After the Fact

Why am I making the same thing again and again? Because I have to work through the things that are obvious after the fact. It's also good to practice when the final garments will be made of all sorts of fancy silks and laces. And by fancy, I mean, I don't want to have to buy all that stuff again!

While I cut all the pieces to test other stuff, like the armhole adjustments, today's sewing focused on the zipper. Here's the "under" half with the zipper in it's approximate placement along with a piece that will become the "extension". It occurred to me, since this is Misato (Not) by Chanel, that I might use the selvedge here to help cut down some of the layers. The extension is to be attached and turned back so that the selvedge becomes the point inside that meets up with the lining.

It looks like a ripped edge, but the selvedge was fringy on this bolt of muslin.

The zipper needed to be basted in place before attaching the extension, since it will be sandwiched in along that edge.

The extension is pinned in place. I had pressed it over while I was messing with it, but you can see here which way it will go.

To sew along that edge, I went to the bag of feet and found something appropriate. This foot has the hole to the side, or rather, it doesn't have both sides,so the hole and thus the needle, can get way over there despite the zipper teeth.

Simple as that! When I turned the extension to the inside, I ended up just catchstitching it to another seam allowance. On the actual garment, I'm currently assuming it will be fell stitched to the lining fabric.

On to the "over" side. Here I'm basting the zipper side to the "extension facing" so that when it gets folded back, the zipper will be right to match up to the "under" side.

Here's where "obvious after the fact" gets sewn in place.

Next comes the "real" extension facing, sewn on sandwiching the zipper in place.

 

The "real" facing gets turned back away from the zipper, getting ready to turn the works to the inside.

Here it is, turned to the inside, so that the zipper sits inside the outer edge and to the back side.

When I was putting this together, I did it such that stitching wouldn't show on the front face of the jacket. However, when I tried it on Lucy, I realized that the outer fabric, while creased to form that edge, could easily pull back, exposing the zipper underneath. So I says to my self, Self, what would Susan Khalje do? And so I got out the needle and thread and pickstitched it in place. This would probably be good for the final garment too, since with the raw silk, you'd have to do a pretty bad job for it to be noticeable.

I meant to do that.

The last test collar was still pinned to Lucy and I left it on, but I imagine it will have to come off as I work more on this. I folded under some edges just to look at, and all the pressed but otherwise unaccounted for seams make this a little messy at the moment.

Zipped up though, here comes the obvious thing. The "over" side zipper half needs to be moved back from that edge 1/2" or so. I like the placement of the "under" but the "over" should be covering that seam. Also, with zipper pulls like these, if you don't allow a little something for it, it's going to be sticking out. Overall though, the test went well enough. Next up, the fun of setting in sleeves and thinking about how to manage all the odd seam allowances in this thing.

Zippers

It's almost the weekend and I'm not sick or out of town for a change, so it's time to get some new pattern pieces puzzled out. The Misato jacket needs a zipper on the front and the sleeves. There's really nothing to the sleeve zippers, since they'll just go in the seam like any old zipper.

For the front closure, I'll be making the "extension" on the "under" front piece separate and then insetting that half of the separating zipper in that seam. On the "over" piece, that half of the zipper will be set on the back side of the extension, with the tape covered either by a raw silk facing or the silk charmeuse lining. Not sure which I'll do on that. Probably the raw silk, but that fabric is kind of thick so it might get a little heavy with more layers.

Ah, it'll all make sense when I sew it up.

Another Box from HK

It's a good thing I can't read Japanese, or I might really be scared of what this evil wizard is going to do to me!

The new issue of Da Vinci arrived, along with the first soundtrack CD from "Say, 'I love you'". For some reason I started watching it on Crunchyroll and enjoyed it, and I love soundtracks, so here it is.

I don't know whose skull that is, but inside the magazine is the beginning of the novelization of The Garden of Words. Or at least, that's what the online translators lead me to believe. Well, at least there's more pictures in this one.

A Bad Sign?

While looking for a place to stop over on the way to GenCon, we found ourselves here... Fortunately, we were not murdered in our hotel room or possessed by the devil, that we know of.

Though perhaps my phone was twisted by dark forces since most of my pictures came out terrible. The one bright spot is the visage of Bob Ross that magically appeared in this photo.

Objects are Smaller Than They Appear

Chapter 4 of the manga finally arrived! I also got #1 and #3 of this book series illustrated by Shinkai. Volume 2 wasn't available, but since I can only look at the pictures, it wasn't a big deal. I don't know why I was surprised that they were so small, I guess I wasn't paying attention.

The backs of the books had QR codes, which I did try out, but you can guess what happened.

Can't read that

I drew up the test pattern piece for the Misato shoulder. No sewing this week though, as I get ready to head out on the road to GenCon. But at least the pictures on here should be a lot more interesting next week!

Semi-Functional Arms

Today I tried setting in the sleeves to the Misato jacket body. This really brought out the way the several seams from odd  angles come together as you go around the armscye. I'll have to spend some time puzzling out which way each set of  seam allowances should be pressed and trimmed. After getting it more or less in place, I found the lower part of the sleeve to have a bit too much fabric to fit without easing under the arm. At first, I thought I would bring in the sides of the top of the sleeve, shortening the distances between the front and back notches and the long edge seam. That is, take the circumference out under the arm, rather than from the sleeve cap.

Instead, where I decided to start was opening up the hole in the jacket body. Something like this...

I made an adjustment to my paper patterns, but didn't end up using them.With the way the side, back and shoulder come together, all the adjustment is in the front and back pieces.

Rather than making a new jacket body, and to make testing it on Lucy easier, I just trimmed all around the armscye back to the sewing line. I could get enough testing out of it this way without worrying about cutting out the ability to actually sew the sleeves in at this time. On one side, I went ahead and cut down to the proposed new line.

One benefit of lowering this part of the armscye is that it doesn't interfere with Lucy's arms, which run tight to the torso near the shoulder. I still want to keep the change minimal and not do anything to odd just to fit a dress form.

While trying her arms back on, I noticed that another adjustment would be to take a sliver off the the  front lower corner of the shoulder piece. Now that there's not fabric fouling movement of the arm from area of the side seam, I could see that that point also hangs up on the arm as it moves. I also don't want to take too much off here, since this is a more visible change, if it goes too far.

Probably not as much as the triangle implies, but a little adjustment here will be a big help (probably).

Needles and Pins

I picked up some more needles for my Juki and when they showed up, I noticed something different about the packaging.

Besides now being made in Vietnam rather than Japan, I noticed that all the needles I had were marked "BP". Ball point? What the hell? I still don't remember where I ordered those from, so I can't tell if it was my mistake or theirs, but it was long enough ago that I probably should have noticed sometime already. By the time I noticed, the sale was over so maybe I'll get some more next time in other sizes. Should I ever take up knits, I guess I will have a good supply of needles.

Next up in the box was the Clover magnetic pin caddy. This little guy has a pin box that fits into the bottom of it and it orients all the pins like this automagically.

My wrist is getting close to healed enough for a pincushion again, but I think I'm really digging this. I gave it a test run while starting in on the pillowcases. Just throw the pins at it and they organize themselves and it really is easy to get needles off of it.

I also got a new bottle of lubricant for the Juki so maybe this weekend I will take the time to drain the oil pan and refill it.

On the patternmaking front, I made an adjustment to the front bodice piece of the Akari, shaving off a triangle about 3/4" x 4" from the upper (my) right corner. A quick test piece shows that as bringing that side in line with Lucy's guidelines.

Odd Ends

Time for another round of pillowcases, so there's a new pile of fabric to be prepped.

I also found the appropriate sized separating zipper, so I will try that out. The jacket front pieces will need some adjustment to account for the halves of this. I think the "underneath" side front piece will need the most doing, but it shouldn't be too bad. It's getting about time to start moving the pattern pieces from just fitting to taking into account the actual construction of the garment. I should have looked for short zippers for the cuffs of the Misato jacket, which is what this zipper is for.

Going to the archives to see WWSKD?

Now comes the scary part! I tried to avoid it, but really I knew it was what had to be done. That shiny fabric peeking out of the paper is the dreaded silk charmeuse. If you're worried about your project looking like hell, silk charmeuse can help make it a reality! This will be the jacket lining, and I bought enough yardage to make it up at least twice.