After the multi-week project of fitting my muslin, I was ready to cut my fabric. My crazy expensive fabric that I can't get any more of unless I make a 10-hour drive to New York. Just a little intimidating.
Part of what makes a nice jacket is matching the pattern of the fabric at the seams, this is also a big pain in the rear. If you're like me, after you were sewing for a while you really started to notice how little commercial clothing bothers to match patterns especially at the side seams and it started to annoy you.
Since this is my first jacket to have this complicated of a design, when I was shopping for my fabric I tried to consider the pattern and how difficult it would be to match. A lot of boucle is plaid so there is both a vertical and a horizontal pattern to consider. I choose a fabric that was more of a tweedy look so the pattern is less obvious because there aren't stripes, so if I don't have an exact match it will be less noticeable.
To begin, I straightened the grain of my fabric. When your fabric is cut, it may or may not be cut on grain, places that snip then rip the fabric across are closer to being on grain but it's probably still off a little. To begin, lay your fabric out and snip one selvage edge in an about an inch. You want to pull on one of the now exposed threads and you will see as you pull longer that it will become a varied distance from the cut edge of your fabric. You need to pull the thread all the way to the other side, if your fabric gathers a little that is ok, you just need to be able to see the thread you're pulling on. The thread will probably break and you'll have to pull another one, just keep pulling the next thread down until you can get all the way across and see the thread on both sides. When you can see the thread all the way across, cut on the thread, now when the edges are aligned, your fabric is on grain.
If you remember, I'm using my muslin that I have altered and cut up as my pattern. I laid my muslin pieces on my fabric, very carefully measuring the distance of each from the bottom and side to ensure they were on grain and the same part of the pattern. I tried to put fabric pieces that were going to be next to each other in the final product next to each other on the layout.
You might be wondering if I used the layout in my pattern envelope, in this case no. That will typically show you the way to lay them out to use the least fabric, which is normally both acceptable and desirable but in this case I am more concerned about my final product then using an extra 2 inches of fabric, in fact I bought enough extra to possibly make a skirt.
Now you might be wondering, did my pattern pieces that would be next to each other (front, side front, back and side back) fit in one nice row across???? Of course not. It was just barely too narrow when I added in seam allowance. So what does this mean?
I measured the vertical repeat on my fabric to find where I should place the lone piece that did not fit. Now you might think that your fabric doesn't have one if it's a tweedy variety instead of the plaid but you might be wrong. My fabric, for example is almost exactly the same vertically BUT every 6 inches there is a small area in which there is some variation there is more of the plumb than the white, kind of a little splotch. Now would it really make a huge difference if I did not do this? No probably not, but this is about doing a lot of little things that end up in a much better overall product.
So I measured my vertical repeat and put the one oddball piece a factor of 6.25 inches further up that the other pieces.
Since I'm using a muslin as the pattern I needed to add in seam allowance. I'm using 5/8" seam allowance with an extra 3 inches at the bottom for the hem. I traced around all of my pieces with tailors chalk to mark the cutting line before cutting out any of my pieces. You can almost see this in the photo below, the line is in yellow.
Then I cut them out!
Part of what makes a nice jacket is matching the pattern of the fabric at the seams, this is also a big pain in the rear. If you're like me, after you were sewing for a while you really started to notice how little commercial clothing bothers to match patterns especially at the side seams and it started to annoy you.
Since this is my first jacket to have this complicated of a design, when I was shopping for my fabric I tried to consider the pattern and how difficult it would be to match. A lot of boucle is plaid so there is both a vertical and a horizontal pattern to consider. I choose a fabric that was more of a tweedy look so the pattern is less obvious because there aren't stripes, so if I don't have an exact match it will be less noticeable.
To begin, I straightened the grain of my fabric. When your fabric is cut, it may or may not be cut on grain, places that snip then rip the fabric across are closer to being on grain but it's probably still off a little. To begin, lay your fabric out and snip one selvage edge in an about an inch. You want to pull on one of the now exposed threads and you will see as you pull longer that it will become a varied distance from the cut edge of your fabric. You need to pull the thread all the way to the other side, if your fabric gathers a little that is ok, you just need to be able to see the thread you're pulling on. The thread will probably break and you'll have to pull another one, just keep pulling the next thread down until you can get all the way across and see the thread on both sides. When you can see the thread all the way across, cut on the thread, now when the edges are aligned, your fabric is on grain.
If you remember, I'm using my muslin that I have altered and cut up as my pattern. I laid my muslin pieces on my fabric, very carefully measuring the distance of each from the bottom and side to ensure they were on grain and the same part of the pattern. I tried to put fabric pieces that were going to be next to each other in the final product next to each other on the layout.
You might be wondering if I used the layout in my pattern envelope, in this case no. That will typically show you the way to lay them out to use the least fabric, which is normally both acceptable and desirable but in this case I am more concerned about my final product then using an extra 2 inches of fabric, in fact I bought enough extra to possibly make a skirt.
Now you might be wondering, did my pattern pieces that would be next to each other (front, side front, back and side back) fit in one nice row across???? Of course not. It was just barely too narrow when I added in seam allowance. So what does this mean?
I measured the vertical repeat on my fabric to find where I should place the lone piece that did not fit. Now you might think that your fabric doesn't have one if it's a tweedy variety instead of the plaid but you might be wrong. My fabric, for example is almost exactly the same vertically BUT every 6 inches there is a small area in which there is some variation there is more of the plumb than the white, kind of a little splotch. Now would it really make a huge difference if I did not do this? No probably not, but this is about doing a lot of little things that end up in a much better overall product.
So I measured my vertical repeat and put the one oddball piece a factor of 6.25 inches further up that the other pieces.
Since I'm using a muslin as the pattern I needed to add in seam allowance. I'm using 5/8" seam allowance with an extra 3 inches at the bottom for the hem. I traced around all of my pieces with tailors chalk to mark the cutting line before cutting out any of my pieces. You can almost see this in the photo below, the line is in yellow.
Then I cut them out!
Comments
Post a Comment