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.