Tux jacket conversion

[ChattanCat]

Wow, is that hair canvas in the third pic? If it is, you found yourself a very well made jacket. Is the jacket material wool?

[sydnie7]

Wow, is that hair canvas in the third pic? If it is, you found yourself a very well made jacket. Is the jacket material wool?

Yes, it's wool, and yes, that's hair canvas! Plus bias tape around the front edges, and some sort of black flannel-ish inner material that seems to come down out of the lapels. There are at least four different kinds of thread used in construction, too, and evidence of hand-finishing.

Got some more work done and am uploading photos, stay tuned.

[sydnie7]

Got the easy stuff out of the way -- sewed on epaulettes. Used these little faux cuffs that came off ends of sleeves. Many thanks to The F-HCAG (sp?) for her pioneering work in this area!


Used a seam ripper to open up a little of the shoulder seam at top, same width as the epaulette.


Fed the raw end into the gap, measured to same length as the ones on sample PC (4 - 7/8 in.).


Folded epaulette away from jacket and sewed the underside of epaulette to body side of shoulder seam.


Folded epaulette into position and sewed top side of epaulette to sleeve side of shoulder seam. Started and ended with a few close stitches across the gap, to keep shoulder seam from opening up any further.


Et voila! Epaulette!


Buttons will all be sewn on at the end of the project. More to come!

[sydnie7]

Now the real fun part -- the front cutaway. I'd chalked a line based on borrowed PC, then modified it to accommodate the end of lapel's satin edging. Here, I've cut a piece of legal-sized paper to align with the chalk mark and make my pattern.


My pattern represents the finished line I want, so I have to cut outside the pattern for some hem allowance. Here I'm using a seam gauge to cut one inch outside my pattern. Lot of allowance, but it's easier to trim it narrower than to make it wider after cutting


Note that I've only cut the outermost layer of wool at this time -- leaving all the gizzards intact to be dealt with later.


You can't tell in this light, but the pattern is still pinned in place. I've turned the jacket upside down and am folding the hem allowance in, pressing in little bits as I go.


Then I pressed the entire curve from the right side, using a pressing cloth to avoid creating a shiny surface on wool (no pics, really nothing to see there folks).

Here is the first curve pressed into place, next to the uncut side of jacket.

[sydnie7]

Same process for the other side, flipping the paper pattern over to create mirror image. Well, almost mirror -- here's my first try.


I wasn't happy with the little pointy edges along that second curve, so I pressed those areas flat and tried again. Still not as smooth a curve but better, I think.


Now to deal with all those inner layers. First, pockets marked for machine stitching (to shorten them to new length of jacket -- I'm taking 3.5 inches off the bottom hem).


And a pocket stitched and trimmed to its new length.

[sydnie7]

Laid the newly curved, pressed jacket front smoothly down on top of the original layers of lining, hair canvas, etc. Used a ball-point pen to trace the new curve onto the hair canvas.


Then folded the jacket front away from hair canvas so I could start cutting.


I want the hair canvas to lie just inside the curved hem, so I cut slightly inside of the ball-point pen marking line.


Laid the jacket front back down into position and, using the seam gauge, cut the jacket front lining (the wool strip that comes down from lapel) leaving an inch of allowance. This turned out to be too much, so I later trimmed it to about 1/2 inch or so.


Still have a length of seam tape to deal with. I threaded up a needle and basted the seam tape along the new cut edge of hair canvas. Being bias tape, it curves nicely. This is just a loose running stitch, nothing fancy as it will never again see the light of day.

[sydnie7]

Turned up the lapel lining piece and pressed it into place. Notice that my pins are way out of the work area -- they are holding the various jacket layers together, but leave room for work and iron.


Folded, pressed, and trimmed the back, straight edge of jacket. I've opened up the side seams for vents, will make the vents a little deeper in my next steps.


So far I've just hacked off a few inches from bottom of jacket's body lining. Original jacket had a really nice design with some "give" built into the bottom edge of lining, yet secured so it would never droop and show below the outer hem. I'll probably try to recreate some version of that, but first I need to stitch up the front curves -- which means getting away from this computer for a while -- and feeding Bob some dinner.

See you all later!