Making the neckline of the yellow bodice

In this video, I'm showing how to alter a dress pattern to make the notched neckline of the yellow bodice shown in an earlier video. You need to know how to make a dress with a lining, because I'm only showing the changes needed for the pattern and what needs to be done differently when sewing the dress.

The dress prototype & some school projects

Here are the latest two videos, which I haven't posted here yet.

First, I finished the prototype of the dress with lining, so I can use it at home.

The second one is about the school projects after I finished the mascot heads.

Pinstripe Blazer

In this semester, we have been making clothes with lining. We started with dresses, but I'm starting here with the pinstripe blazer I made. The pattern is "Blazer 101" from the English language version of Burda, issue 10/2018. The description below explains the basic steps, but I may have omitted something, so the best source of instructions for this is the magazine as it has quite detailed instructions of making this.

This is European size 40, which is equivalent to modern US size 10. Pattern sizes can be so confusing, because magazines like Burda use modern sizing, whereas the McCall's coat pattern I've got has totally different sizes. I read somewhere that it's because they use sizes from 50 years ago. So, my size in the coat pattern is US size 14. You really have to go with the bust and hip measurements (waist is easy to fix, if required).

My bust and hip are basically the same as in Burda's size 40, but my waist is currently 80 cm, whereas the pattern has 74 cm, so I had to add 6 cm to the waist. I also have shorter arms. The pattern had 63 cm, which I had to shorten to 60 cm.

After copying the pattern and making the required changes, it was time to cut the fabric. I've always enjoyed making jigsaw puzzles, so it's kind of fun trying to find the arrangement with the least fabric wasted.

The next step was adding interfacing to the parts that needed it. I pinned the pieces of interfacing in place as I was cutting them, because it's so easy to get confused about what goes where. Also, this way the pieces stay in place while you're moving everything to the heat press, and you just need to remove the pins before pressing.

Then I sewed the darts and made the pockets, which are double welt pockets with flap. This is just one design that uses welts. It's interesting to see how many pocket designs incorporate the same elements, just in slightly different combinations.

When the welts were ready, it was time to add the flap. It's hard to align the stripes when the darts make them angled, but I'm pleased with this result.

The lining fabric I got for the blazer was red, so the outer pocket fabric is also red. It was fun to get some color to the blazer, even if it's in places where it doesn't show when you're wearing the garment.

The next part was the collar. In the picture, the narrow part is the collar stand and the wider part is the actual collar.

Here you can see the collar sewn in place (after sewing the shoulder seam). The corner is tricky to sew and I messed it up in the practice collar I made, but this time I managed to sew it as it's supposed to be.

So this is the progress so far (the back piece is out of the picture). Then it was time to sew the sides seams and sleeve seams and fit the sleeves.

When fitting the sleeves, we found out that my right shoulder is 2 cm lower than the left. I could have ignored that, because all my clothes so far have had identical shoulders and I've never even noticed anything. However, as I had the chance to get the blazer fitted to me, I decided I wanted to fix this. So, I opened the right shoulder seam up to the collar stand seam and raised the shoulder of the back piece by 2 cm.

After fixing the shoulder, I sewed the sleeves place and it was time to move on to the lining of the blazer.

The lining required less parts and I managed to get even less wastage. I save the leftover parts for my doll projects, but in this case, there wasn't anything large enough to be usable even in those.

The lining is fairly easy to sew. You just make another blazer, but wrong side out. You need to leave a 15-20 cm opening in one seam of one sleeve for turning the blazer right side out at a later stage. The white piece showing underneath the lining on the right, is a thin shoulder padding. I don't like how shoulder paddings feel, but having even thin ones gives the shoulders a better shape, so it's a compromise between looks and comfort.

You sew the lining in place by placing the two parts right sides together and sewing the sides and upper edge (the hem stays open at this stage). Then you turn the blazer right side out, push the lining sleeves inside the outer sleeves, make sure they're straight, pin the lining to the outside fabric in one place in the cuff to make sure the lining sleeve stays straight, and pull the sleeves out between the outer and the lining. It may sound complicated, but when you've done it once, it starts making sense. Next, you pin the cuffs, right sides together, and sew them.

After sewing the cuffs, you turn the blazer wrong side out to sew the hem. Here you can see how to sew it when the bottom of the front edge is rounded.

Then it's time to turn the blazer right side out again. You do this through the opening left in the sleeve lining. After turning the right side out, sew the opening closed.

This pattern had a curious way to make the slit in the back. It took a while to understand what I was supposed to do, but I figured it out eventually. This had to be sewn by hand as there was no other option.

All that was left was making buttonholes and sewing buttons. The picture below shows a machine for making keyhole buttonholes (tailor's buttonholes). They look much neater than basic rectangular ones. You need a bit of practice to get the placement of the buttonholes right with this one, so I had a leftover piece of the pinstripe fabric to make quite a few practice buttonholes before daring to make them in the actual blazer.

You can see the finished blazer in the first picture of this post, but here are pictures of some details.

The placket in the sleeve is a fake one. So there's a placket, but the lining was sewn in place as if there wasn't one and the buttons are sewn all through to keep it closed.

Here you can see the keyhole buttonholes. The buttons are shank buttons made of metal.

More collars

On Monday, we made samples of two of the collars we drew last week. Making them made things a lot clearer than just reading the written instructions. With the instructions, it didn't help that some pictures had been turned 90 degrees to fit into the page. Especially one of them was totally incomprehensible until I realized I needed to turn it first to get the upper edge on top. Then it started making sense.

The first collar was a simpler one for a women's blouse. It was fairly quick to make once all stages were clear.

The other one was the kind used in men's shirts. It's more complicated and requires accurate sewing, but I think it looks much nicer and neater. Once we've done some samples of slits for sleeves, we'll be making a blouse, and I think I want this kind of collar in it.

Different collars

This has been a remote learning week, so I've been doing some exercises at home. Monday and Tuesday were all theory as I was learning about textile materials and making a Power Point presentation about them. I was also examining 10 items of clothing from my wardrobe to see what material they were made of and describe the reasons why I had chosen those clothes. 

The latter was interesting and also very revealing. I hadn't really thought about the issue, but it turns out that the price is the number one criterion for my clothes purchases. Of course I buy clothes I like, but I'm always seeking discounts by buying stuff at the "wrong" time of the year. That's the benefit of not caring about fashion, you can happily purchase clothes at the end of the season sales without worrying that they'll be out of fashion the next time the weather is right for using them.

On Wednesday, I was drawing patterns for collars. The teacher provided us with videos showing how it's done and also printouts of the finished drawings. All we had to do was to recreate the drawings with the help of the videos. That wasn't too difficult, but things started to get a bit more complicated when I read the instructions on how to make the collars. Fortunately we didn't need to make them, just draw the patterns.

I ended up making two of the simplest ones in 1/4 scale for dolls as I used the doll measurements for making the patterns. I used the leather armor prototype for the simplest collar, because the fabric is non-fraying and it was quick and easy to get a nice result.

For the other collar, I used a jacket prototype I made for Miss Piggy some time ago. I'm not sure if I'm going to finish the jacket, but it was perfect for trying the collar.

Yesterday, I was making pockets for the vest that is my next project. I've got an existing vest as a model, and it's got quite complicated pockets, which I'm recreating for my new vest. I made one prototype pocket at school before the spring break, so all the problems got sorted out then. Now I'm just making two more pockets and writing the instructions for them and drawing the diagrams for the different seams. I'm also taking a lot pictures, so I'll probably write a post about the pockets later.