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Structure, structure, structure! Underlining

***I will update this post as soon as I can with photos. Unfortunately my phone broke recently and I lost all of my underlining photos!

It has been a busy few months and progress on the fancy jacket has been slow...I apologize to those of you who have been following the project! I have been doing some sewing but unfortunately it has been focused mostly on a quilt I'm making a friend for a wedding gift - there's a deadline!

However, I have underlined my jacket recently and you're overdue for a project update! Without further ado...

Underlining helps a garment to curve toward your body, it rounds it to give it more shape. It's commonly confused with interlining, including at the fancy local fabric store I sometimes visit, which is used to add warmth to a jackets, for example. The underlining goes between your wool fashion fabric and your silk lining.

For your underlining, I would suppose you could use almost any woven cotton fabric? Not really sure about that. I'm using a white cotton batiste. I did check for this at my local JoAnn's since I was in the area and they did not carry batiste, so I went to my local fabric store and they had it in stock! If you don't have a good local store, you might need to order it online if you want batiste.

You will want to pre-wash and dry your underlining. I'm not really sure why need to pre-wash since the jacket is dry clean only but E told me to do it and I do what she says! Sometimes with a little complaining :-) about how long it takes, and I am always pleased with the results! So I suggest pre-washing and drying also.

Cut out all of your pieces in your underlining, pay attention to make sure you are on the grain line as approporiate for each piece. I am sure you do this all the time anyway, I know I do (not always) but in this case it is very important for the function of the underlining. Take on of your fashion fabric pieces and its accompanying piece of underlining, lay the wool fashion fabric wrong side up and the underlining over the top of it, lining up the edges.

You won't see the underlining, so it doesn't really matter if the right or wrong side is up. Mine was plain white and also did not really have a right/wrong. Place a pin in the middle of the piece through both fabric layers. I found extra long quilting pins to be good for this process.

Now, with the side of your had you want to gently stretchy the underlining away from the center pin toward the top of the piece, pulling it slightly past the edge of the wool peice on the bottom. Pin the underlining down so it is taught and extends slightly past the wool fashion fabric. Continue gently stretching the underlining with the side of your hand vertically from the center pin until it's pulled taught. You will also want to pull/stretch from the pin to the bottom in the same manner. After you have fully stretched the underlining vertically, you want to also do it horizontally.

After you have it pulled tight, you should have ~1/4-1/2 inch hanging over each edge, trim this excess off and the stitch down the underlining to the fashion fabric. This stitching should be in your seam allowance, I am constructing my jacket at 5/8" so I sewed my underlining at 1/2".

Important note: at one point I tried to do this assembly line style and stretch the lining for several pieces and then sew it on. It did not work very well, as they were waiting to be sewn the underlining un-stretched somewhat and I ended up re-doing them, also plan to use a LOT of pins.


At this stage of the project:
Estimate total hours: 10
Estimated cost (not including sewing classes for help): $150, still need to buy lining. Fancy local store has a nice silver Dupioni silk but it's $35/yd....I was prepared to buy it for 20/yd but I had misread the tag...so still looking...

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