professional bad example

chemise for 1790s outfit. i enjoy how i spent so long researching the best way to do it and then the actual drafting and assembly process took relatively little time. i actually considered hand finishing the felled seams, but then i actually did that for a couple of centimeters and decided i don't hate myself nearly that much. it's underwear after all, plus i care more about an overall correct impression than about doing everything exactly the way my ancestors would have.

really i think part of the reason i considered it is that i already made one of these years ago and remembered it looking messy somehow. but back then i used the approach of taking a reactangle, cutting triangles off the top half to make the shoulders narrower and adding them to the bottom half to make the hem wider. and i did that using flat-felled seams. of course a flat-felled seam just slapped in the middle of a garment body looks messy. this time i avoided that by just cutting a trapezoid shape to begin with because i live in the 21st century and fabric is made by machines and doesn't cost much.



also here's the skirt i wanted to sew a buttonhole into. which i've done now. it's a knockoff of victory patterns' madeleine skirt. as i said, i originally made it three years ago, when i weighed 30 kg more... i didn't want to throw it away because i liked it so much, but also didn't think it was possible to recut it, and then i realised my version was about 10 cm longer than the original. meaning that if i was willing to shorten it, there was enough fabric after all. i still had to replace the lapped zipper with a centered one because there wasn't enough seam allowance, but meh...

wtf, this butterick pattern actually tells me to cut notches as little triangles pointing out of the seam allowance. that's even worse than little triangles cut out of the seam allowances. it makes it impossible to finish the cut edges before assembling the garment, for one thing, which is much easier. (and if you're not sure whether you might have to make changes to the pattern, you really should make a muslin first, considering there's changes that involve cutting right into the pattern piece and adding extra fabric and that therefore can't be made on your fashion fabric without ruining the way it looks...) nevermind that it seems like it would be really inaccurate in combination with these big seam allowances. i'm beginning to see why there are so many sources that want you to hand baste first and then use the basting line as a guide for the stitching line, which otherwise sounds like a totally backwards waste of time to me. just line up the cut edges and guide them along the marks on the stitchplate... you're not supposed to stare at the needle, nothing interesting is happening there, if you really want to watch things moving in and out of other things, i recommend porn...

"you just can't bluff-stitch a patch pocket on a household sewing machine, the foot is much too wide" funny, i've sewn probaby a dozen of them, worked fine. also come to think of it you could probably use an edgestitching foot, but i didn't. i even did two of them with - gasp - a zigzag foot, which is even wider than a straight stitch foot, because apparently cheap modern household machines don't come with a straight stitch foot anymore. i never saw one of these until i started my apprenticeship. now i own a 1960s singer that has one (though i've lent that machine to my cousin - i barely even know her, but she's in her 20s, so i trust her to handle other peoples' property responsibly...) and i have one for the machine i indirectly inherited from my uncle too.

(in case anyone's actually reading this and doesn't feel like looking it up, bluff-stitching means sewing on a patch pocket without any visible stitching. you do it by stitching from the inside of the pocket - you press over the seam allowances of the pocket before you start and mark the outline of the pocket on the garment so you have something to match the crease to, then stitch as close to the crease as possible. it's not actually that difficult if you work slowly and accurately, but it only works on pockets with curved corners. i actually like to do it even on patch pockets that will have wide topstitching because don't like the way that if your topstiching is - say - 0.5 cm from the edge of the pocket, that leaves 0.5 cm of the pocket edge unattached to the garment. it just seems untidy to me. same reason i hand sew blind hems on skirts even if there's going to be topstitching on the hem)

(i wish i had a sewing icon, but i would need a paid account to have more icons and since dreamwidth doesn't accept paypal that's always such a hassle. have to find someone with a credit card who will buy points for me and have me pay them back through paypal. i don't blame dreamwidth, i understand their reasons for not accepting paypal, but they've got to realise that results in fewer paying customers because owning a credit card is not the norm everywhere...)

it sure is weird to be quite persistently told (even simplicity's measuring instructions say so) that the 10 cm/~4'' difference between your high bust and full bust makes you at least a D cup when actually you have a 12 cm difference between your full bust and underbust and that makes you a european A cup. has anyone actually stopped to consider what a body with 1'' difference between high bust and full bust would look like? that's basically nothing!

just, look. my high bust measures 85 cm, underbust 83 cm, i can therefore extrapolate that my chest would measure 84 cm if i didn't have breasts. so if you didn't have breasts at all, that'd be a 1 cm - roughly 3/8'' - difference between the high bust and full bust. 1'' would be like a girl barely just beginning to grow breasts, not something you'd find on any adult woman (unless she's had a double mastectomy)! what the actual fuck is wrong with whatever sizing standards this is based on? no wonder people from the US have such a weird boner for müller und sohn drafts (which is what burda uses). at least these make some modicum of sense.

(now i do half want to look at another pattern in size 10 to see whether that makes sense, but companies that pull this much bullshit don't deserve my money...)

seriously though, look at that beautiful round sleeve cap. and almost totally flat seam allowance. that sleeve will set with no problems at all, and all i did was sew a single easing seam, pull on the threads and spread the gathers until the seam allowance only rippled slightly, then spray water on it and press it. and i could easily do that again to get rid of more ease if i needed to. i don't understand why people make such an issue out of whether you can avoid sleeve cap ease when... it's not even that difficult to handle? i'd maybe understand worrying about it on an industrial scale, since that's all about saving time in any way you can, but as a hobbyist?

and honestly the only things i can think of that i do differently from most people is that 1. i take care of the ease while the sleeve is still flat and 2. i don't try to cram it all in the top of the sleeve cap (yet as you can see, the underarm area remains flat to the eye)...

and now i've hand basted a sleeve, clearly i'm going mad. nah, just kidding, there was a good reason - i'd pin fitted it into the armscye and moving the seam by as little as one millimetre could've messed up the way it fits, and machine sewing right away would've required me to remove the pins. so basting it was. still think it's unnecessary if you're working with a finished and proven pattern.

i just hope the sleeve actually does still fit properly

(also i think i've figured out a proportional calculation for cap height and that makes me happy. i really like proportional drafting, direct measurements are so wibbly and imprecise. cap height is 2/3 of a head - one head being 1/8 of your total height - for the smallest possible armscye, then the underarm is lowered by the same amount as the armscye)

now i set a sleeve that's at least 10 cm larger than the armscye without gathers. i am magic, i can do anything. i seriously didn't expect it to be possible.

and i mean, i don't use any techniques that aren't known to the general sewing public! just a single easing seam, lots of steam and a few pins! only thing i figure i'm probably doing differently from most people is that i don't try to keep all the ease constrained at the top of the sleeve, in the area between the notches (my pattern doesn't even have notches yet, except for the shoulder one). i distribute it around the entire sleeve cap because i figured that hey, the entire reason i'm dealing with so much ease in the first place is fat flabby upper arms, the underside of these isn't exactly flat when i raise them, why am i trying to keep the bottom of the sleeve perfectly flat? it would be better to have some fullness in that area as well, it will be invisible when the arm is at your side anyway. of course that means i have a lot more bias cut edges to push ease into.

(i also think that using too many pins or hand basting is actually likely to make it harder to set a sleeve without little puckers or folds. traps the fabrics and keeps your fingers from being able to distribute the excess width properly...)

honestly though, people who think that sleeve setting is this ultimate sewing challenge are... probably just not actually very good at sewing. i know i have industrial training, but it's been a good ten years since then, and as i said, i didn't learn any secret techniques homesewers aren't privy to. if anything we worked with fewer cheats, we were grudgingly allowed to use an easing seam, but weren't really supposed to use pins and shit like hand basting was right out. our trainer in the third year of my apprenticeship was able to set a blazer sleeve with no easing seam or pins at all. would've had maybe 4 cm of ease, i never got to look at the pattern in detail. i never got that good, but it's absolutely possible. the whole argument about how it would be nonsensical for industrial patterns to have cap ease because they would be too hard and take too long to set is moot even without the fat that sleeve setting machines exist, so clearly there's applications for them. the claim that properly drafted industrial patterns never have or need sleeve cap ease was just plain overconfident and wrong.

fun new fitting mistakes: a sleeve that's shaped 100% correctly can still get weird wrinkles and puckers if the cap ease (if any) isn't contributed correctly. you'd think that you'd want it split evenly between front and back, but turns out that's not the case (which makes another thing home sewing course got wrong, and i used to like that book so much...). you need to keep the straight grain of the fabric, well, straight. what ended up working was leaving part of the top of the sleeve open, putting the mockup on, smoothing the fabric up over my shoulder and marking the shoulder point.

on the upside, pretty sure i'm done now. just need to actually sew the sleeve in instead of pinning it to see whether that still looks right (ideally it would look better, with the stress on the seam distributed between many small stitches instead of a few pinning points). i have chemo tomorrow, so i'll be on low power mode for a couple of days, but maybe i can get pictures once i feel better

(also, the sleeve has a whopping 6 cm of cap ease because there's just no way around it with my fat upper arms, i used a fairly densely woven cotton and had no trouble setting the sleeve at all. i honestly don't know why people make such a big deal out of it. i used exactly the same techniques they do, a line of easing stitches plus pressing and a few pins. looks fine, no puckers or anything. i have no idea why so many seem almost proud of their seeming lack of ability? or is it some kind of weird social game of putting on an act of agreeing how hard it is? making yourself look less competent seems like way too steep a price for getting to be part of the ingroup...)

sorry, but if you think that moving the shoulder seam can improve the way a sewing pattern fits, you have no business giving out fitting advice. i mean, let's oversimplify what's happening here: let's say you have two paper squares, with a side length of 10 cm. you tape them together along one edge, then draw a parallel 1 cm from the connected edges and cut them apart. does that change the overall shape and area of the combined pieces? no, it doesn't. if you line them up along the cut edge, you still get a 20 cm x 10 cm rectangle. same concept as taping together the edges of a shoulder seam, then drawing and cutting a new one. hell, up until the 1920s or so, all shoulder seams were displaced towards the back, but these extremely fitted victorian bodices fit perfectly well! and the shoulder seam of mens' shirts are generally displaced towards the front, yet most men don't get strangled by their shirts (unless the neckline is just plain too small)! that nicely demonstrates that the shoulder seam position alone can't be a factor in the way a garment fits.

if you want to fix a shoulder seam that's too far towards the back, you're probably actually dealing with a garment that rides towards the back and tries to strangle you, and the misplaced shoulder seam is just a symptom. i'd guess that there's not enough length between the back armscyes and the front gets pulled towards the back to make up for the missing fabric. open the side seams and place the shoulder seams where they belong on top of your shoulder. if the issue is the one i described, the side seam edges of the back will end up higher on your body than the front ones and you would need to lower the back armscyes and add fabric to the back hem to make them match. (or to make the change in the pattern, measure how much higher the back hem is compared to the front hem, then make a horizontal cut through the narrowest point of the back armscye, add as much paper as you measured and redraw the curve if needed.)

why the fuck do the side seams of my bodice mockups keep shrinking... they're 20 cm on the pattern but that somehow turned into 19 cm on the mockup, even though i didn't cut anything off. this has happened three times already!! what's going on? did i stretch the fabric when i pinned the pattern to it or...

... i guess i should check whether the armscye still matches the pattern. if it does, the mockup's still fine to use. if it doesn't, i need a new one, ugh