Fitting the ACTUAL COAT!! :)

Hal & Betty - LA Balboa Dancers, 1939

This past week has been busy! Last weekend we drove up to San Francisco to visit my sister and do some dancing - and in some exciting news, yours truly is the 2010 North American Balboa Champion! Okay, Chris and me both, not just me. That sounds much more impressive than it really is...but then, that's usually the case with Titles. 

Enough with this mid-20th century junk, let's go further back in time.

I've gotten the tailcoat body assembled and the collar attached - looks pretty nice, if I do say so myself! I love love love sewing with this melton wool. It's smooth in the machine, presses beautifully, and is even a dream to cut. I hate cutting! I've adjusted the brightness on the pictures so that hopefully you can see the detail. The actual jacket is deep black, not splotchy. My tailoring book actually recommends using a dark fabric for your first tailoring project, so that mistakes are less likely to show. Good call!

As you can see, I went with modern construction techniques, machine sewing the inside and flipping it right side out. If I had known I was going to use that method from the beginning, I would have picked easier/less pointed collar shapes. The M collar point would be much easier to handstitch together on the outside edge - but I felt that I couldn't just do the collar and not do the rest.

I'm not thrilled with how wide the gap is between the collar point and the lapel - I think that on my mockups the points were closer together, almost touching. I think the difference might be partially because of the thickness of the fabric, and maybe something to do with the roll line/breakpoint placement? Anyway, the right and left sides are even, so that's fine. Something to worry about next time.

I used French Collar Canvas from B. Black, and boy is that stuff heavy-duty! I doubt I'll use it again, and instead opt for a medium weight hymo. But I don't have to worry about his collar drooping!

In the back, I took in a little at the shoulder seam at the armhole, because it was gapping away from the body. That's why the seams don't match at the outer edge. To compensate, I might set the sleeves in toward the center back a little further, but this was an Era of Small Backs, so that should look good.

I haven't touched the tails yet, but already the wool is draping in the back much more nicely than the muslin did. Love that wool melton!

Jacket Entrails...err...Innards

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who responded to my last entry - I'm going to take your advice and just focus on one project at a time from here on out. I don't think we'll have complete outfits in time for the ball in January, so we'll have to beg, borrow, and steal the missing pieces (or maybe just rent them ;)


Subject to change, I think I'll finish the jacket first, then do my dress, and then go back to the trousers etc. if there's time (which there won't be). That's kind of killing me, because the trousers are about halfway done, but it's really best to not risk distraction. Big Picture!


Here's my progress with tailoring the undercollar and front body. As I said before, I'm opting to machine stitch as much as possible. I'm (more or less) following the machine tailoring instructions from Tailoring: The Classic Guide to Sewing the Perfect Jacket, which has options for hand tailoring, machine tailoring, and fusible tailoring on every step. I'm having to improvise a little because the shape of my pattern is a little different from what the book demonstrates.

Undercollar - you can see my
padstitching lines, all drawn out
before I decided to machine it!

Hymo for Front Body -
With Shoulder Patch & Waist Dart

Zig-Zag joined Jacket Front
and Hymo at edges -
Taped Line is machined until
a couple inches from CF,
then the exposed section
is handfinished

We're heading out of town this weekend for a dance event, but hopefully I'll have a nice collar to show off next week. I'm working on getting the collar roll right - that whole "turn of the cloth" thing. It's so fiddly!