Once again, this is mostly for my students. If you are someone else’s student, do this however your teacher says. ;)
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This is really meant as support material for my Flat Pattern I students, to help them with their sample problems. The rest of the world might find this completely boring. ;)
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I love covered buttons. They just make a design look so pulled-together. The problem is that that directions on the back of the covered button kits are a little bit less than useful. They’re actually kinda bad. So for anyone who has ever wondered, here’s the sitch….
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Pad stitching is awesome. It’s fantastic. It’s often replaced with fusible interfacings and spray-glue products, and that’s a darn shame. Because pad stitching is pretty nifty. It’s used to bond an infrastructure layer (traditionally hair canvas in tailoring) to the layer it’s stiffening (often the under-collar). And the great thing is, it provides MORE STRUCTURAL GLORY than the original infrastructure product can on its own. Beat that with a stick!
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So you spent a jillion dollars a yard on some fancy-dancy ribbon for your costume? Bad news – it will only ever look like ribbon… Unless you layer it.
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Actually, most things are easier than making shirts. Shirts are seriously annoying creatures. However, the point of this little demo is that every sewing room needs good lighting, and good lighting is something you can make with far less skill than you need for most of sew-land. Curious yet?
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A lot of sewers are afraid of bifurcated nether-garments. They look more complicated than skirts. I remember wearing bike shorts under costumes for years because I was afraid to attempt a bloomer. And that is an odd conundrum, because I had been making corsets for years. That’s just the power of the pant. But sister, don’t fear the bloomer… There’s a Really Easy Way(tm).
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Nothing makes a pant look as fantastically olde-timey as a fall front. Unfortunately, a real fall front is a pain in the patouty to sew (trust me), and it’s not something that can be added in after the fact in any sort of historically accurate manner. Fortunately, if you’re not 100% concerned about authenticity, it’s easy enough to add a mock fall to existing pants….
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Sometimes, in theater, you need a specific period shoe and you don’t have the time to order it from the internet, the money to order it from the internet, or an actor who wears a size you can order from the internet. (In this case, it was an “all of the above” scenario – I had a Benjamin Franklin who wore something like a 13EEE. This is hard enough to find in a modern shoe at community theater prices. As for replicas, you can forget it!) This is not a demo that will show you how to make an exact replica. It’s more of an act of desperation, which might possibly inspire others to do a better job than I did. ;) I just needed something good enough for stage at the “this ain’t broadway, sweetheart” level.
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Oh, the medieval romance of the sleeve with the little pointsy-doo that falls gracefully over your hand… So lovely. The problem is that half the time something goes wrong and you end up with a sleeve that looks like it’s flipping you off – the point doesn’t follow your hand (unless you put a loop on it), it doesn’t lie smoothly, it wrinkles at the wrist… It can look so sweet, but it can go soooooo wrong. Here’s a drafting trick I picked up in a Bridal Couture class a few years back.
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