Making a classic suit: 1. The decision, resources and plans

Since I'm inching towards the point where I will be once again well enough to go out and work for a living (hurray!), I've started thinking in earnest about what I want to have in my workwear wardrobe. Before I need an everyday workwear wardrobe, though, I need to actually get a job. I will probably need to go to several interviews, and that means I need an Interview Outfit.

I haven't always worn a suit to job interviews in the past, but I definitely want to this time around. In addition to being an easy and totally uncontroversial interview outfit, my thinking is that a good suit is the sort of thing that, if you acquire a classic, timeless style and take care of it, you can keep in your wardrobe for a very long time with nobody really any the wiser that it's several years old. So, given my preferred colour palette for my wardrobe, and my preference for trousers over skirts or dresses, I decided my first step had to be to acquire a classic two-piece trouser suit in navy. (Tops to go with this suit to follow immediately after I acquire the suit!)

My backstop plan: buy a simple, classic trouser suit like this one from Damsel in a Dress (though not actually THIS suit because it's 100% polyester)

Initially, when I planned out my wardrobe in a spreadsheet, Plan A was to invest in a really high quality RTW suit. This plan has not gone well so far. One of my intentions for my new work wardrobe is to stick to mostly natural fibres, as far as possible. I was totally prepared to pay the extra for all wool or at least a high percentage of wool in the fabric. The problem is that I was kind of hoping the expensive wool suits I was looking at would have expensive finishing to match and... nope! Cheap buttons, crappy linings, not the best sewing.

Worse, of course, is that they often fit horribly. Again, I wasn't expecting miracles! I knew there were likely to be some fit issues in RTW. I just wasn't prepared for the EXTENT of the fit issues I was experiencing, and the fact that there are two pieces created even more complexity. For example, even when I found a jacket I actually liked, the matching trousers in that shop were just not designed for my body shape at all. I started looking into how much it would cost to get a suit tailored to me if I bought one and right around then I ground to a pockets-to-rent halt: £££ for the suit, and then ££ for tailoring and good grief, this was getting expensive and complicated, making it myself would be easier! ....Wait, what if I DID make it myself??

Worst case scenario 1: I end up with a wadder and no suit, a ton of time wasted, and probably a lot of fabric wasted. On the other hand, I'll still have the money that I originally saved to buy a suit, so I can just go back to my original plan and buy something and have it tailored if necessary. No doubt I'll learn a lot just from trying to make the suit, and I'm always here for expanding my sewing skills.

Worst case scenario 2: I make a suit but it ends up looking the worst kind of "home-made" or ill-fitting. Obviously if the suit I make is legitimately a Becky-Home-Eccy disaster, it's time to move on and again, I've still got the money and can buy a RTW suit if necessary. However, I've already made several coats and jackets. How much worse can this be? Plus, it's totally irrational to be afraid to sew something. It's just thread and fabric, and for sure I won't know if I can put those two things together successfully without giving it a try.

However, an important factor for me here is the comparisons I'm making. I think it's tempting to compare myself to the catalogue models on the websites where I'm shopping, or Pinterest images of women wearing suits, or to some mental ideal of "a perfect suit". The two former groups consist of women usually very much younger than me, with totally different body shapes, altered by who knows how much Photoshop, pinning, and camera trickery to make them look even better. My comparison has to be not to those women or my imagined ideal, but to the look and fit I can achieve in RTW on my actual body, and thus far the outcome of that has not been great.

So, having convinced myself to give tailoring a whirl, where do I start?

Fabric:

My fabric (sort of, my camera washes out the colour)

As it turns out, I already own some fabric that would be ideal for this suit. When I first started making clothes in 2012, I bought a LOT of fabric, not all of which I had any immediate use for. One of my purchases was from from an estate sale of an older gentleman who had been a tailor before he retired. He had in storage multiple "suit lengths" (3.2m, or 3.5 yards) of high quality, British-made, 100% wool suiting, and I bought 2 of them: one in navy pinstripe and one in a medium grey pinstripe. The fabric is far from new -- at least 35 years old and probably more -- and it almost certainly cost a lot of money when they were originally purchased. I got my two pieces for £5 each. I freely admit I have been hoarding this fabric because it was such an incredible bargain and I don't want to waste it, but that way lies madness and a stash that never stops growing. After marinading in my stash for 7 years, it's time to turn this fabric into clothes.

Fabric (again). This shot is much closer to the actual colour

What I don't have is suitable lining fabric(s), and doubtless I will need various interfacing products and other notions, but I'll need to make those purchases when I come to them later on.

Patterns:

The amount of fabric I have -- and the fact that absolutely no more is available -- does introduce a few constraints to the pattern selection process, but I was pretty sure I could find a jacket and trouser pattern that would fit together on 3.2m of fabric.

My sewing table while I attempted to find just the right blazer pattern

My first port of call in the search for a blazer pattern was my Burda pattern stash. I have already made several Burda coats and jackets, which gives me a head-start on my likely size and fitting issues, and Burda drafting has always been extremely reliable and consistent in my experience. The instructions leave something to be desired of course, but I'm already planning to go well outside the magazine for help on how to construct the blazer, so I don't really care all that much.

My specific requirements for the jacket were:

- Single breasted, with a full-length sleeve
- Designed to be about ~60cm long and to be a medium fit -- not very closely tailored, but definitely not oversized.
- A lapel that buttons below the bust -- not super low but, to minimise the appearance of my bust, below my (low) bustline
- Simple and timeless in design: understated collar, no fussy or unusual details, nothing that will date or stand out
- Suitable for a narrow vertical pinstripe (i.e. not going create a stripe vortex over my bust)
- Requires around ~1.6m of fabric.

You would think this would be easy, but while I had literally hundreds of patterns available in my collection of magazines, many of them have lots of design features. I wanted something really quiet on the design front, and that was oddly difficult to find.

Burda 03-2007-104 -- my proposed blazer pattern

This is the current front-runner. I'm already pushing the "timelessness" requirement, because it's from a 2007 issue of Burda. Honestly though, I feel like this pattern could have been released in a 2019 issue and I wouldn't blink at it. It doesn't look all that different to the current stock Damsel In A Dress suit in the picture above. My big concerns with this pattern at present are: the size of the collar (it seems undersized), making those pockets, the effect of that little Dior dart on the pinstripe and the location of the top button on my body.

(An aside: in trying to find the perfect pattern for this blazer, I ended up with a list as long as my arm for future blazers that don't need to be quite so classic and muted. If this is successful, I feel like it could be the gateway to a whole wardrobe of tailoring. That is the problem with going through my Burda collection: instant desire to MAKE ALL THE THINGS.)

Moving on to the trousers:

New Look 6080 line drawing

When I was doing the trouser block thing I compared my finished block with several commercial patterns I already owned, and I was struck by how similar New Look trouser patterns are to my block. Now seems like a possible time to use that information. Enter New Look 6080, a wardrobe pattern set that I bought originally for the jacket. View E though looks like just the kind of really simple, classic suit trouser pattern that I could see working with the blazer above. I wanted a side zip pattern -- no fly or pockets -- so that I could more easily add a lining to the trousers (both to make the trousers last longer and because wool is itchy).

My next step is to get my patterns traced and organised, make initial fitting changes, and run up a quick muslin of the entire suit. Unfortunate photographs in muslin suits to follow soon!

Know-How

Once I have a pattern that fits, the next problem is actually making the suit, particularly the blazer. There are a whole bunch of things that I need to explore, from interfacing and construction to practising welt pockets. I'm planning to lean heavily on the classes on Bluprint and the tailoring books I've bought. Probably I'll be posting a LOT more about this in the next few weeks.

Autumn/Winter wardrobe additions

This year, I decided I needed that I needed 9 new items to round out my everyday/casual wardrobe for the rest of 2019.

My 9 items were:

1 cardigan

2 pairs of mid-weight trousers
2 pairs of leggings

2 longer-length woven tops
2 knit tunic/short dresses

I ended up buying the leggings rather than making them. I have a favourite, inexpensive RTW brand of leggings though that I find fit me the way I prefer and I don't think there's any benefit to making them vs. buying them in terms of fabric, cost, or fit.

That left seven items to sew, and these are the patterns I picked:

My autumn/winter sewing patterns

Trousers

I made the Burda and Jalie trousers from the same large piece of slightly brushed navy cotton stretch twill. I am going to be honest: I tried to take photos but it's a really dark navy and all you can see is like vague blobs, even with the exposure cranked up, so I will keep the photos to a minimum!

Let's start with something positive: I literally cannot express how much I love the Jalie Eleonore trousers. The fact that this is a great pattern is not news to anyone who was around when it came out, because the whole world and their sister made it and (mostly) liked it. I made the full length version, in plain navy, with the pocket add-on. I made very few fitting changes: mainly I straightened out the shaping along the inner thigh and did a knock knee adjustment.

They are not a perfect fit, but they fit probably the best closer fitting/stretch fabric trousers I've made so far, and the places they don't fit well (below the butt; above my calf muscles at the back in particular) are the same place every single pair of closer fitting trousers ever has wrinkled on me. I could probably have fewer wrinkles if I increased the width of the back leg from above the knee, but the wider leg changes the whole shape of the trousers so I haven't done so.

My one complaint about the Jalie Eleonore is actually about the pocket add-on. It's true, the add-on pattern piece does create a pocket. Alas, it makes one of those sad, vestigial, fingertip-deep pockets that are almost more annoying than no pocket at all. I will definitely adjust this when I make the pattern again.

The other trousers turned out MUCH less well and in some ways I am kicking myself for not just making a second pair of Eleonore trousers! The pattern I used, Burda 01-2007-108 is a simple straight leg pattern with a top entry pocket. I made this pattern before with only moderate success, but I hoped that using the trouser block pattern I drafted for myself earlier this year would help refine the fit. Alas, no.

Having traced out the pattern, I slapped on the trouser block and adjusted the pattern to match to the best of my ability. It turns out my best ability was not very good. I made some changes to the last version of my block on the crotch curve shape and got it wrong, and in the process of fixing that problem by sewing a new curve in the part-finished trousers I was making, I lengthened the crotch curve again. Since the main problem I have with Burda trouser patterns is that the crotch length is far too long for me, I actually resolved nothing. The trousers are also overall too big at the waist and leg, and slightly too short because I made a mistake with my hem calculation. It's a litany of disappointment, in short.

So far I've worn these trousers about a half a dozen times, but I can already feel myself defaulting to almost anything else that's clean in preference to wearing them. I'll see if I get a bit more wear out of them, but if not, eh, failed experiment, move on. 

Fly  of Burda 01-2007-108 trousers. Please forgive how wrinkly these look, I dragged them out of the ironing basket for a photo!

 All that said, I did do a few things really well: this is the "sewing course" pattern in this issue of Burda and, as unlikely as this sounds, the fly instructions are fantastic and the fly and waistband overall turned out really well. I must remember to photocopy the fly instructions for all future trouser-making activities.

Cardigan

Ottobre 05-2019-10 cardigan in blue ponte

This is a really quick and easy pattern from the latest Ottobre magazine. I had a problem with the front band, which was far too short when I cut it out. I didn't have enough fabric left to recut the whole thing, so I pieced in an extra section. Luckily, the uneven stripe and texture of this  fabric totally hides this "fix". At first I thought there was a problem with the pattern that caused this not to work. However, I have since seen at another review of the pattern and they didn't mention a problem so probably it was my fault somehow!

I like this cardigan (and strangely my mum really loves it) but I find it a bit shapeless and square, and I don't particularly like the way the collar sits at the  back neck. For sure I don't like it as much as my favourite cardigan pattern I've used a dozen times, the StyleArc Estelle.

Woven Tops

These are both tunic length tops, falling to about mid-thigh.

Butterick 5203 in navy patterned viscose

I have made up Butterick 5203 before, so making this version was simple. The pattern calls for a keyhole opening at the back and therefore a centre back seam. However, the neckline sans keyhole is more than large enough to slip over my head AND I have an irrational dislike of keyhole necklines (not even so much making them: I hate wearing them!) AND I hate chopping up large prints unnecessarily, so I just cut the back on the fold and omitted the keyhole. I love this top -- ultra simple to make, and it's just really pretty. I made it in  a lightweight viscose woven, which is an ideal fabric for this drapey, flowing top pattern.

Simplicity 2246 (view B) in navy and white gingham

The very first garment pattern I ever acquired was Simplicity 2246, a Lisette shirtdress pattern. I think everyone and their mother made it the year it came out (2012). My copy came on the front of a magazine, and I've hung on to it ever since as something I'd like to make. I'm not entirely happy with my version, but it's all right.

On the plus side: This shirt/tunic has a separate (rather than foldover) button band, and I am very pleased with my decision to put the bands on my version on the bias. I also bias cut the collar. My reasoning was about 80% practicality and 20% aesthetics. Mainly, I did NOT want to pattern match the gingham across all those pieces! However, the other problem was that the width of the finished button band was really awkward when compared to the width of the gingham squares, and I didn't like any of the alternatives I came up with for how to cut it (along a white stripe, along a navy stripe, half-and-half). Cutting it on the bias got rid of that problem entirely and also I think it's aesthetically pleasing to have the obvious vertical feature running down the front of the top.

Close-up of gingham shirt.

Minus side: The fit. As much as I like this shirt, it just doesn't fit as well as I would like. I needed a touch more ease over the waist and hip. It's not that it doesn't fit, exactly -- everything buttons up fine, nothing pulls -- but it's just a little bit closer fitting than I wanted for the outfits I had in my head. Still, it's fine, and since I am currently at the top of my normal weight range, there's a strong possibility it will fit more like I prefer as I fluctuate downwards again.

Knit tunics/short dresses

I like to wear leggings & longer tops on days when I am planning to spend all day at home. I therefore like to make soft, cosy knit tunics or short dresses to wear with them, to make outfits that are basically just a half-a-step removed from pyjamas but that are, at the same time, perfectly respectable if I have to answer the door or run to the post box. I tend to change up my patterns a lot -- I don't think I've ever made the same pattern twice in this category of garment.

This time I made a Butterick See-and-Sew pattern with a cowl neck and a slightly curved hem (Butterick 5870) and a very simple A-line skirted t-shirt dress from a recent Ottobre (Ottobre 05-2017-18).

Butterick 5870 in navy polka dot viscose/lycra knit. The cowl looks super awkward on Flossie and much nicer on a person

I like both of these a LOT but I actually have nothing at all to say about the construction, really. The Butterick dress turned out a little smarter looking than I entirely intended -- I can definitely imagine someone more into dresses than me wearing this just with tights out and about --  but it's really cute and I like it a lot. I'm really tempted to make the other view (which is the same dress in every respect other than the neckline, with is a V with a small scarf feature) next time I make a knit top like this. It was super easy to put together, and it's a great pattern.

Ottobre 05-2017-18, A-line skirted t-shirt dress in blue cotton-lycra knit

The Ottobre pattern was even easier as it's literally just a t-shirt dress and has no distinguishing features. I swapped out the long sleeves in the pattern for 3/4 sleeves, and I actually redrew the whole shoulder and armhole and used my own established tshirt pattern sleeve rather than the pattern, because why bother reinventing the wheel. I also lowered the neckline to a slightly deeper scoop as, as designed, this was rather high. I have to be honest: my version bears more than a passing resemblance to a nightgown. I think this might be improved by making this pattern up in a print rather than a plain pattern, but I don't think any t-shirt dress is ever going to be the most sophisticated of looks.

Overall, even though there are little problems with some of the things I made and I am not equally enthusiastic about  all of them, I am quite pleased with my wardrobe additions for the season. Some I've already worn a LOT, some of them have been waiting until the weather cooled down in October and I've only just started wearing. The definite star of the show though is the Jalie Eleonore trousers, which I love to pieces.

Next up: a wool suit! This is my BIG project for the autumn, and I probably won't have time to work on anything else at all for a while. I'm going to post more about it maybe tomorrow or Monday, so more details on this soon. :D