) in order to have a central pleat in the lining back. This pleat prevents tightness and tearing in your lining as you are giving yourself a little bit of extra ease as the lining of jackets (and capes!) tend to get pulled about a fair bit!

The lining pieces were also changed in order to match up with my self-drafted facings, which you can see below:

And there you have it, the cape is completed! But my aim was always have have a complete plaid outfit from my gorgeous Scottish wool, so of course I needed a pencil skirt to match! And here it is, made from the Pencil Skirt pattern from the fabulous "Gertie's New Book for Better Sewing":

I adored this pattern, I actually cannot wait to try more patterns from this book because the pencil skirt was such a pleasure to make! (And I may already have a few projects from this book in the pipeline...!) In case you were wondering this is what the internal working of this skirt look like:

I tried a couple of fancy techniques on this skirt, all of which were great fun, but looking back they weren't exactly necessary! I underlined the whole of the skirt in silk organza so that I could hem it completely invisibly, however the wool I used was very forgiving so this was a little bit of overkill! I also used a length of vintage seam binding on the hem, which wasn't really needed as the skirt was fully lined, but I love how it looks so much I really don't mind :)

So there you have it, construction is complete and here it all is in all it's glory!

What do you think of my outfit? I must admit I am totally and utterly in love with it, tailoring is definitely my new passion, I love it more than any other kind of sewing, and I adore all kinds of sewing! Stay tuned because soon I'll be sharing some shots of myself in my plaid wooly ensemble, I can't wait!

Thanks for sharing my cape journey with me, I hope you've enjoyed it all as much as I have!

Bye for now!

Katie xxx

A Cape Adventure #4 - Welt Pockets

Hello my lovely readers and welcome to the next step on my cape making adventure: Welt Pockets!

Now you may remember that the original pattern was only supposed to have faux pockets which meant only the welt pattern piece was included. In order to create useable pockets I had to draft my own pieces for the pocket underlay and the pocket bag. 

Once this drafting was done I was ready to cut out my fabric (the welt and the underlay in the plaid wool and the pocket bag in a cotton sateen I am using for the lining) and start the construction of my welt pockets!

The construction of a welt pocket is very similar to the construction of a bound buttonhole, insofar as you sew a lot of fiddly pieces on the right side of your fabric before cutting into your fabric and passing all these fiddly pieces to the wrong side to create your neat little pocket! Well, that's how I see it, but if you want it explained properly then take a look at this how to from the Coletterie, it's great and will tell you all you need to know about welt pockets! 

I've taken a few shots of my own construction of my welt pockets to show you the process a bit more broken down...

First up I marked the placement of my pockets on the right side of my front pieces. Some people prefer to mark with fabric markers or chalk but I find that pins work fine.

To make sure that my pockets are exactly level I made sure that the pins were mirroring each other in their plaid placement. This is one of those moments where working with plaid is actually a help rather than a hinderance! After marking these points I reenforced these areas with weft interfacing (on the wrong side of the fabric) as they about to get a lot of wear and tear!

Next up you need to construct the separate parts of the pocket. The welt pieces are sewn together along both short edges and one long edge, the seams trimmed and graded and then the welt turned right side out and pressed. The pocket underlay is sewn to the upper pocket piece, and both the welt and the upper pocket need a row of stitching 1/4 inch away from the raw edge for the welt and the top edge for the upper pocket (this row can be seen in the second picture below)

The welt, pinned and ready to be stitched, trimmed, graded, turned and pressed!

The welt and upper pocket, stitched to the front of the cape

This 1/4 row of stitching is the one you will sew over to attach these pieces of the pocket to the cape front. The welt pocket stitching line is sewn completely but the upper pocket is sewn about 1/8 inch short of the welt line on each end, so that the pocket bag will fit neatly inside the welt and will not be seen. After this stitching is done, very much like a bound buttonhole, you make an incision (my goodness, it sounds like surgery doesn't it?!) on your pocket line (in my case the line between my two pins) and then flip the upper pocket and the welt to the inside. I cannot stress how much you should go and check out the Coletterie tutorial if this isn't making any sense, their directions are very clear and I am aware that I'm rambling quite a bit! Plus I really didn't take as many pictures as I should have done!

In the below picture you can see that the upper pocket and underlay have been turned to the inside and my welt is still lying flat.

It was at this point that my camera didn't want to play ball anymore so I went on and completed my welt pockets without taking any more photos. To be honest, once you have passed this point the scary bit is over and the final steps are quite simple. Once again I direct you to the Coletterie tutorial where they will show you how to attach your lower pocket to the raw edge of the welt, stitch down the little triangles you made during the cutting of the window to the pocket underlay, sew the upper and lower pocket bag pieces together and finally fell stitch the edges of the welt pocket down to the cape front to finish. Believe me, it's all a lot less complicated than it sounds!

Anyways, here are my completed welt pockets:

It's all looking pretty good isn't it? At this point, as well as completing the welt pockets, I have attached my upper collar to the pad stitched lower collar, - the upper collar was interfaced with some weft so that it would match the weight of the lower collar - trimmed and graded the seams, turned it out and pressed it and under-stitched the collar by hand so that the seam favours to the underside of the collar. I have also sewn the front cape pieces to the back piece and have attached the under collar to the cape. It's definitely starting to look like more cape-ish isn't it?

Anyway, I think that's quite enough waffling from me for one day, but I'll be back soon with more updates on this Cape Adventure, it won't be long now until it's big reveal!

Bye for now,

Katie xxx

A Cape Adventure #3 - Pad Stitching the Collar

Pad stitching is one of my favourite parts of hand-tailoring! I find all the little hand stitches very relaxing and I love to see the shape of the collar change as I work in it. For those of you unfamiliar to pad stitching it's basically a way to help your collar keep it's shape beautifully through lots of tiny hand stitches and steaming. Gertie shows us how to pad stich in this fancy tutorial, check it out, she explains the whole things much better than I ever could!

Here are a few shots of my newly pad stitched under collar, I love it so much, all the stitches make me happy!

And here you can see the teeny tiny stitches on the stand (the area of the collar below the roll line). These too make me happy :)

I am loving all the hand tailoring I have been able to do on this cape so far, and there is more to come! Next time I tackle something I've never tried before: Welt Pockets!

Bye for now!

Katie xxx

A Cape Adventure #2 - Matching Plaid and Bound Buttonholes

Matching Plaid

When working with plaid you have one of two options. Either you can do what all the ready-to-wear manufacturers do and disregard the need for matching the pattern properly, or you can take the definitely-more-professional-but-also-crazy method and meticulously match your plaid. Any guesses as to which route I ended up taking?!

Ok, so there was never any question as to whether or not I would match my plaid, to me it just seems crazy to spend money on such a beautiful high quality fabric and then not do things properly! However, believe me my friends, there is a good reason why high street chains do not take the trouble to match their plaid: it is seriously hard work!

There are all kinds of different tutorials online about how to match plaid, but I decided to use this brilliant how to by the incredibly talented seamstress Tasia of Sewaholic. Tasia's technique (in the most basic sense) involves pinning through your double layer of fabric, matching the plaid at every pin. And we are talking a lot of pins here, and a lot of time spent! 

Pins, pins everywhere...

The experience of pinning my entire length of wool fabric before cutting out my pieces made me appreciate just how time consuming working with plaid really is! And then of course you have to make sure that every one of your pieces is cut so that the plaid will align nicely at the seams, and the the center back of the cape and the collar match, and that the interfacing line up nicely with the outside of the cape, the list could go on and on! But when you see each one of your fabric pieces laid out and perfectly aligned and matched it's really worth it (at least for obsessive compulsives like me!). 

And after all that plaid matching you are ready to cut out your fabric pieces and start sewing! And the first step in my tailoring is going to be...

Bound Buttonholes

This is not my first foray into bound buttonholes, but my previous attempts haven't always been the prettiest of things! This time I was determined to get them right and take my time with them. I used this great tutorial from the Coletterie, which worked really well for me. Before I have used a method in which you make a window in the fashion fabric and form a separate little fabric window behind it, but I much prefer the Coletterie patch method in which these two steps are combined into one. All four (I have added an extra buttonhole after lengthening the hem) buttonholes are looking very pretty indeed!

My small but perfectly formed bound buttonhole :)

Things are going well with my Cape Adventure so far, next time I'll start on my pad stitched collar!

Bye for now!

Katie xxx

A Cape Adventure #1 - Alterations to the Pattern

Welcome to the first part of my mammoth new challenge: sewing and hand tailoring a cape with not instructions! Before I started tackling this bad boy there a few changes that I needed to make to the basic pattern:

1. Lengthen the hem

The little cropped cape is very cute but not particularly practical for the notoriously cold English winter, so I want to lengthen the cape by 4 inches, so that it ends just below waist height. That should help keep me a bit warmer! This will be a pretty simple slash and spread job, no fancy techniques required here :)

2. Move the pockets and make them REAL

The pattern pieces included in this pattern are only enough for faux welt pockets, i.e. there is only one piece (the welt pocket piece) provided. Now I know that these pockets are pretty teeny tiny, but I want then to be real not fake, so I will need to draft my own pattern pieces for the pocket bag and pocket underlay. And I'll also have to relocate these now real pockets 4 inches further down to match the extended hem.

3. Draft facings

So, it makes no sense to me that a gorgeous little cape wouldn't have any facings at all, the creator of this pattern literally wanted pretty much raw edges inside this little number! I know, they must have been insane! It's madness I tell you! Anyway, to appease my rather OCD personality I'm going to draft my own facings for both the front and back pieces of this cape, giving it a much neater, prettier and more professional looking finish (I hope!) This will be pretty simple, I know Gertie did a how to about drafting facings in one of her sewalongs, and how can I go wrong with Gertie as my guide?

4. Add a Lining

Oh, and did I mention that facings alone aren't enough for me? I want to add a lining as well for good measure. Because I'm winging it and that means that I can add whatever I want to the pattern and I want a lining :) Plus it will make my OCDness even happier because all those naughty little raw edges will be hidden away inside said lining. Happy times. 

On top of these basic changes I am also going to tackle bound buttonholes, a pad stitched collar and of course go to extreme lengths to match my plaid exactly. It's all very exciting! I'll be back tomorrow with more about the joys of matching plaid (seriously though, it's hard work!) and bound buttonholes.

Bye for now!

Katie xxx

The Start of my Next Big Sewing Adventure...

Now this story starts with two things: a pattern and some fabric. Let's start with the fabric...

Pretty Plaid!

During my time travelling about the UK and Ireland on tour I was lucky enough to visit the gorgeous city of Edinburgh. During my time there I was lucky enough to meet to the lovely Debi who took me on a trip to Edinburgh fabrics where I purchased some of the most beautiful plaid wool in the world. This took place in November last year, almost a year ago, and I still haven't used the fabric. Now that I find myself at a loose end (read: unemployed!) I thought it was about time that I did this fabulous fabric some justice, it was time for some serious tailoring!

And so we move on to the pattern. During my recent move into a smaller home I was forced to sort through my rather excessive collection of vintage patterns, not a small task but one I was very happy to undergo, because during my search I unearthed this beauty:

Swoon-worthy pattern :)

I must admit my heart skipped a beat and I knew that my fabric had found it's pattern soulmate. Now I only purchased 3 metres of the plaid, so I knew I wouldn't have enough for the cape/dress combo from the pattern, but I was mostly in love with the cape and knew that I would have enough fabric for a cape/pencil skirt combo, so all was well (for those of you who are interested I will be using Gertie's Pencil Skirt Pattern from her New Book for Better Sewing). Or so I thought...

I hadn't opened the pattern since I bought it at a Vintage Fair a few years ago, and when I finally did, quelle horreur! There were no pattern instructions!!! I was very disappointed I must admit. Every item of clothing I have ever made, from a simple dress to a full on coat I have always followed instructions pretty much to the letter and I have a great fear of doing something wrong. I have never just "winged" a project as I always think what's the point in spending money on beautiful supplies and then ruining them with my lack of skills? And then I got to thinking about my sewing skills and everything that I have learnt about sewing since I started to make my own clothes and I realised that thinking I have a "lack of skills" is really ridiculous. I have learnt so much and tried out so many different techniques over the past (almost) two years that I'm actually quite knowledgeable on the subject. OK, I may have never been to any classes or courses but that doesn't mean that I can't turn out what I consider to be a pretty topnotch piece of clothing with a professional finish. So what was I worrying about really? Yes, a cape is something I haven't made before, but I've made a coat before and how much harder than a coat is a cape? So my mind was set: I'm going to make the cape on my own, without any instructions or guidance. This is me winging it.

I can't wait to get started!

So there you have it my lovely readers, that start of my next big sewing adventure! I know that whatever help I need I will be able to find somewhere on the big wide blogosphere, so let's see what happens when I really trust the skills I have learnt on my sewing journey so far and properly put them into practise!

Bye for now,

Katie xxx