FINISHING MY COAT TOILE...

Recently I have been having problems with my coat toile as the neck shape didn't match and the lining was to small for the outer shell. So I have spent a couple of days trying to problem solve this by amending the patterns and trying to figure out where I went wrong.I have been able to fit the neck shape by unpicking some of the panels and making the match the correct way. This has enabled me to move onto the next step of inserting the lining by hemming it, attaching the outer shell to the lining, stitching the sleeve openings together and then finishing the bottom hem line. I then finished off this toile by pressing all the seams again and then attaching the elbow patches onto the underarm of the sleeve. Overall, I now know how to solve these problems and I am very pleased with how it has turned out.

CREATING THE CIRCLES FOR THE SHIFT DRESS...

To complete my toile of my shift dress I had to attach the neck and arm facings and the sewn up circles. I positioned these in the same way the spec drawing was done having a total of about 17 circles spiralling down. I constructed these by sewing a circle inside a circle inside another circle. This way I could get a layering effect, over locking the edges to make it appear neater. I used similar fabrics with the calico to see how the machine would take the woven fabric, as flat weave is quite thick and difficult to move. After pinning these in the way I wanted them hand stitched the inner circles to the base of the dress block. I quite like the difference of clean lines from the base and then textile detail that makes the garment more 3 dimensional.