Putnam County Spelling Bee Rona Silk Jacket
100% Silk fabric from Liberty of London. This fabric was gorgeous and manageable with a walking foot.
Because we didn't have quite enough fabric I had to finagle and shift pattern pieces around to make them all fit. The pattern pieces were close to being on-grain to mitigate any shifting/unwanted stretching from being slightly biased. After cutting the pattern pieces out of the fashion fabric Kevin instructed me in using tailors tacks to mark the fabric instead of using chalk or wax which would mar the fabric. Next I stay-stitched all the edges with a scant 5/8" to stabilize the edges before I pieced them together.
Construction photos. The garment was constructed using french seams to minimize the risk of fraying, after each seam I had to go along the entire seam to pick out fraying fibers to make the seam look clean. This small task was essential in making sure the garment looked professional and stage-worthy. In the second photo above you can see an accidental almost pattern match on the CB seam which I was quite pleased with. With more yardage we could've attempted to really pattern match but considering all the layouts I had to try to make the pattern pieces fit on the fabric we had I'm happy with this outcome. Also the pattern is so busy that the pattern isn't easy to read from the audience. In the last slide you can see the walking foot on the right, I already mentioned it but it really was invaluable in the even feeding of this fabric I would've gone crazy without it.
Next I began constructing the neck and armhole facings. These were regular seams instead of french seams because the raw edges would be turned in between the facings and body of the garment, so there was little risk of them fraying on contact with the actress. On the far side I pressed the facing edges under 1/4". I chose what I considered a healthy amount of turned edge to make sure the fabric wouldn't fray up to the seam edge while I tacked them down. This whole garment was made using 100% silk thread so the thread would fall into the fabric and not stand on top of the fabric like cotton or polycotton thread would. I tacked the inner facing edges down every 1/2" to make sure the turned edges wouldn't flip upwards and begin to fray. I didn't slip-stitch the entire inner facing edge down because then all those little bites would telegraph onto the front of the fabric and be showcased under stage lighting, which would have looked messy.
Done! Ain't she pretty? Overall I was really pleased with the outcome and loved how it looked onstage.