Long Coat Vent Lining ~ My Way

It’s sort of like pornography, I know it when I see it, but I don’t know what it is.

Marfy patterns do not have lining patterns so when it came to lining my coat I laid the back piece on the lining acetate. The center back is not on grain. Here’s how the pattern piece lay on the fabric:

I am used to making jackets, not coats. I am used to having the ease pleat be on the fold of the fabric. I am on my own.

So I cut the lining straight up the full width including the vent with 5/8 seam allowances and added width in the neckline, shoulder length and back length by just moving the pattern piece a bit as I was cutting.

Then: research and reading…where I got stuck and horribly confused! I was blaming my pitiful brain when, after a week’s misery and waking up thinking, “Oh, the vent is in the wrong direction”, I asked my pen pals and Els said: men’s vents open one way and women’s vents open the other way, unless you’re a woman driver and then the vent goes to the right so you can slide behind the steering wheel without the vent folding back under you. I’ll let her explain that. It would be a good post at The Sewing Divas someday.

But back to The Stitchery’s references which piled high but none addressed my particular problems with the coat. Most references just addressed jackets but a few mentioned that a fully lined long coat would have an unattached lining hem. OK.

So, here’s some of the more detailed references:

Timeless Tailoring, by Starr Hashiguchi

Palmer Pletsch jacket books had the best pictures and easiest to follow instructions.

I also referenced more than 10 other books, but nothing was on point for a full lining of a raglan sleeved long coat with a deep center back vent. These were good ones: Men’s Custom Tailored Coats by Stanley Hostek, and Classic Tailoring Techniques: A Construction Guide for Men’s Wear by Roberto Cabrera.

From Mr Cabrera I picked up this great way to stay a deep fold in the center back. It’s a keeper.

I was still mulling over how I wanted to construct the lining over the vent area and didn’t want to use the cut out techniques of traditional jackets shown above. This wool coat comes to the top of the knee and the lining is medium weight, not heavy, so I was afraid that the methods shown above would result in a torn vent from simple wear and tear sooner or later.

Then I found Gertrude Strickland’s A Tailoring Manual but her written instructions were beyond my comprehension. Palmer Pletsch I can understand on a good day, Strickland, well see for yourself:

from the prior page (129)

Lining The Vent and The Bottom of the Long Coat

Figure 84
If there is a vent in the coat at the back seam attache the upper lining in the same manner as in a long coat, except for the center back ease (1 1/2-inch-pleat) and around the vent at lower edge of lining.
a. The 3-inch ease at back was earlier basted in a 1 1/2-inch pleat down center back. Place pins the length of garment on either side of pleat to hold the lining into place.

OK, so-far-so good, except my ease is 5 inches deep and is based upon the depth of the vent.

Place a basting down the edge fold at the center back of garment and release the pleat.

OK, I’m getting really hazy already….

b.  1.  Measure the vent overlap “in inches” (her italics) on the garment being lined and baste from top to bottom edge of vent parallel to the folded edge.
2. Measure from the center back of the lining to the “right” the exact width of the vent width, “b”-1, and mark new fold edge. Transfer the center bacd pleat to the position marked to the right and baste the folded edge the full lining length.
3. the underneath folded edge “must” turn to the left on the inside of the lining.

end of page 129, on to page 130, shown above

I want to use this lining method and it made perfect sense in the picture. But I couldn’t process those instructions until I ripped out the wavy ease stitching a la Roberto Cabrera and draped it on the dressmaker’s form.

This is exactly what I want but it puts the fold over way on the left shoulder at the neck edge. To weird! Two friends had coats with this lining type but were really busy and I didn’t want to bother them for more info so I centered the fold at the back neck and angled the fold down diagonally down the back to the vent opening.

The blue line shows the true vertical and the red dash shows how the fold will go

The lining on the overlap will be hand stitched at the edge (even though the modern books say to machine stitch) and the lining on the underlap will be handstitched so that it lies just at the junction of the two. But before that stitching is done the hem will be put into the lining by a double fold.

This is what I wanted and somewhere in the back of my mind is a discussion of how to treat this ease fold but I couldn’t find it even after days of searching. Ahhhh, I wanted to have this stitched up and finished but am snowed in at the moment. There’s more photos at the Flikr album in the Lining a Long Coat set.

If anyone knows what this is called or how it should properly be done, please let me know. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do when on your own!

Bothering Birds: Nuisance Control

I arrived at The Stitchery today and found no birds in the trees. Whew!

So, I’m reinforcing the raglan sleeve seams in the coat’s lining with some lovely straight waistband tape that Els sent me a few years ago. It is straight tape sewn on top of a biased edge so the edge can be folded into the interior of a seam quite nicely. I believe she uses it for waistband stays. It’s working perfectly for the raglan armscye.

Decided to take a break to go visit my neighbor, Mr O, who is responsible for alerting the authorities about our alarming bird population. I am fond of him, anyway. This man has passed his 50th wedding anniversary, to give you an estimate of his age. Let’s just say he’s been around enough to know how to live life well.

Around here polite manners are supreme and being fast witted is the way to get along. People will agree with you whether they really do or not rather than be rude, which is just a horrible thing. I always learn about verbal STYLE from Mr O.

Anyway, Mr O says the birds were on a hill higher up in the neighborhood this morning and that the city is going to order special guns that fire a kind of bomb that goes off up in the air. The codes enforcer hadn’t bothered to explain that to me. I guess he didn’t think I would want to know, and I didn’t ask, either. He told me “shotguns”, so I took him at his word. That’s why no shotgun shells in my yard.

Well, that makes sense: the buzzards are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and there’s special State and Federal permits required.

So special guns. I guess I feel better. There’s something about men running amuck after dark with shotguns that had me more freaked out than the buzzards!!! Silly me.

I guess this would be similar to having too many pigeons, starlings, or geese, crows, or mergansers. Just the fact that they are Really Creepy Birds, buzzards, had me so freaked out I couldn’t see them as just bothering birds.

And old problem after all.

Back to being more sensible and getting my sewing done….

Shoot

I never thought I’d write about shooting and sewing, but here it is. I just got a call that the camera is fixed and is due to return to me within 3 to 4 days but sadly, this is not a post about shooting a photo, it’s about shooting guns.

Behind The Stitchery is land that 50-60 years ago used to be a farm and is now crisscrossed by electric and sewer line easements. In fact, The Stitchery was carved out of this land and it’s maybe 50′ away from my back porch. What is left back there now is wild, overgrown woods and ancient trees now, all scrubby and dark but full of beautiful flowers left over from the folks that lived there long ago in this house that is half caved in.

Last Spring (April 2009) I took some photos of the lovely blooms and put them in a Flikr album here

And while I was shooting the pastoral woodland scenes a startling thing happened: an American Black Vulture flew out of the attic window of the old house next to which I was standing. Oh my, it scared me! It’s wing span was close to 5 feet.

Since then I have watched more and more of these birds nest in the trees at night and fought off the feeling of impending doom, telling myself, “They’re just birds, for goodness sake, not harbingers of evil.”

Now, at roosting time when the sun goes down the sky is black with these birds, during the day every tree is covered with black hulks, their shadows crisscross the front lawn as they relentlessly search for hapless rodents.

Today the city codes enforcer came today to tell me his plans. Every evening for the next 10 days a team of men with shotguns will come to my driveway, park, and go to the back yard where they will start shooting into the air. If that doesn’t scare off the birds then they will try to kill them off.

You see, the State officials have said that once these critters get settled into an area they are difficult to get rid of and they are dirty. The woods now is covered in white bird droppings. Bad diseases, like histoplasmosis, are possible. We’re a population of old farmers and everyone knows you don’t want to clean out an old chicken coop for fear of this dreaded disease. My Step-Dad almost died of it once.

So these men will have shot guns and they will mean business.

Hey, I don’t love all these birds, I hope they go away FAST

I and the dogs will go to the house early of an evening for the next few weeks. I can’t imagine what all this will mean for us. I don’t think these men will go into the woods, I think they’d be scared to for fear of getting sick. I think they will line my back yard and aim into the air.

Will The Stitchery be safe for us to use anymore??? I don’t know WHAT this means for my sewing sanctuary. I’m just glad I didn’t turn this into a rental and have tenants with children that might have played in the woods. Oh man.

It turns out that the birds were harbingers of evil after all!!!

Piping the Lining Edge and Knitting a Little

Here’s the piping I had made up for the join between the orange and purple wool and the acetate lining for the Marfy 1977 coat. Because the silk used has cool stripes in it I wanted to create fabulous chevrons with the strips but ran out of any thing I could use to fill the piping. I also wanted the piping to have more “statement” next to the loud wool and flashy acetate so I experimented with the width of the second layer of piping. I’m not satisfied with the results of the rat tail piping and flat edge:

Next step is to make some cording on the knitting machine, using a yarn I can live without:

I caste on 7 stitches, knit some waste to get going, and punched the right part button on. Each pass from right to left the machine knits on all needles and before passing the carriage from left back to the right I pull out the middle needle. The machine then only knits on the middle needle and the stitch pulls the ends inward, creating the inward curl and making the knitting into a cord.

I see that this second cording is going to be bigger than normal so I hope my “creativity” (read “playing fast and loose with the rules”) hasn’t produced something that is too autre or eccentric. We’ll see.

I have overcome my fear of the knitting machine for yet another time. It seems so mysterious until I sit down and stumble through the routine. And then it’s all routine, back and forth, back and forth, pushing that carriage, hundreds of passes: good simple muscular, grunt work.

Which is good when trying to work off frustration at finding that fabulous pattern that I couldn’t afford: Is. Missing. The. Jacket. Pieces.

J, K, and L are not in the envelope.

I made up some photos to get more detail of the shape of these pieces. You can get larger views by clicking on the photo and then on “sizes” above the photo on the Flikr page where you can chose the larger sizes:

The instructions for the font show a small bust dart

And instructions for the back piece show a shoulder dart

I can draft this style of jacket since I have the Coat & Skirt Making book, but I really wanted to see Edith Head’s interpretation.

Fortunately I found another copy of the pattern (for half the price) and the seller guarantees that all the pieces will be included.

Meanwhile, the knitting machine has help me keep the blood pressure down. That’s a good thing. I can probably drag out the finishing of this coat until the new pattern copy arrives. It’s always something!

Happy Sewing!

Gusseted Magyar & Turban: 60’s Edith Head Pattern

Newly arrived in the mail from Vintage Fashion Library

A boxy early 60’s Edith Head pattern: a skirt, blouse, jacket and … Yes … a turban!

lined, interfaced and underlined “magyar” style jacket with side panel and gusset cut in one

I got curious about the Magyar draft

last January when I bought the book Coat & Skirt Making by Samuel Heath FCI

I’ve never worn a turban much less made one so I feel a great excitement creeping in 🙂

Suggested fabric: cotton suitings, pique, linen, blends, silk linen, faille, satin, silk tweed, wood crepe, tweed, flannel, jersey, blends. Hmmm, quite a bit of variation allowed. Ohhh, the stash will be searched extensively!!!

I’ll have to grade up 2 sizes but i think I can do that without too much trouble. I have a grading tool I’ve never tried before. Our dear Fashion Incubator author, Kathleen Fasanella, ALMOST reviewed it in 2006 in her post on Grading Machines and Rulers and it was ALMOST discussed in 2004 at Pattern Review: Pattern grading ruler: New gizmo!! but it was the Gizmo not to be reviewed so I’ll give it a bit of description here.

(I haven’t used it yet…still slowly finishing up the coat. I used to be able to do many things at once but no longer, it seems…anyway…)

I admit I lost track of this Gismo for a very long time but found it again during the clean out this summer. Here’s some pictures taken before the camera finally died a couple of days ago:

I tried to find an active link for retail purchase of this Gismo but there doesn’t seem to be one any more. Not to worry, I don’t believe it is worth the money I spent on it and I’ll give you links to probably much better sources.

This Grade Master is ridiculously simple and helpful mostly because it shows how the grain line should be lying under the clear Plexiglas. But other than that it is a simple procedure of extending incrementally to the seam line: (measuring visually) it is 6mm at the collar end, center front and back, neck point front & back, and sleeve crown; 5mm at the sleeve head (which, I believe,means at the width of the sleeve cap), 3mm at the cuff and 12mm to the side seams. Calipers would be more accurate than my eye but since this little tool is unavailable I think this approximation should suffice.

Different drafting tools and systems most likely will have different increments and I’m sure most readers would like to hear about your particular system for grading, if you care to share in the comments.

Currently available guides to grading patterns:

Threads’ Making Sense of Pattern Grading

Connie Crawford’s Grading Workbook

Fun Ahead! Happy Sewing 🙂

Eyes on the Plaid

I am finishing up the top stitching on the orange and purple plaid coat before I insert the lining and wanted to note some “discoveries” in working with plaid.

There is quite a bit of a casual style of top stitching on this Marfy 1877 pattern. Click on the link to get a bigger picture but this little one might do to remind:

By casual I mean that it is not symmetrical: there is top stitching on only one side of the seam line, not on both sides which to me would make the look more formal and in my mind, require a more precise top stitching than what I can produce by stitching by hand alone without a visual aid for straightness.

At first I was a bit disgruntled by the inaccuracies that my unguided stitching produced but when I looked at the garment from a bit of distance it seemed somewhat gay and carefree and had a “personality”

I decided that this plaid and garment shape benefited from the added carefree style so I stitched ahead last night all cozy sitting next to the HusPartner, surrounded by dogs and The Cat, in front of the TV. But something bothered me in the cold light of morning. It wasn’t good enough! When the hand stitching is done next to a curved seam or in an area where the fabric will have a lot of movement the slight variations added to the pleasing effect of top stitching but in a long stretch of vertical it just wouldn’t do.

See what I mean?

Next to the vertical back and front seams, the top stitching must be straight to satisfy my eye. I considered “pouncing” out the pattern like would be done in doing an embroidered and beaded design a la Lesage and indeed gathered the cardboard, talcum powder, marking wheel and punch when it hit me….

No need for all this when a simple machine stitch would give me the guideline I needed.

I used the presser foot edge as a guide and moved the needle over a couple of clicks and slowly basted with extra thin threads. I can stitch next to the machine basting and be somewhat under control 🙂

Whew, I just saved myself a ton of work: pouncing would have been time consuming and the talc would have rubbed off the stitching line. Eeeyyyy, I would have driven me nuts! I’ll still have the casual “by hand” look but it will be straight in the vertical fronts and back. Yay.

Marfy 1877 Plaid Coat

Here’s the pattern

My coat isn’t finished yet. It needs to have the rest of the top stitching hand done, the lining fitted and installed and the back vent and hems done.

But I promised pictures so there it is so far:

I made a couple of dresses to go with it earlier this month. I used a Sandra Betzina shoulder princess dress pattern for knits but it is no longer available so there’s nothing urgent in getting it reviewed.

The collar is made to stand up but is drafted well and does cover the collar stand nicely

Hope this is done before Spring! I’ve already worn last spring’s yellow coat

just to celebrate the sunshine!!!

Musing in the Cold “They Did Not!” Category

Today is hopefully the beginning of the end to the cold snap that has kept me indoors and away from back porch photography. The porch is under the snow and I’m just not that kind of girl. Oh, the dogs demand that indeed I shall march through the frozen fields with them but modeling is just not a job I do out of doors in this kind of weather. There’s just not enough money in it, te-he!

So finished coat pix are coming…later this week.

In the meantime “They Did Not!”. Pendleton did not put all their current and classic styles on sale…oh noooo, just when my budget is completely snuffed by medical and insurance bills and the economy in general.

Oh but they did: Pendleton online catalog It’s a given that I’d snatch up any of the women’s garments in a heart beat. But, but, I’m not sputtering only for my own selfish interest, Dear Lord, the men’s sale is fabulous too! Please windfall me some cash really soon, like today?

I have lusted after iconic the wool robe for the Huspartner forever! His Sir Pendleton, Lodge and Board shirts have been staples of The Stitchery Christmas giving for the past number of years. These shirts are so gorgeous and they stay gorgeous for a very long time!

And now they are on sale.

sigh.

I’ll live through this lack of cash somehow…I’ve survived a severe curtailment of fabric money for the past year so I can survive this. But, but, sniff.

On the Good News side of cold musings is that in visiting Annika’s Atelier and Esty Shop and generally catching up with this productive and lovely lady I’ve rediscovered a blog I used to love: Beauty Tips for Ministers PeaceBang is back and beauty blogging again. She’s been back for a while so I’ve got lots of reading to do. I love her writing style and thrift consciousness. And she talks about Proper Fit. LOVE….

Could Spring be just a few months away?

Understanding Chicken Snipping: Bound Buttonhole Facings

I have heard that Clotilde used to say to her sewing classes

Don’t Be A Chicken Snipper!

to encourage sewists to cut right up to the stitching when there was a job to do. I think it is a great phrase, very memorable and I do remember it every time I have to cut into a corner when working a bound buttonhole.

Front bound buttonholes are finished and pins have been struck though the ends of the holes to make markings for the front facing. The facing has been flipped over and the end lines and center line marked on the inside of the front facing piece. Once the under collar is stitched on the facing will be folded over the buttonholes and needs to be finished off to frame the buttonhole.

I love good tools and used an accurate measuring ruler from Fashion Sewing Supply to mark 1/8″ above and below the center line. A very sharp pencil comes in handy so I keep a cheapo electric sharpener just for these moments.

I cut 2.5″ wide lining strips and pinned them to the right side of the facing, covering the area that will become the buttonhole facing.

The strips are cut on the bias and the stretch is ironed out. I found this tip in an old tailoring manual and I really like it, much easier to cleanly turn than it is when cut on the grain and all the little ends want to poke through in the corners. The bias helps in the turning through as well.

From the under side of the front facing, the marked side, I could stitch the box for the buttonhole facing. Here’s a big picture so you can see that

1. I started and stopped the stitching in the middle of the long stitching line
2. I did not count my 1mm stitches so I ended up with one extra stitch in a corner!

I hoped that the extra stitch will not be a huge problem and it didn’t turn out to be an error I would find worth of ripping out those tiny stitches

However, here is what a chicken snip might look like.

The water droplets are brought to us courtesy of a new DG5030 Rowenta Pressure Iron and Steamer. It is a replacement for the first one that was worse and the retailer I bought it from can only switch it out for another of the same model. I only have so much patience and money and certainly don’t use it when dry ironing is important! When I called the Rowenta company (my retailer had not even done this yet) they said Oh, we know about that and have come out with a newer model that fixes the problem (steam condensing in the hose)

but back to the Chicken Snips: There is only one corner where the snip goes directly into the corner. The two top ones stop short of the corners and the lower right cut is slightly off and doesn’t go into the corner.

Upon turning the lining material to the back side

you can see how not getting right into each corner and clipping that is slightly angled can result in a poor result

Extra tiny snips into the corners using a (Carson MagniLamp Hands Free Magnifier that I found at Hancocks years ago) magnifying glass helps to correct these tiny errors

and the result is much better

and this buttonhole facing is fixed!

And to keep my blog out of trouble, let me say that I have no association with any of the suppliers that I have mentioned here nor have I reviewed anything that I have received for free. Just sharing the story…

happy sewing!

Wait, Where Am I???

Honeys: this is the South fer Goddess’s sake. We had a light snow yesterday and many schools are opening late today because of the cold.

——————————————-

High /Low (°F) Precip. %
Today
Jan 05 Partly Cloudy 28°/13° 20 %
Wed
Jan 06 Mostly Sunny 33°/22° 0 %
Thu
Jan 07 Snow 32°/12° 70 %
Fri
Jan 08 Flurries 22°/11° 30 %
Sat
Jan 09 Mostly Cloudy 23°/11° 20 %
Sun
Jan 10 Mostly Sunny 31°/17° 10 %
Mon
Jan 11 Partly Cloudy 38°/27° 10 %
Tue
Jan 12 Snow Shower 43°/27° 60 %
Wed
Jan 13 Snow Shower 41°/29° 40 %
Thu
Jan 14 AM Clouds / PM 46°/32° 20 %
Sun
Last Updated Jan 5 08:20 a.m. CT

——————————————

OK, whining done (check)

More sewing posts coming soon, promise!!!