Chapter 36 - Tailoring

Constructing a suit or coat should be no more difficult than constructing a dress, once the basic elements of sewing are mastered. Your differences will be in interfacing, interlining, and lining.

You will need an interfacing of lightweight canvas or muslin. Sometimes canvas is used for the front and collar, and unbleached muslin for the rest of the garment. The lining should be of rayon twill, rayon or silk crepe, satin or sateen. Sometimes novelty linings are used for their effect, for example: quilted cotton, plaids, prints, checks, stripes. In a winter coat you will want an interlining of a wool or part wool fabric, chamois, or a satin-back, wool-face fabric. You will also need seam binding or linen tape and weights for the bottom of a suit jacket.

Alter the pattern as usual. Sponge wool fabric (pp. 6, 51, 52), and lay the muslin in hot water for a few hours and hang it without wringing. This is to shrink it and remove sizing. Cut the pattern, mark it accurately, sew in darts. The pattern will give you directions for cutting the interfacing, which is sewed to the wrong side of each section of the garment with padding stitches.

Lay the interfacings in position. Padding stitches are made like diagonal basting stitches. Work with matching thread, take stitches about ½ inch long, just barely catching through the outer fabric, down one complete row, up the next, without turning the garment around. The stitches must not show on the right side, nor be pulled so tight as to cause puckering or pulling of the fabric. The entire interfacing piece is padded in this way to give the finished garment body, as well as a well-tailored look. Pad all interfacings except at the back shoulder and neckline. This piece is caught in the seams.

The seam allowances of the interfacing are then trimmed away, and the edge is taped. The tape is basted on so that one edge is on or just barely over the seam line so that it will be caught into the seam when the stitching for the seam is done. Overcast or hem the inner edge of the tape to the interfacing. Tape is put on around the reveres, down the front edges, around the collar, and over the seam joining the collar to the neckline.

Make bound buttonholes in the front. Collar and facings are then attached and the buttonholes finished through the facings. Press as you go along as always. When the garment is finished, the last step is the lining, which is cut out from pattern pieces which come with the pattern.

The lining is put together as is the garment. The center back has a soft pleat, which is pressed in place and caught with catch stitches at the neck edge, the waistline, and the hem across the width of the pleat. Lining is placed in garment, wrong sides together. The raw edges are turned under about ½ inch and the fold is slip stitched to the garment. All seams must be carefully matched first, at armhole, shoulder, sides, neckline. Baste long seams together, the lining to the garment. This prevents shifting as it is worn. The sleeve is turned wrong side out, and the lining slipped on, right side out, and slip stitched to place. Baste the seam of the lining to the. seam of the sleeve, wrong sides together. It is a good idea to pin the lining all the way around, with pins perpendicular to the edge, before doing any slip stitching.

If an interlining is being used, it is basted permanently to the seams and interfacing, but left free at the bottom. It can also be placed on the wrong side of each corresponding lining piece, and stitched together at the seams. However, the latter method causes bulky seams.

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