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.

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