March 22, 2000
e-Mail: mainfairy@smockingbooks.com
Website: Garden Fairies Smocking & Needlearts Catalog
Smocking Newsletter - Beth-Katherine Kaiman, copyright 1997-2004, all rights reserved. Please respect my creativity and hard work and ask permission before you copy something from these newsletters for your non profit goup, I always ask that you quote me correctly and give me credit with a way for people to get back to me. Thank you. IF you wish to quote me in a venture for profit please contact me separately concerning royalties.
In This Issue:
1) How to Sew any garment together, Ready-to-Wear Style (sort of)
How to Sew any garment together, Ready-to-Wear Style (sort of)
I grew up in San Francisco during the 1950's. It was a strange time in many ways as the war had been over for five years when I was born but I was unaware of the significance then until I grew older. Every holiday the family would gather around telling their take on the war stories and as well the Korean War and Cold War Bomb Shelter scares et al. (See the movie with Brandon Fraser for a pretty good representation of America in 1960). It was a strange time as everything new was made of plastic and a bit cookie cutter reality. The fashions for young girls were very strick with net petticoats I graduated from High School June of 1967 in the Haight Ashbury District next to Golden Gate Park when fashions suddenly blossomed into embroidering heaven. Everyone was wearing some form of embroidery on their garments. Whether it be bell bottom pants with embroidery down the side of the pants (men would wear their pants embellished by their ladies) or along the cuff or a Hungarian Peasant Blouse smocked at the neckline and embroidered on sleeves and front. Ah fashions freedom, those were the days.
My sewing training began in 9th grade with skills such as aprons and curtains and finally my downfall, darts which I considered the most challenging for me. Neither garment I attempted with darts succeeded to where I was content with the look. I managed to succeed with help from my mother and grandmother who both loved to sew. Still to this day I have a dislike for darts. As I look back I can see that if my teacher had only taken the time to explain how a pattern should be put together I know I would have ended up loving darts and buttonholes. I managed to get some wonderful pattern-making training while studying privately with a tailor and costume maker and reworked my antiquated learning skills.
From all that I have read the ready to wear garment district has tricks of the trade which all seamstresses (or potential seamstresses) should take the time to learn if they are going to be sewing a lot mostly because some patterns out there have lousy directions or fitting problems. I can't tell you how many times over the past 13 years I've heard complaints about Children's Corner pattern Mary De. It's almost like it's a cult of answers to a problem that should have been corrected years ago but hasn't been. One starts to think that you almost have to have a degree in patterning to understand why the lining doesn't fit the bodice, not sure but it seems that way when you're in the middle of frustration. Gosh golly girls, sewing a garment is hard work, especially if you have a tendency to get lost in directions and when they are poorly written or the pattern pieces don't fit geeeezzzzzzz, it just ain't fair.
However there is something you can do, learn how to sew a garment together as the ready-to-wear industry does. Garment workers do not sit at their machines with directions, they usually are on in an assembly line repeating the same process over and over and over again. (We've all heard the sad tales of the garment workers but that is not the topic for the day.) It sounds boring and rightly so, but when you have several outfits to make at the same time it's easier to work in production methods rather than one garment at a time. When I sew smocked doll dresses together I do all the steps at the same time for each garment, it's the easier way really and a lot less stressful on the brain rather than doing the process over and over again, which leads to repetitive boredom and possibly other problems. Anyhow, I digress.
Figuring out the most logical way to put a garment together takes a bit of calculating but it's not hard. You just have to look out for caught seams and twists and turns that can happen when you put a lining to a bodice if you don't sew it right, or certain tricky linings that just have to be thought out before sewing (I hate those for sure).
I found a great book printed by Fairchild Books (they print the manuals and trade magazines for the fashion industry in New York, many of their manuals are excellent instruction books for those of you who want to learn how to design clothing as well as work in the industry) when I was working with my Vivian pattern entitled "A Guide to Fashion Sewing by Connie Amaden-Crawford and thought it would help if I wrote out an outline of the steps the author recommends one should take while constructing a garment. In my pattern I tried to keep in mind the most logical way of sewing a garment together. I think a lot of the problems people have with sewing patterns and sewing garments from those patterns is that they are so trained to go step by step they loose the overall picture.
The first thing to remember is to meld your sewing stitches before moving onto the next step. <To meld is to put the steam iron flat on top of the seam and gently press, the thread will meld into the fabric instead of sitting on the top layer.> Melding is very important, otherwise your stitches just sit loosely on the top of the fabric and when you open the seam to press it flat you are weakening the bond between the two fabrics. Melding helps keep the thread from pulling out. Tailors know this process quite well as melding is extremely important when working with wool fabrics.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
In my sewing business over the past years I have constructed multiples of items for doll and bear makers and always made a practice garment first before constructing the rest of the order. I found that I had a better understanding of what I was working on after I had made one. I knew exactly what went wrong and how to fix it. Later on I found that this ability kicked in and am now able to envision how to put a garment together just by looking at it. Of course there are still techniques I need to learn, we all need to sharpen our skills now and again just to keep astride with the rest of the world, but I found that after I while I had gained all the skills necessary to put many garments of the same pattern together with ease.
To start from the very beginning, look over the instructions of the pattern - are they written well, do they make sense? Then fit the garment (a whole other topic of discussion) and discern when's the best time to do the areas of embellishment. After fitting your pattern, knowing all there is to know about the construction you can cut out all the pieces of the garment and put them in a project bag (clear is best) along with the pattern so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle of switching the cutting table back into the dining room.
Depending on the type of garment you are working on it is recommend that if you have any embroidery or smocking to get that organized so that when you start everything you need is at your disposal. If you are working on a complex project combining several skills into one garment (embroidery, smocking, heirloom sewing) you will have to organize each section into logical steps in order to get those pieces ready to bring the garment together into the harmony of construction. My advice is to leave the "adult language" at the door of your sewing room and treat this time as sacred sewing time, filling your garment and embroidery with love and peaceful thoughts. It is rumored that women of centuries past wove spells of love and protection into their embroidery and smocking, casting their circles of protection around their loved ones. We should carry on this simple tradition and teach our children to do the same. So open up that jar of potpourri or turn on the aromatherapy lamp and start sewing.
When you fingers are tired or bored with the embroidering you can work on one of the other areas of construction like sewing all the lace and beadings to entredeux or construction the non embroidered and non lace pieces of the garment up to that point of adding in or inserting the section of smocking, embroidery or lace pieces.
If you are going to be handling a certain pattern piece a lot in order to embroider it is best NOT to cut out that piece you are working with because of fraying. As you may or may not realize going in and out of a hoop or frame (such as embroidery) or handling a lot will make the edges start to fray. If you have cut out your pieces you are working on you MUST stay stitch all around the edges to help the curves keep their shape. Too much pushing and pulling makes curves go out of shape too quickly, the goal is to sew two curves together as quickly as possible to avoid this. Rule of thumb it's best not to cut anything out until you embroider it first. You can trace the pattern piece's shape on the cloth you are working on to remind yourself when the embroidery is placed.
TIME TO SEW
If you look at a garment's structure there are logical steps to take in order to bring the garment to looking clean and finished. The suggestion is to start from the top and work your way down. Darts/tucks/pleats to put in are done so right away. (If you are working on an heirloom sewing project there are some steps that need to be done with the lace insertions, beadings and entredeux before you can even begin to cut out.)
(Remember to meld your stitches, don't ever continue to sew without steaming in your finished stitches first.)
Then your next step is to sew all the style line seams together. Any seam that is NOT a shoulder seam, armhole seam or side seam is a style line. "A style line usually runs from one point of a garment to another point." Princess seams are style lines as well as yokes. Top stitching at this point is recommended. Smocking which is attached to a yoke is considered a style line as well as cowls.
(Remember to meld your stitches, don't ever continue to sew without steaming in your finished stitches first.)
After that it's time to do interfacings, pockets, zippers and finally shoulder seams.
(Remember to meld your stitches, don't ever continue to sew without steaming in your finished stitches first.)
Next work on side seams and inseams, prepare your collars and sleeves and then attach the sleeves and collars and facings or linings if you have them (basic yoke dress with collar). No collar? Then finish the edge with a facing or seam allowance. Depending on what's next always remember to meld your stitches, don't ever continue to sew without steaming in your finished stitches first. Look at your garment to see what's next which is usually the hemline and buttons. There wasn't that easier than following directions?
Ok it's a bit simplified but I wanted to help take the mystique out of sewing. It's not as hard as the instructions make it out to be once you start looking at the constuction of it. It's alway a great idea to have some kind of dictionary or encyclopedia of sewing available while you are sewing, every woman needs one of those in her library.