Unit Evaluation

In this unit I have been looking much more concisely into men’s tailoring to produce a three-piece suit to a set of measurements supplied by ArtsEd in London.  This has given me the experience of working with an outside client as opposed to working alongside the acting department within the university; working in a very small group as they asked for three suits, and learning more of the skills and techniques involved in professional tailoring.

I have really enjoyed working in such a small group, finding that the tutorial sessions are much more focused and befitting to our needs that that we would get in a larger group.  Working with two people I have not worked closely with before has also given me the chance to get to know them.  We have worked well together, able to approach each other for help and advice when Graham has been unavailable and in being a support network for each other, especially when going to the fitting in London, which was a new experience for all of us, none of us having done a tailoring fitting before.   In particular with the skills and techniques of tailoring, doing this unit has presented both much enjoyment and a considerable amount of frustration.  However, my over-riding feeling at the end of it is that I definitely want to do more, and that this is still the career path I would like to explore.  Tailoring, even costume tailoring, is so different from normal costuming, combining the elements I like without the elements I am not so enamoured with.  Even if I do not end up in tailoring, the skills I have learned over the past few weeks are very useful – not least, how to draft and fit a sleeve so that it sits well and falls in sympathy with the garment. 

There have been many challenges along the way with this unit, not least the fact that I was working with checked material.  The fabric was pure wool and was therefore very malleable, ironed well, sat well when placed and had movement, and was lovely to work with for those reasons.  But, with that movement also came a difficulty when matching the checks as any pressure on the fabric in the wrong place at the wrong time could push it out of alignment.  I found the pockets in particular a great challenge to get looking really crisp with the longer straight seams also presenting a considerable difficulty.  However, this has only improved my patience and my appreciation of careful preparation, and the power of tacking.  The other construction area I have found hard is the sleeves.  The way a jacket sleeve sits in the armhole is one of the most noticeable areas on a suit and they have never been my forte.  This time, I not only had to position them properly, but I had to do ‘easing’, and I still had to match the checks.  At the time of writing this I have not put the top fabric sleeves in the jacket, but have had a day of working with Graham to improve my sleeve pattern, making changes to my calico toile and preparing the top fabric and lining for the real sleeves.  I have found keeping a blog a test of discipline; I found it hard to keep track of what I had done when and how I had reacted to each step with a view to reviewing and evaluating it later in a professional, academic manner.  This is, however, good practice for third year and I will try to keep up some record of what is happening with each of the projects I undertake, especially as I am aware we will need to do an evaluation of our whole time at the university at the end.

There are many areas that I know about where I can improve in the future.  My finishing skills, though much improved, can still be taken further.  My cutting skills are not as good as I would like and accuracy overall is something I feel can always been bettered.  This unit has incorporated a very large amount of learning huge amounts in a very short space of time, trying to absorb long lists of quite detailed instructions and so all the new skills and techniques I have learned over the last few weeks need improvement, not least my note-taking to understand and remember demonstrations at a later date when I come to complete a step without Graham being in attendance. 

In third year I fully intend to do more tailoring, for at least one or two of the project areas.  I would like to advance my knowledge and practise of the skills and techniques I have learned in this unit, looking at a suit from a different era and some culturally specific tailoring.  I would also consider looking into women’s tailoring.  Tailoring is definitely still an area I would seriously consider undertaking as a career and therefore I would like to keep studying it, but also looking at how it can influence my making methods in all areas.

Reflection on the week

·         

A good week.  This kind of reading up in books, working together to get some sense out of the fabric in our hands with the input of G has been very positive.  G also told us that the first suit he ever made was so bad that he refused to wear it, so we know he appreciates the position we three are in.  There was a very good atmosphere in the workroom this week, to the point that even having one’s work criticized, literally being shown where one had gone wrong and needed to start again, we not demoralizing, but weirdly uplifting.

Mistakes need to be made in order to progress: if you don’t make mistakes, you don’t learn how things can go wrong.  If you don’t know how things go wrong, when they suddenly spring at you in the future, you have no idea how to remedy them or, even, quite what has gone wrong.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. – Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

 

New things!

We learnt how to doing the finishings on the waistband: this involves more hidden, secret canvas, basted into place; pretending to machine sew linings on but actually doing them by hand; how to attach trouser hooks and bars that won’t move or pull at the opening by tying a short length of cotton tape to them, couching this down, and then hiding everything beneath the lining, leaving just the hook end poking out over the edge of the lining.

We also were shown how to do curved hems on trousers. By curving the hem up over the front and down at the back you create a hem that sits well over the top of the shoe while keeping the length at the back.  Long-looking legs = good.

Jetted pockets...

Now then; everyone said that jetted pockets were easier, but I wonder if they had to do one first time with checks.  Precision, as with most things in tailoring, is the key, but here, it is very, very visible if you get it wrong.  With most things, you can put something together not quite right and the majority of people might notice that there is something slightly off about it but they won’t be able to put their finger on it unless they know exactly what they are looking for.  With Jetted pockets, it is excessively plain to see when you have failed to a) match your checks, b) sew in a straight line and c) sew two straight lines that are parallel. With our jacket pockets we were actually going to be putting a flap over them, but while this might help hide a very little inaccuracy, you have the added hurdle of getting the flap to match up with everything involved too.

Practice, practice, practice...

The week that was

·        

 

This week was a week of using initiative and scouring of text books.  Conferring between the three of us, A, N and I figured our way through most of the assembly of the trouser waistbands, using Robert Doyle’s The Art of the Tailor: With a Needle, a Thimble and 10,000 Stitches.  When we saw G on the Wednesday, he looked at what we had done, gave some suggestions and advice on how to totally finish them.

We also had a tutorial on how to do jetted pockets, which are, supposedly easier than welt pockets, and in some ways they are, but in other ways they are just as hard, if not worse, or maybe just different.

By Friday I had finished the trousers  - hooray!

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home

So, my best friend and I clubbed up together this weekend and decided to keep each other working by supplying good company, good music* and someone to commiserate with, go for lunch-walks with and watch movies with in the evenings.  She is studying Law and has exams looming, so was revising with papers, cases, coloured pens and a dictionary; I was tackling the fly, pockets and side seams on the trousers and the pockets on the waistcoat, pacing back and forth between the sewing machine and the ironing board.  

I admit I had to make two of the pieces over a couple of times as I made certain mistakes – putting them together upside-down or back-to-front, sewing up and clipping the wrong side.  But I sat my head straight eventually and it all came together.  

Sewing up the side seams I was quite pleased with: It required matching the checks down the very visible outside length of the leg** and stitching right up to, but not over, the opening edge of the pocket.  This is so that, while the pocket is not being used, it should be invisible; only when the gentleman puts his hand in his pocket would its existence become obvious, melting out of the side-seam like a secret entrance, only evident at certain moments.

And mine came out Just Right.

________

*We both listen to a variety of music and, with both of us chipping in with suggestions we covered quite a bit of ground; from Wicked to Avatar, Katherine Jenkins and Michael Ball to Avril Lavigne and Nightwish, country and western to modern worship.

**When you are 6’4” there is quite a bit of leg-check matching to go on^! 

^and it is very noticeable when you get it wrong...

Planning for the next week

With a note from G that said we were to do our pockets out of Silesia, which is available in the university haberdashery store, I will be concentrating on finishing all my pocket and commence with making up my trousers.  I will continue doing my waistcoat in my spare time.  We do need to be shown how to construct a jetted pocket as we need these for our jackets, and we need to figure out the finishings for the trouser waistband and hems.

Reflection on the week

This week has been challenging: sleeves, checks, lack of time in university...

I have always wanted to conquer checks, and this is certainly going to be a victory if I complete this to any satisfaction.  I have learnt that how you put your tacking in has a big effect on how well your fabric stays put, or not, depending on whether you are sewing with two pieces on a straight grain, with one straight and one bias, or with both on the bias.  With the wool, it is a very malleable fabric with a good amount of natural stretch and can stay put in one place and not ¼ “ down the line. 

As far s the sleeves go, this was an interesting one.  I have drafted and made sleeves before but never to fit into such a precisely structured garment.  I struggled with the ‘easing in’ as I mentioned in my blog.  I think this is something I need to discuss with G at a later date.

What with G being an international contact in the university as well as our (only) tailoring tutor, we knew from the beginning that some days would be completely impossible to have as teaching days.  However, we hadn’t factored in a late Easter weekend, a Royal Wedding, and the May Day bank holiday all converging on us at once.  This has been a source of slight unease, but life sometimes throws these things at you and you just have to get on with what you have.

Halfway through the week G told us that we should use (and probably prefer) Silesia to do our pockets, so that is being done.  I like working with Silesia – as a pure cotton fabric it doesn’t have any nasty habits beyond fraying.

woe is me...

So today, I had a meltdown.  Several, in fact.  And all over these blessed little checks. 

It has been a while (in my brain, which doesn't take long at all) since we had the demonstration about how to match checks through pockets on waistcoats.  Approximately 7 months, actually, so, this time my brain had a slight excuse.  But thinking in 3D is something that I can do, usually, so I am not sure why today was quite such a disaster.  But it was, and then, at about 3.45pm, I managed to accost my tutor and he showed me how to do it, which was slowly where I was headed, but upside-down to how I had it.  It is awe-inspiring and demoralizing at the same time how people can make things look easy.  I know; people have said that about me when I fix machinery that they have battled with for ages, in 10 minutes.

Maybe I should become a mechanic...I will finish this suit first, however.  I will not let it beat me.

5 days in one

Today is the only day this week we can have a tutor at our beck and call, so we made use of it.  We have had little demonstrations in: what needs to be done now that we have had a fitting; how to do trouser side-seam pockets; and a crash bang whizz through Everything that can be done now, without the lining.  

Apparently, we are not using the lining fabric for pockets (whoop!), so we can get quite a bit more done in the time before it appears.

However, of that 'quite a bit more', we have been warned that there is still a Huge Amount to do, and that we probably don't quite grasp how much Time it will take us to complete it all.  We have 20 days until hand-in, including a 4 day weekend, which, tied in with our tutor's timetable, we have 6 days, starting tomorrow in which we are Totally On Our Own.  This is not scary so much as the blind leading the blind.  We know we are perfectly capable of using tailoring techniques and doing this really well*, it is just that we have never done any of it before, Ever.

Hey ho! Where's the fun in not having a challenge!

Garibaldi, anyone?

_________

*even, maybe, getting all those checks matched up?

New things!

I always knew that I would learn new and interesting things during my time at university – that is why people learn: to discover things that are amazing, or intriguing, or thought-provoking – and tailoring has been one of those things.  I had always admired men in suits; smart, slick, dignified, and I, maybe particularly coming from a military family, have thought that a man in uniform is one of the ultimate shows of elegance and decorum.  But I had never thought I could pull myself away from the beauty of women’s historical costume in all its diversity and inventiveness.  The main factor about tailoring is, however, that, for men, the basics of a jacket and trousers can be seen throughout a very large proportion of history.  Through this, the creation of jackets and trousers for men has been tried, altered, refined and tried again, all the way to the 1930’s.   I don’t say to the modern day because, though people are still trying out ideas and, potentially, moving forwards, I believe the craftsmanship and quality of the tailored suit reached its height in the 1930’s.

SO! With our previous unit, I was shown how to draft and use tailoring patterns, how use fabric in a different way, how to put a tailored garment together, how to do pockets.  

This time, I have learnt some new terms: ‘Ziggering’ namely securing the edges of the fabric by running a zigzag stitch all the way around them.  'The Cabbage' being the fabric that is left over from cutting out the garment.

I have learnt how to baste multiple layers together – last time we did just 2, this time, we have 4, each of which is done individually.

And I have had the new experience of tacking, by hand, an entire garment together.  Gulp.  There is only one seam that is machine stitched, and that is the centre back of the jacket.  Every. Single. Other seam is sewn by hand and then the seam allowance is pushed to one side and that, too is tacked down by hand...

How to conduct a tailoring fitting, too, is very different to how one might do a dressmaking or a costume fitting.

Here's too questing minds, generous tutors and more information than we can ever dream of

Reflection on the holidays

I feel I have made up my lost time – having the fittings late enough that all three of us could have them at the same time was a real bonus, and gave me that time to do everything that the others had already done.  The holiday taking me back to my parents home, away from university digs and the people in my class made for a very different working atmosphere, in both good and bad ways, and allowed me to catch up in an environment free of comparison to other people’s work, though I was working almost blind, but I had my notes and I phoned A a couple of times, just to check I was actually doing it correctly. 

From the time of the fitting, we were all on an even keel, with a steady following wind.  We knew there would be a few rocks under the surface, but we also knew that land was up ahead, and there was a chance of an albatross...

                           

Reflection on the fitting

I found the experience quite stressful.  Going into a strange place, meeting new people on my own, having to conduct a task that I had only seen done, and that only once, and having to be totally professionally calm and automatic about it are all things, especially when mixed up, that are, frankly, terrifying to me.  Part of my anxiety came from how fast everything had moved once I returned from work experience: having less than a normal 5-day week and less tutor-contact time than I had initially expected, all combined together with stepping into the unknown.  However, I felt that I was able to keep myself collected enough that my actor was not perturbed by my nervousness.  It was also a very hot day, and so I made sure I reassured my actor that if he felt to warm with an entire three-piece, 100% wool suit on, he was to say immediately.

As far as the fit and fitting of the garments, the length for all of them was just right.  I knew that there was a high chance of ambiguity over the fit at the hip and waist as this was where we had taken an executive decision to alter the measurements we had been supplied with. 

Trousers:

They did fit at the waist, high-waisted as they were, sitting nicely at the base of his ribs.  The waist itself was fine, but as the trousers went over his hips and down his thighs, they were rather tight.  This is a note for the future: When fitting dancers, expect slightly unusual measurements as they are more muscular in some areas than you would find on someone of the same height and chest measurement.

Waistcoat:

Slightly snug around the chest, but this can be let out of the side seams.  The sit across the shoulders was good and shaped well.

Jacket:

The sleeve I had had some problems with in drafting, so I was pleased with the amount of accuracy I did have, and not unhappy that I had to move it slightly.  Again, it was slightly too snug around the chest, so I will need to let it out at the side seams.

Overall, I felt that it was mostly a success, and hopefully next time I have to do a tailoring fitting I will not be quite so nervous.

It's all in the preperation...

Having arrived home for the Easter holidays with all of my tailoring equipment and fabric, I had to set myself up to continue the hard graft until a) I knew when my fitting would be (which was a minimum of 4 days away), and b) make sure I was completely ready for a fitting whether it was in 4 days or 14.

I still had to: sew up all the darts in the jacket and waistcoat; piece together all three garments by tacking them along the seams and then securing the seams by tacking down the seam allowance – all by hand; make a calico mock-up sleeve for the jacket and a back for the waistcoat (we didn’t have our lining yet).

In other preparation for going to London, I looked over my notes from the fitting I had sat in on where G was helping a 3^rd year with a suit she was making, and organise what order I was to fit each garment with all the different elements that each need.

Tricky Pieces

Well, when I heard that I was getting checked material, I had a small quibble-moment, but I do enjoy a challenge like this.  

When we did our previous tailoring unit making waistcoats, our tailoring tutor, G, said that we were very welcome to used checked material, but that we had to be prepared to have a few hiccups.  Because at that point all I wanted was to produce a good, well constructed garment, I went for the safer option of a block-coloured wool.  And I was very happy with the results!  BUT, this meant that coming into this unit, and being presented with a green tweed bolt, my knees shook.*

In matching the fabric I had an immediate problem: that the way in which the fabric had been woven and folded meant that I couldn't line up the two layers without wasting a lot of the fabric.  So, under the guidance of G, I was instructed to pin on my pattern pieces, carefully choosing where I wanted the strong red stripe to fall vertically as well as horizontally, then cut out the TOP LAYER ONLY.  Then I had to move each piece over by about half an inch** and re-match the lines to cut out the bottom layer...

I fell into a zone of concentration; I had started cutting out when it was still in lunchtime and therefore quieter in the studios.  By the time I looked up from my work the first years had returned and were clamoring on the edges of the (3) tables I was taking up, wanting the space for their class.

At this point in time I am not too stressed about the whole thing; all the hand tacking is going to my head and making me rather placid - a good thing to note for up and coming units: if you get too stressed Do Some Hand Sewing!

______

*It is not that I have never worked with even stripes before; the last university project we were studying Candide by Voltaire, making 18th century costumes and I ended up with a black silk frock coat with silver braiding and matching breeches, but for that I applied the stripes by hand so was not trying to match them right from the outset.

** Yes, we still work in the old imperial scales in this profession.  We had a modified version for the waistcoat when all 43 makers were learning at once that used the metric scales, but all the original books and patterns are still printed in inches

Picture: http://villagedraper.com/

And so it begins...

Well, today was the first day (in university) of tackling my Self Directed Project (SDP).  I have chosen to undertake a project in tailoring, working alongside the Arts Educational College in Chiswick, London.  They have asked for 3 three-piece suits from around the turn of the nineteenth century; the advert illustration I am working from dates from 1898.

Having spent the first week and a half of teaching time away on work experience, I have some catching up to do!  I had drafted the basic blocks for each of the waistcoat, jacket and trousers but waited for the green light that they were actually correct to start altering them to the design.

I had some anomalies with the measurements I had been given, but I ironed them out and have now got an, almost, satisfactory set of patterns from which to work.  I say almost, because I still have some reservations of whether my trouser block is correctly drawn...but I need to wait until after a nights sleep and a fresh brain to face that...

So until tomorrow, gütten nacht