Grainlines, fulling and stretching

(I'm trying out a new photo hosting format and I'm not sure what results I'm going to get so bear with me here)

When discussing fulling (or, the modern term, easing) and stretching as well as elasticity it is important to have an understanding of what is happening to the cloth, and to understand this one needs to understand a bit about the weave.

Cloth is made up of interlacing yarns running, in a plain weave, perpendicular to each other. Fancy weaves can be created by varying the way they are interlaced, but that is not within the scope of this discussion. The yarns running along the length of the goods are known as the warp (or the lengthwise grain), and are generally stronger than the filler yarns that are run along the weft (or, crosswise grain). This is important when cutting pieces which are subject to strain like waistbands and pockets- they will generally be cut along the warp.

If you try to stretch the goods along either grain, the amount of stretch is limited by the amount of elasticity in the yarns themselves, which is usually rather limited; imagine stretching a shoelace- not much stretch? How is it, then, that we can shape a garment by stretching parts of it? That is where the bias comes in.



The bias is an angle measured from the straight or crosswise grain; the true bias is a 45 degree angle. Just as the properties of the warp and weft are considered when cutting, the bias must also be considered. Madeleine Vionnet was widely (and dubiously) credited with the “invention” of the bias cut, but she is clearly the most notable champion of it; her fluid gowns of the twenties and thirties showed how the bias could be used to mold cloth and that the weave would shift, clinging to the body and draping gracefully.

The principle behind this is that tension exerted along the straight grain stresses the yarn and very little displacement occurs; tension exerted along the bias will not strain any given yarn, rather it will cause the weave itself to shift- the yarns are displacing themselves. In the images below you see two strips of canvas cut the same length but one is on the straight and one on the bias; the they are also shown stretched out- the straight has gained very little but the bias-cut strip has stretched a great deal.




Notice also that the bias-cut piece changes its dimensions- as it gets longer, it gets narrower.




The inverse is also true- when we try to ease or full parts of the garment, an area cut on the straight grain is likely to wrinkle or pucker since the yarn is being compacted (think of folding a paper into an accordion) but the weave of areas cut on the bias will compact and thus the easing will be smooth. The degree of bias will govern how much easing can be done- straighter cuts will allow less easing and cuts at 45 degrees will allow the most.

The clever cutter will keep this in mind when considering where he might need extra length, like the front of the shoulder and thus maximize the degree of bias, or areas which need to be eased in, like around the sleeve cap, and plan the distribution accordingly. The sleeve in particular, with its varying degrees of bias, is a tricky thing- the middle of the front is close to the straight grain so very little ease should be placed there, whereas the area around the front of the shoulder bone is very rounded so a lot of fullness can be placed there, but one must be careful- the area roughly ¾” to either side of the very top of the sleeve is on the straight grain so no fullness must be placed here or the sleeve will pucker. Below you see a sleeve which, by accident or by design, shows this puckering at the very top because fullness has been placed there. These days we would be careful to distribute the fullness to either side of the top where it will be eased in smoothly (as highlighted by the arrows), and place nothing at the very top. The sleeve can be just as full but a more careful distribution will give cleaner results. Of course, certain Neapolitans have different ideas about that, but I have been told stories straight from the horse’s mouth about how that kind of thing came to be accepted in Naples at the time….. Not having been there myself I won’t comment.

Soft tailoring

Having worn the drape coat a bit I have noticed one thing about the comfort- it is markedly more comfortable in the chest, but that has nothing to do with the drape allowance (actually, the drape in the chest bugs me a little when I move my arm forward).

Drape and soft tailoring have often been confused and I am inclined to think that the softness of the construction has much more to do with the comfort than the drape. While I have cut soft coats in the past, one thing I have not done is to put the chest on the bias; I am convinced that this is giving a lot more comfort than a straight-cut chest would since the hairline is not impeding forward movement. I think my next experiment will be to cut a clean-cut coat with a soft-construction and bias-cut chest to compare with the drape coat. I guess I'll have to keep this a while longer.

Canvas Fronts

I went to visit a friend of mine today.

She started in the business as a machine operator (seamstress) at Samuelsohn; today she owns the company which makes their, and the majority of North American manufacturers', canvas fronts.



She has special double-needle jumpstitch machines with custom-built forms. This machine doesn't sew like most, whose presser foot and feed dogs feed the fabric- the operator feeds it through at their own pace. They can control how many stitches, whether lots for a firm shape, or few for a soft shape, and the forms allow them to work in the shape of the chest and shoulder. It requires a certain amount of skill since the operator is building in the shape and has to know how to do it correctly. They do a very nice job.



Canvas has not been though all the finishing processes like cloth has so there is still a big amount of shrinkage left. A tight canvas will make the fronts ripple, and I suspect this is one of the reasons some people put their canvases on the bias, since the bias allows more stretch. Whife alludes to it, and suggests that clever tailors are able to put the canvas on the straight grain without trouble. One of the most important steps to avoid trouble is to pre-soak the canvas fronts. They are soaked up to 24 hours, and then hung to dry, then pressed on custom-designed forms which retain and enhance the form of the chest, and stretch the shoulder at the same time. Some people then run some light shirring stitches through the canvas to draw it up a bit to prevent any further shrinkage problems.

An old iron

I found this when going through some old stuff. An 18 pound iron of the type that used to sit in coals to get hot. One of the first jobs an apprentice would have would be carrying this thing back and forth, and swapping out the press cloth which would keep the dirty iron from soiling the garment.

Thank god for electric irons.

Not seeing the forest for the trees

This drape experiment has got me thinking. I feel very Meh about this coat but the general population seems to like it. Why?

I like pagoda shoulders. I like a good rope on a sleeve. I like a polished-marble clean chest. I like pocket jets that match the coat.

Why?

Because they are the most difficult things to execute properly.

Where I see virtue, normal people see, well, I don't know what they see, but it's clear we don't see it the same way. But this is normal. People like things that are difficult, that are rare, that show virtuosity. We go sit through 2 and 3 hours of opera and most people are only waiting for a few notes to come out- how much of Che Gelida Manina do they really hear? They're waiting for the tenor to belt out that high C and everybody leaps to their feet and claps. Because that high C is hard to get and hold. And it's easy to understand that it's special.

The coat I feel most meh about is generally liked and the coat I prefer is generally disliked. Maybe I am judging only on Technical Merit and completely ignoring Artistic Impression. On the other hand, the other night I drank a bottle of wine which sells for $150 at the liquor store. Sure, it was good, but could I, a non-expert, tell the difference between it and a $30 bottle? No way. Should wine-makers abandon their high standards because only experts understand the virtue of an excellent bottle? Is it a fair parallel? At least the wine tasted good so had some merit. Many people think the Prince of Wales coat looks bad. Would it be pure snobbery to say that they are not aware of the technical superiority, or is that just a bunch of tailoring claptrap and a coat should just look good and be comfortable, regardless of how hard it was to make?

Probably the latter.

Drape, part 3

Coat's done.

Meh.

For all the fuss they make over the comfort of drape, I expected the clouds to part, rays of sunshine to burst forth and choirs of angels to sing when I put this on. It's soft, it's light, it's comfortable, but is it really all that much more comfortable than the starch and armor that I normally wear?

No.

In part, because of the sleeve. People have this funny notion about sleeves and their fullness. Despite what most people think, the neapolitan sleeve is not the fullest; in fact, it is one of the smallest. And neither is the A&S sleeve (I hate to burst your bubble, Mr Hitchcock, but EVERYBODY fulls a large sleeve into a smaller armhole, not just you guys). The rope shoulder is the fullest sleeve up top; that's what makes the rope. You have to fill in all the extra room with wadding to make it clean, otherwise you wouldn't have "soft ripples" like the spalla camicia, you would have Niagra Falls. I can then taper from that fullness toward the wrist and have a sleeve that is full up top but trim at the bottom. Much more modern and appealing to my eye. People don't usually have fat elbows, and extra space around the lower bicep or elbow is not actually more comfortable. The key is to have more space ABOVE the breast line. In this, a rope-shouldered sleeve is the fullest and affords the greatest amount of movement. That is why I have more movement in the POW jacket picture below, even though it is lean-cut than I do in this drape coat. Of course, if the armhole were in the wrong position, nothing is going to comfortable.

Does this coat suit me better? Probably. I'm still not thrilled about it, though that may change. Since it is a sport coat it is not bad, but I think a business suit cut like this would not feel right. Not for me, anyway. I'll wear it a bit but I have a feeling this is going to end up on ebay.

Drape, part 2

I have since found some things out about A&S and drape.

I didn't think that the full canvas would have been cut on the bias- Sator showed me a oage from Whife in which he indicates that it was, in fact, done on occasion, but I get the impression he did not favor it.

Edwin DeBoise, of Steed (who is former A&S cutter) pointed out in a LL post that A&S only cut the chest canvas on the bias, as I suspected.

Bengalstripe posted some photos of the insides of an A&S garment here and it appears that they use linen canvas, not hair canvas. Interesting, but not for me.

Upon reflection, I have changed my mind about the spalla camicia thing. While the purpose is not to reproduce a period A&S coat, it does seem that the spalla camicia was a later invention. I am not sure if the seam should be opened, though, since several photos indicate that it was not, however there was no or little wadding which would have made a rope-type shoulder. the photos posted also clearly show a little padding in the shoulder of the A&S garment, but I am omitting it in mine. I have drafted a nice trim sleeve using my own ever-developing system, and this time I got everything to match nicely in the back and still fit the way I want. Yesterday I was not feeling so good about the coat, feeling that there was just way too much drape. Now that I have a sleeve in, my feelings are changing.

Here we are at the office, I have one sleeve basted in, and placed on a tailor's dummy which is quite a bit bigger than I so it fills out the coat, but you get an idea of the shape of the coat so far. I am not displeased.





EDIT It looks much better on the dummy than on me. It's now a little rumpled from having been stuffed into a bag but here are two shots anyway. Feeling a little discouraged right now.

Up until now I had only seen the back in the 3-way mirror and a very distinct vertical fold ran down the back, much as I had expected it to, however I didn't have a sleeve on it yet. Now that the sleeve is on and I see it full-on thanks to a tripod and a camera, the fold is no longer visible and I see some cleaning I have to do. So is this to do with the angle of vision or the weight of the sleeve or both? The back now looks clean (well, not clean, but not drapy)- can this be also a result of the weight of the cloth? It is a good 3/4" than I normally cut my back, which is twice the drape allowance given in Regal's. I am starting to think it is possible to conceal a great amount of drape in the back without it looking too messy. Definitely worth more thought.

The front in this photo makes me look about 20 pounds heavier than I am. Again, maybe camera angle and the fact that it is not finished. Note the high position of the breast welt- I had to bring the chest dart higher than I normally would because the fullness of the chest seemed to sag much too low. This is probably a feature of the style and maybe I should have left it as is, but I did not like it. What seemed like a huge amount of drape before I had sleeves on is again, not so apparent, but again, probably camera angle.

To drape or not to drape

I'm getting ahead of myself (again). The windowpane coat is finished but I'm going to wear it and abuse it for a while before making any further observations on it. On to my next experiment.

A whole lot of fuss is made over the drape cut, some claiming it to be the ultimate in bespoke silhouettes and others deriding it as just bad cutting. Many people aren't very clear about just what drape is, especially since what is made nowadays as drape is perhaps far from what was being made in its heyday. The proponents of it claim that it is not only more elegant, it is also more comfortable. I favor a clean-cut chest over drape and feel quite strongly about it, however I have never worn a drape coat and I am also not so much of a testa dura to not put it to the test. So my next experiment- to cut myself a drape coat and do the wear-test.

First, what is drape? Opinions can differ on the details, but drape is primarily characterized by soft vertical folds of excess cloth around the scye, on the premise that this affords more movement or comfort. It seems to have been made popular (some claim it was invented) by Frederick Scholte, a famous cutter at Anderson & Sheppard, a Savile Row house. EDIT- I AM INFORMED THAT SCHOLTE TRAINED A&S CUTTERS BUT WAS NOT, HIMSELF, AN EMPLOYEE OF A&S. Cutting manuals of the time state that it was not clear where the drape came from, whether from England or the States or even Europe, so I wonder if it really was invented by Scholte or the fact that he popularized it misleads us. I don't know. They also pioneered a "soft tailoring" school which sometimes confuses people, since a suit can be clean-cut but be soft, and a draped suit can be structured. Here are a few examples, the first being Mr. Hitchcock, the current head cutter at A&S, and one of them being a very extreme version, just in case you missed it.







The same vertical fold would appear at the back of the scye.

I have two texts which give instructions for drafting a drape coat- one is Whife's Modern Tailor, Outfitter and Clothier of London from the late 40's, and Regal's Garment cutter, which, if I am not mistaken, dates from 1933 so they are both from the period of greatest popularity of the style. Regal's gives a draft with a moderately small drape allowance- 1" on the half while Whife gives well over 1 1/2" on the half; Whife also gives options for a closer-fitting seat and appears to be more of what we see in the drape cut. One feature it does include is a front dart which extends all the way to the hem, something that we rarely see except on Rubinacci, some Huntsman and perhaps a few other Neapolitan tailors. I know that this was hugely popular in Naples at around the time that English tailoring was catching on there, and I would prefer a cleaner seat so I chose to use Whife's draft with dart extending to the hem. It is the first time I have drafted and cut this sort of thing and it posed a certain challenge where matching the pocket was concerned. More one that later.

The draft instructions are actually manipulations to the regular draft so I started by drafting a pattern to their standard grid, then followed their instructions for turning that pattern into a drape coat. I made the pattern without a separate side body, another thing which is new for me. One of the reasons I am doing this is to see exactly what the drape coat of the day would have looked like and felt like so I am trying to stick to it to the letter. Being a checked fabric, I have left the sleeve until I am happy with the fit of the coat since changes to the armhole will affect how well (if at all) the checks match. Once I get the armhole nailed down I will draft a sleeve to fit it, using my own sleeve drafting system, not Whife's.

Here is part of the instructions for the drape manipulations- you can see there areas which are getting larger, and also the extreme straightening of the neck point. Further manipulations include cutting through the front to open it up and create the long form dart



One thing that Scholte was known for doing was putting the canvas on the bias. I have been trying to get a look inside vintage A&S jackets to see if the whole front was on the bias or just the chest part; I suspect it was just the chest part. The large piece of canvas that goes all the way down the front is quite supple and I see no reason to put it on the bias. The chest, however, has stiffer hair running across it but not lengthwise; putting this on the bias, running diagonally toward the top of the shoulder, would give dimensional stability but be softer when the arm was reaching forward. It would also allow the extra cloth in the scye to drape and form that famous fold- otherwise the crosswise hairline would just fill the chest out and it would be less evident. So I am cutting the main front on the straight and the chest canvas on the bias. I am not putting any other chest plates or shoulder reinforcement pieces a I would for a fully constructed garment, nor am I putting a shoulder pad.

I have done two fittings so far (which is hard to do on yourself, even with a 3-way mirror) and this is what the coat is starting to look like. The bag is a skein of silk thread- the way most finishing threads are sold, as opposed to on spools. You cut one end of the skein and that makes pieces of thread just the right length, and all the same length. The thread is pre-waxed.



It was very tempting during fittings to clear the scye (clean up the chest) since to my stubborn eye it just looks wrong. But I resist! It is quite a lot of drape, even though I allowed the minimum suggested by Whife.

Manipulations with the iron play a big role in shaping so I will note now what I did. Since the chest seems amply big on its own, the only manipulation was a bit of shrinking of the scye near the front pitch notch. I stretched the neck and first two inches of the front shoulder to give the forward pitch, and that is all I did to the front. The side seams were stretched as usual, as well as the blades of the back and center back seam (see my previous post on shaping the back). I would normally tape the back scye, drawing it short, but Whife admonishes against it so I did not. That is the full extent of the manipulations with the iron.

Having a seam going down the front means that pockets won't necessarily match at certain parts. Iammatt was kind enough to show me a closeup of one of his Rubinacci coats which they had cleverly managed to disguise this mismatch at the bottom of the pocket. I was not so successful, but I think it has more to do with the width of the check- the check on Matt's coat was much wider. I will do some more looking into this later.

This is Iammatt's Rubinacci. The check mismatch is very well disguised.



Even though I find the drape amount excessive, it was what Whife described so I am going to leave it. Tomorrow I will be able to draft my sleeve and go to that fitting. Then I will post some photos of where I am at with it.

Learning to sew with a thimble

Someone asked me how to learn to sew and I told him to start by learning to work with a thimble. This will protect your finger as you work with multiple layers which can sometimes be stiff. FIrst, get an open-ended thimble in the correct size. The average size is 10 or 11.

Thread a piece of ribbon through the thimble, then place the thimble on your middle finger. Bend the finger toward your palm and have someone tie the ribbon. Take a threaded needle between your thumb and index finger, with the end supported by the thimble. The dimples are there so the needle won't slip. Now practice taking stitches. It is pretty hateful at first but you will eventually get the hang of it. Use a turning motion of your wrist to drive the needle through the cloth- most people's natural tendency is to extend the finger to drive the needle through, and like this you will tire quickly, especially when working with thickness like canvas or collars. This is why you are tieing your finger- to rid yourself of this tendency.

Now practice.

How to Iron a Shirt

Anyone interested in the pro method of ironing a shirt should check out this tutorial at

http://lavraiechemisesurmesure.blogspot.com/

While on the subject of shirts, does anyone know what David Page Coffin is up to these days?

I am reposting an interesting article I found on LL. It echoes some of my sentiments about drafting systems, and the propensity for bespoke cutters to be slightly "loose" in their cutting, leaving a lot to be adjusted during fittings and by the tailor. Though RTW and MTM is often maligned on the fora, the patterns and cutting systems have to be perfected to a great degree since there is very little basting and adjusting being done. A sleeve pattern must be so perfect that the sewer merely matches notches and sews, and can do about 20 pairs in a hour. My work in RTW has positively influenced my cutting for bespoke for this very reason.

But let me be clear here. It is not any cutter's fault that his system may be loose or imprecise. The author is partly correct in that many who do have knowledge of better cutting systems do not share that knowledge, largely because it was hard-earned. We all learned cutting from one system or another, and these systems were imprecise. They mostly date to a time when production standards were different. In a factory, I have the opportunity to observe my patterns being made up thousands of times in different cloths- I can make observations and generalizations that a bespoke cutter can not. I also found that the cutting systems we were all taught were not perfect; in RTW when we do a draft it was common to make several samples, fitting each one several times, before something satisfactory was achieved. Sleeves were probably the worst. So I started to reverse-engineer the results of my testing and fitting and came up with much more precise ways of drafting which eliminate the need for a lot of these fittings and trial samples. This is an advantage that I may have had over the cutter who only cuts a few garments per week. Many of the old-timers like to say that they stick with what they know and don't bother with fads. that's fine. They like to think their systems work so why change them? That's fine too. But I counter by saying that technology evolves, things improve. Why not keep up, if it offers a competitive advantage?

This article could have been written today, but I was surprised to learn that it dates from 1932.

Interesting

The one-piece back

We’ve been talking a lot about shaping and about the back, and recently voxsartoria posted some photos of some garments he’s having made with a one piece back; there have been a few questions about it so let’s look at the mechanics of the back of the jacket. Sorry about the crappy Iphone photos.

EDIT- dumb me is assuming everyone has seen vox's suits since he's posted them on every imaginable forum except the russian styleforum :) So you can see these suits here http://www.styleforum.net/showthread.php?t=99996

Traditional patternmaking rules dictate that a seam or a dart must pass over, or point to, the point of greatest fullness. On a lady’s front, this is the bust point. On the back, this is the shoulder blade. Tailors, however, do not like to follow rules; instead, we make up new ones.

The first new rule is that some of the shaping of the back will occur at center back, not at the level of the blades. Thus, the center back seam is not straight but shaped (usually). The red line shows that my first line in the draft is straight, but then the center back seam is shaped from the hem up to the blade area.



This gives some room for the blades and some shape to the waist.



But placed on a dummy, we can see that it is not quite sufficient to fit cleanly. Of course, I could just call this drape and have done with it. But some people prefer a cleaner looking garment so a little additional work is required.



If we were to follow the rules of regular patternmaking, we would need to place a dart in the armhole to give length to the blade, and another dart at the waist to give the waist some shape. You will perhaps recognize the “princess” seam which was typical in tight-fitting dress coats taking form.



If I place this fitted panel on the table you can see the large amount of shape given to the blades, and the ripple of length at the side seam which is a result of the dart.



We do not want this shoulder dart and would like to shift the waist dart off to the side, where it now exists in modern coats. It is not possible to do this using regular drafting and construction methods, which is where some of the tailor’s art comes to play. I will adjust my drafting to take into consideration the elimination of the shoulder dart and the displacement of the waist dart. I can also eliminate the center back seam. The back, when cut, now looks like this. Flat. Not so good. Yet.



So I will start by stretching the blades, shrinking the armhole and center back, which will give this result.



Then I stretch the side seam and shrink center back, which gives a ripple of length at the side. The result looks like the one pictured above, but minus all the seams.



Placed on the tailor’s dummy, I have a back which is clean and shaped and well fitted. Two potential drawbacks are that injudicious use of steam can wreck what I have done, and that there is no inlay at center back to allow for future alterations, should they become necessary.



This is a garment made by Edwin DeBoise of Steed Bespoke Tailors for one of his Boston clients who requested a one-piece back- note the amount of shape he was able to achieve (note also the drape near the armholes- this was intentional) and the spectacular sleeves. Edwin travels to various spots in the US and perhaps elsewhere- check his website or his blog for itinerary. The world needs more clothing like this.

Sleeve matching

So I managed to draft a sleeve that matches all the way down the back as well as the front (here it is, just basted in to the armhole)



The under sleeve is pretty hollow and I'm not thrilled with the fit so I am going to keep trying other things so long as I have some cloth left.

But at least I know it's possible.

Bonjour aux lecteurs Français

Il parait que j'ai quelques lecteurs Français- et bien, si les choses ne sont pas très claires, dites-le moi et je me tâcherai de faire un peu de traduction.

Bonne année!

Progress report

So here is some of the progress so far.

As promised, I pulled the pad stitching from half the collar and redid that half by hand; the stand is pretty heavily padded, the fall is more lightly padded and the ends were curled under as I worked to keep the corners tight to the chest. After breaking the collar, there is no noticeable difference in shaping or shape retention, though that may change, particularly after it's been worn so we'll have to keep checking back on this one. The side which looks bare is the one done by machine- it is done with a fine, clear monofilament thread which is nearly invisible.



Going back to the business of felling, here you see that the facing seam has been sewn to the canvas; this can also be done by blindstitch machine. As we work across the garment we are sewing everything together, in place, so that nothing moves once it's been (shudder) steamed or had its first chemical bath at the dry cleaners. On more economical garments, this seam may be glued in place, which will come apart after a few cleanings; some garments whose lining has been "bagged" will not be tacked at all.



I talked about Chris Despos' method of balancing the patterns on the back; this is the result for this check. Normally when I draft the back, the result would have the lines evenly balanced (mirrored) at the neck so that the collar matches but very close together at the hem. Chris' idea is to balance the pattern at the hem, as shown- this requires more shaping with the iron to get a good shape to the back, but I like the result shown below. I recently worked with a navy cloth with a very bold white windowpane; it would have been much nicer done with this method. My one snag is that I like to be able to keep a person's pattern on file once a garment is finished so that there is less fitting the next time I cut a garment; with this method a new back must be drafted for every cloth if it is a stripe or a check, requiring different amounts of shaping and fitting. One of those techniques I'll keep tucked up my sleeve for when I have very distinct fabric designs.



To further drive points about felling and steaming home, let's consider this side vent (look closely, it's there); the back hem is folded up and the back underlay is folded under- the side body seam allowance is folded back and the hem is folded up. This is a lot of folding- eight layers of cloth, not to mention the lining. A lot of stuff to fall out of shape as a result of humidity and cleaning, which is why we fell everything in place, so it keeps this nice flat appearance. But let's consider that many manufactured garments are not felled so that the lining can be bagged; let's also consider what happens to a pant crease when it is steamed- it relaxes unfolds itself. So someone who takes their jiffy steamer to the back to get rid of wrinkles is also relaxing those 4 creases used to create the vent and since they are not felled in place they just open up. I can guarantee you that the vent will not sit flat any more.



The most intriguing for last.

The proponents of hand sewing the sleeve talk about elasticity and looking at the chain stitch versus tape in the armhole looked promising in this regard so I decided to observe what areas of the garment come under the most strain during movement and was surprised at what I saw. When we reach forward we feel the back of the armhole straining; this area is mostly bias and so I figured if the chain stitch and hand sewing could provide support and elasticity it would be far superior to a lock stitch. But what I saw (and is difficult to see in the photograph) is that the back armhole was not even touching my body at all; the forward motion of the arm was dragging on the front of the armhole, causing the area shown in yellow to pull, and that the garment was pulling on my blades but mostly along the latissimus dorsi. The bias area received no tension at all, and the area under strain is on the straight grain so there would be not much give at all. The front of the armhole and a large part of the underarm are tacked into the canvas which negates any benefit of elasticity so I am starting to have big doubts about this. I also wonder if those who equate hand-sewn seams with elasticity consider that bathing suits and T shirts are sewn by machine and yet are elastic so if elasticity is really so key then surely a machine dedicated to those operations requiring it would have been invented. There are still enough big guns who advocate hand-sewn sleeves so I am still not ruling it out but it's starting to look like marketing hype to me.

A very important distinction as I prepare the armholes

As I was preparing the armholes a contextual distinction came up; there are two sides of the tailoring coin- one is the independent tailor shop, the other the factory. Why is this important? In the context of a tailor shop, which may have only a lockstitch (plain) machine and maybe a serger and blind-stitch machine, there are a great deal of operations which must be done by hand to be done correctly. In a factory there may be machines which can do the same operation to the same level of quality but in a fraction of the time. So to say a certain operation is better by hand than by machine can be true if in the context of a tailor shop, but not true if in a factory. But it goes beyond that.

I am preparing the armholes to eventually have sleeves set in. Certain parts of the armhole are susceptible to stretching, and others must be kept short in order to create shape; the lower part of the front armhole is held short to help build the chest and to keep the sleeve tight to the body. The back armhole is held short to clean up the blade area. The majority of makers use a small cotton tape in the armhole to prevent stretching and to hold the extra length, like this



The black cotton tape serves to stabilize once this area has been shaped, and so that the sleeve setting is cleaner.

The makers who attach their sleeves by hand normally do not use this tape which "locks" the armhole, but make a chain stitch by hand, which holds the armhole, draws it short where needed, but is still elastic. There is an amount of give and recovery which you don't get when the tape is used.



But then it occurred to me that we have machines which make this exact stitch and can perform this same function; in the case of the tailor shop, it is true that doing this by hand provides elasticity, but in the case of Kiton or Oxxford, they would be able to afford such a machine that performs the same job. If you are going to insert your sleeve by hand in order to preserve the elasticity in the seam, you would not use tape but use a chainstitch. It then occurred to me that it might then be confusing or difficult to explain to a consumer that one is done by hand, the other machine, but that one machine method is identical to the hand method whereas another machine method is far lesser. It then becomes a blog subject :) Maybe it's just better to do by hand in order to preserve the cachet of the "hand sewn armhole" since the consumer perception is that the hand sewn would necessarily be better.

Whatever the case, I am leaning favorably toward the chain-stitch rather than tape right now, and could eliminate the tape in my factory in favor of a chain stitch method. In this case, an industrial duplication of a traditional, hand-sewn application. To be continued......

Happy Holidays!

I'd like to wish everyone happy holidays, and a healthy and prosperous new year!

This period is a little anti-climactic for me- after the rush to get everyone's suits finished for the holidays, coupled with the Christmas shopping and parties and general craziness, we close for the next ten days and I don't know what to do with myself. I'm not very good at doing nothing and I've gone through my last pile of books. So the experiment will continue.

I have made garments entirely by hand before, and one which were partly done by machine because I don't think that it's worth doing certain things by hand, like the collar padding and the sleeve hanging. However I've never been able to really properly compare the two so my opinions are untested- really, I should make two suits out of the same cloth and same trimmings but made using the different techniques. Ok, I may be a clothing geek but I'm not quite that hardcore; there is a limit to what I will do in the interest of sartorial investigation. Instead I'll do a half-and-half.

I found and end of flannel, a nice charcoal with a camel-coloured windowpane which unfortunately does not photograph all that well- it's a lot nicer in person. I'm going to do my back the way Chris Despos does and see how that turns out. I'm going to see if I can match the sleeve to the back like in the Paul Smith garment pictured elsewhere on this blog. I'm going to take some pre-padded collar melton and undo half of the padding and redo it by hand to see if there's a difference between the two. I'm going to sew one shoulder seam by hand and the other by machine. I'm going to set one sleeve by machine and one sleeve by hand.

I will either end up with a garment which looks distinctly different one side from the other and will thus be unwearable but it's an end so it doesn't matter- all I have lost is my time; however, I will have learned something in the process. Or I will have a wearable garment which may be more comfortable on one side but is visually indistinct from the other, in which case I will have a wearable suit and will have learned something in the process. Either way I will have learned something and either proved or disproved some of my theories, at least to me. So it's win-win.

Happy holidays!

On the subject of Felling

I showed how to spot the different ways of hemming a lining and explained why it would be better to do by hand or by the special felling machine, since allowances inside are felled in place. But what does that really mean?

Have you ever got your trousers back from the cleaner and there was a phantom crease near the new crease in your trouser? A result of wear, humidity and the cleaning process, the trouser loses some of its crease. If the presser at the dry cleaner is not extremely careful, he will not make his new crease in exactly the same place as the old one. The same can apply to hems and vents- during construction they are usually basted in place so when they are creased, they are creased exactly where we want them to be. If, as a result of wear, humidity or cleaning the hems fall or the vent puffs, it can be difficult to get the crease back in the same place as the old one. One of the goals of tailored clothing is for the garment to maintain its original shape for its useful life; in order to prevent hems from sagging and vents puffing and lining and facings falling out of shape, we tack as much as possible in place, which is permanent. Looking at the photo of the back panel (which has side vents) I am turning up the vent underlay to show how this underlay has been invisibly felled in place using a zig-zag-shaped stitch. Along the bottom, you can see (though not all that clearly) that the hem has been cross-stitched to the cotton interlining, which has, in turn, been stitched to the garment fabric using the same type of stitch as the vent underlay. This can also be done using special blind-stitching machines. This felling prevents the lining from being sewn in using a conventional lock-stitch machine, which is why it must be felled using the felling machine or by hand, as illustrated in the post on hems. So when you see a hem sewn by lockstitch machine (the bright blue lining in that post), you are seeing the manner of closing the lining but you also know for certain that the allowances have not been felled in place, only tacked at the seams, unless glue was used to hold things up, which itself can wear out after wearing and cleaning; it is also almost guaranteed that the facing has been glued in place rather than felled with a blindstitch.

A bit of nerves this morning

I don't usually get nervous while I'm working but I'm drafting a gentleman's overcoat this morning and he is flying in for a skeleton fitting later this week so I need to rush a little. Lovely pure cashmere from Cerutti- I'll need about 4 yards at $500 a yard. That's $2000. Not something one wants to goof up.

Made to measure

For those who have been wondering about their options when ordering made-to-measure suits, below is a list of alterations which are typically available- far more than the few length and girth adjustments which may have been offered in the past. Keep in mind that the success of the fit relies entirely upon the person measuring you since they are required not only to take measurements but to be able to judge your posture. If you are concerned about the salesperson’s ability to fit you, ask about trunk shows in which representatives of the company which will make the garment will be in store- often there are discounts offered during these shows and you will be sure to have an experienced fitter on hand.

This list is by no means exhaustive (and covers only the jacket- there are more for trousers) but will give you an idea of the flexibility of modern MTM programs.

Lengthen/shorten jacket
Lengthen/shorten sleeve
Button stance higher/lower
Pocket higher/lower
Increase/reduce back
Increase/reduce center front
Increase/reduce waist
Increase/reduce seat
Increase/reduce waist and seat
Sloped shoulder
Square shoulder
Erect
Stoop
Easy armhole
Full chest
Flat chest
Longer/ shorter strap
Dip neck
Pinch neck
Short/long neck
Big/small neck
Forward shoulder point
Big arms
Deeper/higher armhole
Sway back
Round back
Hollow back
Prominent/flat blades
Arms back/forward
Increase/reduce point to point
Left low/ right low