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Here's a closeup of the dance tuxedo I made last week, which went to Austria with one of our team members, showing the pockets, lapels, and failing interfacing on the
sleeve. I have a week to make another one for myself, in order to
wear at the Manhattan Amateur Classic where the tailsuit I made for the fall's collegiate comps would not be
legal in syllabus.
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Here I'm rotary cutting the back with a pinking blade and marking
the seam lines with chalk paper and the pointy wheel. Usually I just
cut everything out with a half inch seam allowance and use the guides
on the sewing machine throat plate to stitch a half inch in, but for
this I wanted to have larger allowances for adjustability, hence the
chalk lines to guide stitching.
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The entire front is reinforced inside with a layer of hair canvas (grey), and the
top part gets an additional layer of flanel (white... unfortunately, as you can see some threads of it in the button hole later). I'm using fusible (heat
activated) adhesive to stick the layers together - if I had more
time, I might do it with tiny hand stitches that would be invisible
from the outside. But this project calls for "speed tailoring"
methods.
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The heart and soul of a dance jacket is the way that the sleeve fits
into the armscye, so that the shoulder doesn't ride up in dance
position. It's 11:47 pm the night before MAC, and I'm still making
pattern adjustments... |
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| Here I'm sewing the sleeve into the armscye. Note how the highly twisted fibers of this wool like to stretch and unravel... nice stuff, but hard to work with. And it would be really nice if the sewing machine could go backwards for doing the other half!
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It's 11:30 am and MAC starts in 7 hours. Good thing a friend's driving - I'll close up the lapels, hem the back, and sew in the lining by hand on the way to NY. Alas I forgot the pocket square and had to substitute a bit of paper napkin... |