Details of 18th century shirt
Dec. 20th, 2021 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaOkay, I've made progress on the shirt; turns out Zoom meetings where I don't have to pay full attention are good for hand-sewing. The only thing now left is the buttonholes on the cuffs and adding ruffles.
Here's the whole shirt; you can see the little heart-shaped strengthening I put at the base of the neckline. The collar is not stiff at all, but I guess it would be covered by a neck-cloth anyway.
Close-up of the heart. Probably I could have reinforced this much better, though.
Top of the sleeve. The inside of the seam is properly flat-felled along the top of the shoulder, but not along the sleeve. There I just zig-zagged the edges and sewed them to the main fabric, which is sloppier, but it's harder to flat-fell the seam when the sleeve fabric is gathered. The description I went by said to have a sleeve binder, which is basically a piece of fabric sewn onto the inside and covering the seam. But alas, I was too lazy for that.
In general one thing I regret is being too stingy with the breadth of the strips of fabric left on the inside seams, so that it was in some places difficult to flat-fell them! Why on earth, when I had so much fabric and the shirt is so loose, did I do it that way?
The outside of the cuff.
The inside of the cuff; this is hand-sewn. Should I have done a back-stitch instead? I don't know.
The gusset at the neck. I like this construction! But here you can see my difficulties with flat-felling a seam when it suddenly divides into two...
The gusset under the arm. These seams are also not properly flat-felled, I zig-zagged them on the machine and then sewed them by hand to the main fabric. I'm not that used to sewing by hand, and am not sure I did it in the best way. But at least there are no strains on those seams, so it shouldn't be that important.
I can see how hand-sewing is neater in some ways, though, and probably looks very pretty when you're experienced at it. Like, on the machine I usually start by backing up a bit and then going forward, to secure the end of the seam, and it can make for an ugly bit of seam when you do that, with thread ends that you cut off on the outside, instead of securing them on the inside. Of course it doesn't matter on a seam which attaches two pieces of fabric, which won't be visible, but on hems and on flat-felling it's visible.
The little gusset where the shirttails divide. It looks a bit weird--surely it's not meant to bulge out like that?
Okay, I'll give up and make a sewing tag. Three posts make a tag...
Here's the whole shirt; you can see the little heart-shaped strengthening I put at the base of the neckline. The collar is not stiff at all, but I guess it would be covered by a neck-cloth anyway.
Close-up of the heart. Probably I could have reinforced this much better, though.
Top of the sleeve. The inside of the seam is properly flat-felled along the top of the shoulder, but not along the sleeve. There I just zig-zagged the edges and sewed them to the main fabric, which is sloppier, but it's harder to flat-fell the seam when the sleeve fabric is gathered. The description I went by said to have a sleeve binder, which is basically a piece of fabric sewn onto the inside and covering the seam. But alas, I was too lazy for that.
In general one thing I regret is being too stingy with the breadth of the strips of fabric left on the inside seams, so that it was in some places difficult to flat-fell them! Why on earth, when I had so much fabric and the shirt is so loose, did I do it that way?
The outside of the cuff.
The inside of the cuff; this is hand-sewn. Should I have done a back-stitch instead? I don't know.
The gusset at the neck. I like this construction! But here you can see my difficulties with flat-felling a seam when it suddenly divides into two...
The gusset under the arm. These seams are also not properly flat-felled, I zig-zagged them on the machine and then sewed them by hand to the main fabric. I'm not that used to sewing by hand, and am not sure I did it in the best way. But at least there are no strains on those seams, so it shouldn't be that important.
I can see how hand-sewing is neater in some ways, though, and probably looks very pretty when you're experienced at it. Like, on the machine I usually start by backing up a bit and then going forward, to secure the end of the seam, and it can make for an ugly bit of seam when you do that, with thread ends that you cut off on the outside, instead of securing them on the inside. Of course it doesn't matter on a seam which attaches two pieces of fabric, which won't be visible, but on hems and on flat-felling it's visible.
The little gusset where the shirttails divide. It looks a bit weird--surely it's not meant to bulge out like that?
Okay, I'll give up and make a sewing tag. Three posts make a tag...
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Date: 2021-12-21 04:32 pm (UTC)