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.