Wedding Coat

My schoolmate from tailors' training centre is getting married. This is the image she showed me as a template.

I first made the garment from a loose coat, tried it on her and made it slimmer. Then, when I had the complete pattern, I cut it out from the real material.

I cut out all the pieces and started with sleeves at they are the easiest part to prepare. I sewed both the lining and the knit sleeves at the bottom edge together. I ironed the seam, leaving one centimer hanging down to get more loosenes of the lining. Then I sewed the sleeves side seam in one long line of stitches.

I pinned the sleeves together and marked the upper edge of the lining - it will be one cm bigger than the upper sleeve.

The breast tucks are not sewn with a direct line, it has to start and end almost invisibly for perfect outcome.

I made the rear and front tucks on the outer pieces, then on the lining. Just for the breast "tucks", they are only folded on lining.

After some horrible result at the neck lining, I decided to sew the pieces together in hand. The lining fabric is really stiff and thick (which you don't want for any lining...)

I ironed the satin fabric at the basting, making cuts to the seam allowance a few milimeters from the edge.

Hand sewing, taking always just a milimeter from the lining. In fact, there was more hand sewing than I had expected at this coat. I pinned the paper template to the panel and once more traced the neckline to fit perfectly.

I prepared the invisible zipper fastening. The center seam was sewn up to the point where the zipper would start. I aligned the teeth with the basting and sewed one side with the zipper open.

Then I closed it and pinned the other side to the zipper. Opened it, moved the pins to go just to the seam allowance and sewed on the other side. This is my special footer.

Front facing has fusible web pressed on. I sewed it on the front pieces.

I sewed the coat lining to the upper fabric on front facing. Then I had tough time assembling the shoulders, because there are two upper front pieces and two lining front pieces at each shoulder.

I sewed together just one layer of lining that is the closest to the body. That's one shoulder seam. Then all the upper layers together in correct order. That's the second shoulder seam.

Zipper lining was sewn on by hand.

When all this was done, I could baste (by machine) the front panels together at the armhole.

Leaving the coat without sleeves for a while, I got down to the lower hemming. The edge is not ironed right in the seam, but two milimeters to the upper piece, so that the seam is hidden. This is a tailor's stuff whose english word I have no idea about :-D

So I also had to sew the corner a few milimeters aside.

I sewed the lining at the lower edge by machine and pinned the facing. Then I dived into the coat from the inner side and attached the facing with herringbone stitch. Very light and loose, catching only one or half a thread.

I made all the lower hem - machine sewing + herringbone stitch.

Side slits lining done all by haaaand....

Finally the sleeves. I basted the upper sleeve the standard way. Laying flat at the armpit, adding more of the sleeves as I go up and finally two centimeters from the shoulder seam going flat again.

The sleeve was sewn by machine, while the armpit was sewn twice at the same place. As you can see, there were waves at the shoulder at that point.

I turned the seam allowance towards the neckline and pressed the little waves and the allowance. Then I turned it towards the sleeve and pressed the seam to stay there.

Now it looks much better - fabric lays flat.

I cut the edges of lining sleeve (I did that as late as possible, as it frays as hell) to be one centimeter longer than the real sleeve and hand sewed it to the lining body. Increasing the size has a pleasant side effect - it can be sewn flat as the seamlines have similar length now (usually the sleeve seamline is like 5 cm longer than the armhole).

And this is the main reason why here also in hand. There is one of the front pieces attached to the lining. It's like a brain-teaser to assemble all this together.

I hung the coand and I pinned the bottom of the lining. Then I pressed it to get clean sharp edge.

Done.
I'm done :-D
Pants will follow.

My Wedding Dress

I'm getting married. Not so much time and I still didn't know what to wear. Finally, my friend helped - she gave me a wedding gift - her wedding dress.

For me it was just too decent - the lace sleeves are just not like me. So a lot of things got solved. First, I wanted to sew my wedding dress and at the same time didn't want to because all the stress from that - I might finally find myself hating them if the process was too hard... Now I could just tweak a finished dress with my design which was a perfect choice.

The dress was dirty at the bottom and had a hole from fire in it. I made a tuck at the hole. Lucky enough, the skirt was so long, that I could shorten it and get rid of most of the dirt. It was pain in the ass. The chiffon is hard to hem and I was just folding the (curved) edge twice and sewed through it. It was moving like water and ended up very unprofessionally hemmed.

I made a pattern for sleeve - arc 80 x 60 cm. The armhole was measured from the dress. I used cans to keep the fabric in place - chiffon is like water, always moving and changing shape when you don't watch it.

Finally I googled up a video how to hem chiffon. You fold the edge once, sew through it, the you turn it upside down, fold once more and sew at the right side.

Results are excellent compared to my previous work. Before and after ironing.

The lower hem was not nice, but it wasn't noticeable close to the ground and in loads of layers of fabric. Sleeves - that is different. They're close to sight and have to be perfect.

Light fabric - no machine lock, just tie the knot in hand and pull through.

I cut out the armholes after hemming so that it doesn't rip off in the meantime.

I cut off the original sleeves, pinned the new ones and sewed them in.

One sleeve trial. I sneezed at the photo :-D

It all went well, so I added the second sleeve and cut the seam allowances.

I folded the lining net over the seam and sewed on in hand.

As an accent, I glued some AB crystal rhinestones to the neckline.

The dress was meant for outdoor ceremony and it moved beautifully in the wind.

My handsome beloved husband.

Finally this dress meant something more. There is a lot from me.

Friendship - it is a gift from friend

Sewing - I designed and made part of it

History - the sleeves resemble medieval long sleeves

Dancing - we used AB crystals for our belly dance costumes

Fireshow - the hole from fire :-D

Wedding Dress Petticoat

 It seemed like a good idea to make a petticoat so that my wedding dress gets some volume.

I bought 4 meters of tulle and tried to get as much of it as possible. Every layer should be like twice as wide as the previous one.

I sewed the pieces together to get four panels. I gathered each of them, pinned them and sewed together. Pinning the last layer was really annoying. I had to readjust several times to get even result.

When I had this piece, I sewed the center back seam.

I folded the upper piece twice to get a tunnel for rubber band.

Here it is.
And how did this story end? I spend a lot of time at the petticoat. Then I tried it with the dress, then tried again and again.. And had to admit it doesn't work. Light chiffon and satin fabrics showed bulks and the overall shape was not flattering. This is probably a choice for dress from tough material that holds its shape and just needs some support.

So bye bye my dear. Unused.

Wedding Invitations and Wine Labels

 I was trying to make a desing for our wedding invitations. I liked simple flower designs most from what I found as inspiration, so I tried to do something in that style.

I drew a heart of leafs with black ink and scanned the image to get a basic design. It was really really big, like half the A4 and was shrinked in PC to a small image.

I used several fonts, all calligraphic, to get closer to hand written invitations. The back of the invitation is a flight ticket as both of us are pilots.

There are three types of paper glued together and we used a transparent paper to wrap it. It gives the whole thing some lightness. Every invitation is finished with a flower and hot melt glue seal.

I also printed wine labels to match the invitation design. Every guest family would get an excellent Moravia wine.