Burda 7576 Jacket - Setting in the sleeves

I've always had difficulty setting in sleeves.  They always seem to look a little unprofessional, a bit too rustic.  So obviously I was a little nervous when I got around to doing them for the 7576 jacket.  My main problem has always been there's a pucker, or a gather that's not evenly distributed, no matter how hard I try.  This is the sleeve of the McCalls M5759 jacket I made, notice the problem?

I was told recently of another method to set sleeves in which is different to how pattern instructions and all my books said to do it, and I decided to give it a go for this jacket.  I'm thinking the results are pretty good....

Do not sew the 2 gather lines as per pattern instructions.  Instead, it's all about pinning to distribute all the ease evenly.   First match up all markings and pin together - I had 4 markings for this jacket making 4 little sections.  Next, working on one section at a time, find the middle of each fabric piece and pin mark it, then match the 2 pins together and pin the sleeve to jacket.  Then do the same again and again until all ease is distributed.  Then move onto the next section until all are done.  Your pins should be close together, about 1/8 inch apart in areas with a lot of ease.  This is what it'll look like once pinned:

You can then hand baste it all together and take out your pins, or like me whose hand basting isn't good enough, just sew the sleeve with all the pins in - obviously sewing really slowly so you can whip them out if the needle looks like it's going to hit.  This is my sewn sleeve - I'm thinking is the cleanest one I've done, big smile!  Compare it to the M5759 one above.

This will definately be my method from now on.

BurdaStyle 01/2011 - 113 Skirt

My first Burdastyle magazine pattern is completed!  Overall I'm pretty happy with this skirt, although I had a few little issues with the construction. 

The fabric I used came from a sample rack so I'm not entirely sure of its contents, however I think it must be lycra based as it has a bit of stretch - this is a good thing as this skirt is quite close fitting! 

The yokes:  Getting a nice clean V shape on the yokes was difficult and I didn't quite get there unfortunately!  You can see from the picture that the back V dose not sit so flush. 

The godet:  I loved this element of the skirt in the magazine picture, but unfortunately this part just did not quite work on mine.  I think this was because of 2 factors -

• I had taken 2 inches off the length when cutting out to get it to my desired length, however I forgot to adjust the the godet seam mark on the pattern up by 2 inches also.   This meant that my godet was far too small;
• The fabric doesn't have enough movement in it so the godet stuck out rather than fall softly into a fold.  Looks more than a little odd so off it came!



The tailored jacket is still in progress and coming along slowly, I should have a post soon as an update.

Burda 7576 - Jacket, Uppercollar

Not much happening in my sewing world this week unfortunately, I've only managed to work on joining the uppercollar to the front facing.  Why is it that instruction writers always seem to go light on words in the really tricky areas of the construction?  Is it because for them it's an easy step, or, perhaps they're just as confused and keep it brief so they don't get found out!  Anyhow, it was tricky and fiddly getting a nice neat corner on the join - it was a 3rd time lucky situation!

Feels like progress has been slow after such a good start, but I know that once the collar is done, the rest should come together quite quickly....

Next Projects...

This weekend I headed up north to Norwich.  It was a lovely town, a lot of that old-world English charm, and good shopping too!  There's something quite nice about wandering around shops on old cobbled streets and through arcades. 

One of my main reasons for the visit here was a fabric shop - Anglian Fashion Fabrics.  I always have to visit fabric shops whenever I go somewhere new, it's a slight obsession of mine!  This shop though had a wide selection of fabrics, and I was quite impressed with the seasonality of them - for instance they had several shades of camel wool blend fabric for coats which was big this winter - but my local shops just did not carry any.  They also had racks of sample fabrics from suppliers for sale, buy now or miss out stuff, these were at good prices as well.  Anyhow here's my picks:

From the left, the grey will be a dress from this new seasons Vogue, V1222, from the Anne Klein New York range. 

The next 3 will be for designs from the BurdaStyle 01/2011 magazine - 102 blouse in the black and grey spotted satin, 113 skirt in the black, and the 108 dress in the printed jersey.

Burda Style magazine patterns

Whow!  Trying to copy the Burda Style pattern pieces is a bit of a struggle isn't it?  It's like a maze of lines!

To save me the daunting task of tracing them out, I've photocopied the bits that I need (I think!), but even just identifying the right lines to cut is hard!  I had read they were difficult, but hadn't quite appreciated just how much.  Check out this example:

I'm going to need my concentration head on for this one that's for sure!

Burda 7576 - Jacket, interfacing

I'm interlining my Burda suit jacket with hair canvas following the guidance in my tailoring book.  This book describes 3 methods - custom, machine and fusible.  Originally I wanted to follow the machine method to speed up the process - I didn't want to get bored with endless mindless hand stitching - however some of the steps for machine method are a little light on detail.  So now I'm doing a combination of methods to incorporate the custom method too. 

First I worked on the undercollar.  For this I used the machine method.  I needed to cut the interfacing on the bias, and being a newbie to bias cutting, wasn't sure how to do it!  So all I did was cut it on a 45 degree angle to the selvage using my mat grid lines as the guide.

When stitching interfacing onto the fabric, the machine method stitches will show through to the jacket fabric.  It's only a problem if you put the collar up, but as I won't be I'm okay with this. 

Then the collar needs to be wrapped around a tailors ham and steamed to set in the roll.  Here I wasn't sure how long I needed to steam it for, and how I could tell if it was done enough, so I gave it a good blast for about 5 minutes.  Now only time will tell I guess .  Looks cute hey!

When I moved onto the jacket front, I switched to the custom method.  I ignored the pattern's front interfacing piece and instead used the jacket front piece (& slightly altered it to take a chunk out from the inner side). 

There was a fair bit of hand sewing to be done - yawn.  However, strangely I actually found it really satisfying work!  I learnt new stitches - catch stitch, padstitch and uneven permanent basting - and it was all kind of relaxing.  Perhaps I drank too many camonile teas....     

I steamed the lapel on the roll line as well to set it in. 

For the back interfacing, I used the back pattern piece folded up to give a bit more support across my shoulders. 

That's an awful lot for one day!  This has so far been a really enjoyable project which was much needed after my last one.

Simplicity 2440 - Part 5 - Time for a break!

After the disaster I had recently with my first attempt to cut out the skirt for this pattern, the extra fabric has now arrived in the mail, and I set about re-cutting.  

What I'm trying to do is eliminate the pattern gatherings and just have a simple A-line skirt.  As the skirt waist pattern pieces are wider to accommodate for the gathers, I need to reduce them down.  The first time I attempted this, I just halved my waist measurement, marked that on the pattern, and drew a new line down from there.  This was obviously a school-boy error, as my hips are bigger than my waist, and as such there was not enough material to fit around them.  Doh!  All part of the learning experience right?!  This time however, I followed instructions for making a skirt block and worked out where to mark the new lines.  This was much more successful!  I was probably a bit too generous with the ease measurements though - but better to have too much material than not enough!  Anyhow, here it is so far:

I still need to adjust the side seams, finish the lining, do the hem and fix the shoulder straps in place. 

Gosh, so much to do still!  I really think this dress and me are needing a break from each other for a while.  It's been a rocky relationship so far, and some time apart will allow me to start loving it again so that I can give it the attention it deserves....

Previous posts on 2440 can be viewed here, here, here and here!

Burda Style magazine 01/2011

I have just discovered Burda Style magazine and I'm soooo excited that I did!  I purchased the January issue, and absolutely love about 10 patterns in there, and all those patterns for just £5! 

My favorite item is the cover dress (dress 108).  The pattern sketch of this dress is actually really bland, like a sack really, but once made up and with a belt, I think it's unreal.

My only problem now is trying to get hold of the fabric used in the magazine.  I've discovered a site which sells a range of the fabrics used in the Burda magazines - it's in German but Google Chrome can translate the pages easily - http://www.alfatex.de/epages/alfatex.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/alfatex - but they do not have this particular fabric!  Any ideas from readers will be greatly welcomed!

Burda 7576 - Jacket, muslin

I've encountered a problem with the dress.  It's now on hold until more material arrives in the post!  I seem to have miss-calculated a pattern alteration and cut the skirt front piece too small, disaster!  However, crisis was averted as luckily the fabric store had some left - 75cm left to be precise, but I only need 64cms luckily!

And so I've moved onto my next project in the meantime - the suit jacket to match the skirt previously made.  I'm using a Burda pattern for the first time - Burda 7576:

I want this to be a proper tailored jacket, and so am using a book to help me - Tailoring, a step by step guide to creating beautiful customised garments.  I'm going to use their machine method which combines many of the hand tailoring techniques with the sewing machine to make it faster.

Today I made the muslin.  Following the book, I cut the front, side, back, under collar and sleeve pieces only and constructed it.  I'm pretty happy so far; sizing is good (for once), darts and waist line in right place and lapel seems to sit well. 

I need to make 2 adjustments only - first is to mark on the under collar roll line (Burda seem to have omitted this from the pattern) and secondly, eliminate the back peplum gathering and replace it with a pleat, which I think looks less homemade, what do you think?

Simplicity 2440 - Part 4 - Bodice Boning

Its been a few weeks since I've posted, and a few weeks since I've even done some sewing.  Oops!  Finishing this dress for Christmas day is going to be a bit touch and go now...

My next step is the bodice boning.  I'm using some thin 7mm wide reinforced flexible plastic boning which is suppose to resist twisting.  I moulded the boning into shape by holding it over the kettle spout as it boiled, this made it pliable for a few seconds whilst I bent and straighted.   Shaping the boning will help with the fit and look of the bodice; you can see below, the one on the right is as sold and doesn't sit nicely in the bodice channels when worn.

Next I need to cut out the taffeta, the good fabric, a step I am quite nervous about this time, cross fingers!