Problems and Solutions

It's official I passed my City and Guilds in Tailoring. I am so pleased.

About 40 years ago I started a City and Guilds in fashion, but circumstances changed in my personal situation and I never finished the course.

I don't like to start something I can't complete, so last year I enrolled on a course to do a Tailoring City and Guilds, at the  Ashby de la Zouch Sewing School. I enjoyed every minute of the year I spent there learning new skills. Now  I'm 'over the moon' to know I passed. Does this mean I can call myself a Tailoress?

I'm still working on my patchwork jacket, yesterday, I made the pattern for the front yoke; I chose the fabric and cut it out and stitched it.  Usually Crazy Patchwork is stitched to a backing and then hand stitching covers the raw edges.  I was careful to design my piece so I could stitch sections together on the sewing machine.  I chose this method because this patchwork is for a wearable garment and not a quilt or wall hanging.  

I hope the fabric I've just bought, to link all the pieces together on the finished jacket is OK. In the picture below, I've laid the Crazy Patchwork yokes on to my new fabric to have a look at the effect.

Does it work I wonder?  I don't want to use a completely plain fabric, nor do I want a lighter fabric.  But I thought this might just do the trick. 

The troublesome sleeves

Before my next gent's tailoring lesson, I needed to finish the sleeves on the jacket I'm doing, they are giving me grief.  The sleeve heads and the holes in which I need to get them, have a 3 inches (7.5cm) difference in size.  I've been trying to get a huge sleeve head into what seems to be a minute hole.   It's been a challenge.

Using my new sleeve head pressing gadget my nephew Thomas made for me. I used the iron and lots of steam to try to get the linen to shrink a bit.  I had stitched two rows of gathering threads around the sleeve head and I drew up the gathering stitches as I steamed, to help to hold it in place and to keep the shape whilst it dried.  Then I repeated the process once the sleeve head had completely dried. When I pinned it into the jacket using the method my friend Elaine had suggested in her email this weekend, I found it worked.  Now the second sleeve is drying on the pressing gadget after the first steaming process this morning.  One more steam and I can add that to the jacket and I hope it's dry and done before my lesson this week. 

With the shoulder pad and the sleeve role in place this might just have done the trick.