Barbara Deckert Couture

2011-07-04T15:11:00.005-04:00

The Dressmaker's Daughter's Wedding

At Last . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Celebrate!
Wedding gown and veil, bridesmaids' dresses, and tuxedoes by Barbara Deckert Couture
All photos courtesy of Balance Weddings

Here and below are just five of the over 800 stunning images from the wedding. I will post more later when we get them! Many, many people told us that this was the most beautiful wedding they had ever been to. Someone said that with most weddings, there is one thing that is good: it might be the photographs, the flowers, the clothing, or the food; but with Claire & Steve's wedding, everything went perfectly, and I never use that "P" word lightly, without worrying about making the Gods laugh at me.

The weather for the outdoor ceremony was gorgeous; no one stumbled on the brick pathway to the altar; no one got sick; no one flubbed their lines; all the vendors did an outstanding job. In all, the wedding was a celebration of life, perhaps the celebration of a lifetime.

Claire

With the dress bustled after the ceremony, at the demi-lune window in the bridal suite of
The Elkridge Furnace Inn.

I hope readers enjoy these pictures, as they show the results of all the technical steps needed to actually produce the garments that I blogged about in previous posts.

My heartfelt thanks to my son, who made the wedding and groom's cakes, the mini-desserts, and the croquembuche; to the Elkridge Furnace Inn (where both the bride and her brother worked for many years); to the florist for the beautiful flowers; to the craftsman who made the silver, pearl, and blue topaz custom jewelry for the bride, bridesmaids, and myself; to the DJ's who kept the young people dancing all night long, and to Balance Weddings for their light-blessed images.

And now, on with all our lives!

In Anticipation

2011-02-07T13:36:00.000-05:00

The Dressmaker's Daughter's Wedding

The Tuxedos

There is a saying in my family: I will sew menswear for love, but not money!

Making five tuxedos from scratch has surely been a labor of love. Each suit, and a tux is generally just a suit with a contrast lapel and covered buttons, has about 137 pieces of material in it. Times 5, that's 675 pieces of stuff that has been flying around my workroom these last five weeks. The tuxes have taken a total of 122 hours of labor, or about 25 hours per suit and bow tie each, from start to finish. Were I to have made these for money rather than love, they would have cost about $2,000 each.

Originally, the wedding was scheduled for March, so over a year ago I purchased a lightweight black wool gabardine, an inexpensive acetate lining, and to echo the bridesmaids' dresses, a black silk doupioni for the contrast. Duchesse satin or faille is traditional for the contrast, but I wanted to do something a little different, and I have never seen tuxedos made with doupioni. We decided to ditch the cummerbunds, which are weird anyway, and avoid vests, and to just use braces to keep the trousers up. Actually, I have seen pictures of celebrities on red carpet runways who also ditched the cummerbund and vest, and I think it gives a sharp, clean look.

Thank goodness Vogue makes a tux pattern, although the peaked lapels were rounded rather than pointed, which I changed, and of course I completely disregarded the instructions. I have been tailoring since I was about 15, so I have a set of techniques that work for me as long as I remember to use them! They are a combination of old-fashioned hand tailoring techniques that I learned as a teenager, and newer techniques using fusibles. The way I figure, if our ancestors had Armoweft and fusible hymo, they would have been deliriously happy to use them!

Preparation:

To start, I got all the guys measured, over clothing, they were relieved to learn. The groom and groomsmen vary in size wildly, from 5'5" and size 36 short to 6'6" and size 50 X-long, so the first step was to adjust all the patterns and do the cutting, which took a total of 18.5 hours, or about 3.5 hours each. I went through a lot of Scotch tape and drafting paper in order to adjust nearly all of those nearly 300 pattern pieces for every one's unique body lengths. I marked each piece with the wearer's name, color coded to help preserve my sanity, and separated all the pieces into piles for face fabric, lining, Armoweft, fusible hymo, under collar felt, and chest piece felt. I took a lot of Tylenol.

Prepping the Pattern Pieces

The next step was to do all the fusing. Fortunately I have a press, but even so, the fusing took about an hour per suit.

Yes, My Press Head Needs Cleaning!

Then I sorted all the pieces into project bags for each guy. I did not want to end up sewing Brad's sleeve onto Bryan's jacket!

After 8 hours of sewing per suit, I had each tux ready for a fitting. Fortunately, the guys only needed one fitting. The trousers were completed except for a basted center back seam and finishing, and the jacket shell was complete with one sleeve hem basted and the sleeve basted into the armscye with the shoulder pad inserted so that I could check the sleeve length.

Here, the jacket front and side panel is shown, with the welt pockets completed and chest pieces in place.

Finishing

After the fittings, the next step was to complete the trousers. That included sewing the center back seam permanently, hand cross stitching the waistband curtain to the waistband seam, adding suspender buttons to the curtain, sewing on the covered buttons to the back welt pockets, hemming the trousers, and finally, setting the creases on my press. I have to say that mens' trousers are the most over-constructed garments on the planet. Crotch guards?" Pul-eeze.

The Trousers

As I finished the trousers,it felt wonderful to finally complete a garment! Once the trousers were done, I ironed their RTW wing-collared and pleated tuxedo shirts and started finishing the jackets. To start, I sewed the center back and side panel seams permanently and removed the basting. Then I stabilized the neck seam and under arm area by zig-zagging twill tape to the seam lines. I zig-zagged twill tape along the roll line on the interfaced under collar, too, to help prevent the collar from stretching for the life of the garment.

To prepare the collar pieces, I layed the top collar right side down on my ironing board and placed the felt under collar on top, lining up the neck seam lines. I then pressed the upper collar outside seam allowances over the felt under collar, mitering the corners. I carefully separated the two pieces, and basted the seam allowance, trimming about half of it off to finish. This makes the upper collar exactly fit the under collar, and prepares it for hand felling later on. Lastly, to make the under collar take the shape of a neck, I folded it at the roll line, pinned it to a pressing ham, steamed it, and let it dry.

Then I zig-zagged the under collar to the jacket neckline, trimming the seam allowance off and hand catch stitching it to the collar.

Next, I completed the sleeves, including hemming the lower edge, mitering the overlap corners, and hand catch stitching the vent. I then set in the sleeves, and hand sewed in the shoulder pads, which I had thoroughly steamed and shaped on my ham, and finally, hand sewed in the sleeve heads.

Shoulder Pad and Sleeve Head

The jacket shell is completed.

The next step was to complete the lining unit. First, I sewed the facings to the lining fronts and made two inside double welt pockets (I made 30 of these altoghether, and I did not need the practice!) I sew the welts in place by hand, which takes about a half an hour per pocket, but it is idiot proof: my kind of technique! Then I completed the jacket lining and sewed the upper collar to the neck edge, trimming, clipping, and pressing open the seam.

Then I sewed the lining unit to the jacket shell from the lower edge of the facing precisely up to the lapel and collar juncture. I carefully pinned out a "tailor's blister" in the jacket lapel point so the facing material would roll over the jacket front, and I pivoted with a couple of diagonal stitches at the point to keep it sharp.

After careful grading and clipping, I turned the jacket right side out and pressed the edges lightly, favoring the correct sides for above and below the roll line so the facing did not show on the lower edge and the wool did not show on the lapel.

Next, I hand felled the under collar to the top collar. I like to use Silamide for hand sewing. This is a pre-waxed hand sewing thread that comes in basic tailoring colors, and it allows me to sew very fast. I lightly pressed the collar edges from the wrong side.

Hand Felling the Undercollar

Next, I hand sewed the lining to the armscye. Then I sewed the neckline seam from roll line to roll line with a very tiny back stitch to stabilize everything.

Securing the Neck Seam

Then I hemmed the lower edge of the jacket with a cross stitch, and sewed the lining down, forming a jump pleat to allow for movement.

Sewing Down the Lining

Next, I sewed in the sleeve lining by hand with a fell stitch, and sewed the lower lining to the sleeve hem, forming another jump pleat.

Preparing to Sew the Sleeve Lining to the Armscye

Then I made the one corded, machine button hole and sewed on the front and sleeve buttons. I am incapable of making a nice hand embroidered buttonhole, and I have been trying for over 40 years. With cording, the machine buttonhole looks fine to me.

I had the covered buttons made for me, and I used purchased waistband curtain.

After a final press, suit by suit, each tux was completed. Actually, one of the guys is overseas and won't be here until the week before the wedding, so for his suit I worked from measurements and did not get to have the basted fitting. I might need to do some minor alterations, but I am crossing my fingers and toes that I will get lucky.

The Bow Ties

Since the purchased shirts are wing collared, I didn't want to use pre-tied bow ties with a slider, since that hardware would show and look tacky. So, I made tie-your-own bowties for each neck size out of black silk doupioni to match the contrast on the suits, which I think is very cool. Each and every one of the guys thinks that someone else in the wedding party knows how to tie a bow tie, but no one really does! I am going to print out instructions and put them in each garment bag. I learned how to do it, and I will help if I need to.

The guys' names are written in indelible ink on the underside of the "Dry Clean Only" tag so hopefully none of them will be cussing me out if the guy with the 18" neck is trying to wear the tie made for the guy with the 15" neck. All the other garments are labeled with names, too.

Can I go the wedding, too? My outfit is ready!

Lint rollers are going into the garment bags, too. I have been driven mad by trying to remove all the lint and CAT HAIRS that stick to these suits! Trying to sew on black in the dead of winter has tried my patience, too. My eyes aren't getting any younger.

2010-12-30T14:07:00.000-05:00

The Dressmaker's Daughter's Wedding

The Bridesmaids' Dresses

One of the many, many advantages of a bride being a dressmaker's daughter is that she gets to pick any design she wants for her bridesmaids.

Let's face it, most bridesmaids' dresses are hideous. They are cheaply made, ill-fitting, and frankly meant to be worn once under duress and then tossed into a landfill. What a waste. In my business, I seldom make them, since I charge for labor and materials and my prices are not determined by the color of the thread or the intended use for the garment. I am not willing to reduce the quality of the work or to use RTW, factory construction techniques to keep prices dirt cheap, and I could never "compete" with cheap foreign labor even if I wanted to. That said, I did make some expedient adjustments in my usual construction techniques that I would not have done for a paying customer, as I will explain below, but I would wager that no one but someone as fussy as I am would ever notice.

So, my goal was to make my daughter's friends some pretty dresses that would enhance the visual themes of the wedding and make everybody look as beautiful as possible. As usual, the bridesmaids vary in size from very tall and tiny to larger and shorter, with cup sizes from B to F. Fortunately, with custom made dresses, everyone can look their best in nearly any style. Clothing that fits properly enhances the appearance of the wearer. So, the dressmaker's daughter got to pick any style she wanted, without having to worry about what style would look good on each bridesmaid.

The Lanvin Design

This is the design that Claire cut out and pasted to notebook paper for her bridal wish book, who knows how long ago. As usual, my job was to examine the design and interpret it. We decided to nix the crinoline, because I didn't want the bridesmaids to look like walking poof balls. This design shows a gathered circle skirt, which takes many, many yards of fabric, probably silk taffeta, which runs about $40-60/yd. I really, really wanted to be able to adapt a commercial pattern, just to make my life easier. So, I decided to use this one:

The Pattern to Adapt

This pattern is dart rather than princess seam fitted, which is fine, and only needed minor tweaks, such as raising the waistline to the natural waist, conveniently marked on the pattern, and eliminating the collar and using those pattern pieces to make the arm bands. Because I am cheap, I only purchased one pattern. I used the same skirt pieces for each bridesmaid by merely adjusting the gathers as I attached the skirts to the bodices, and I copied and adjusted the only two bodice pieces to fit each bridesmaid's back waist length and cup size.

I found some iridescent silk douppioni from an Internet resource in pale blue for a relatively affordable $15/yd. and ordered 22 yards of it. The dresses needed about six yards each of face fabric, but I can generally squeeze blood out of a turnip, and laying out four dresses at a time usually saves yardage. I found pale blue acetate lining for, get this, $1 a yard. I would normally use China silk, but at least acetate breathes, so it was an economical expedient. I also ordered cotton flannel and crinoline to underline the bodices for smoothness and strength. Douppioni is pretty but fragile, and would shred at the seams in the bodice after just one fitting without a durable underlining. For paying customers, I would underline the skirts in silk organza for body, but again as an economy, and since the full, gathered skirts would take no stress with wear, I skipped this technique.

Please Make me a Dress, Too! I Look Pretty in Blue!

As usual, Cadbury helped me cut the dresses out. I started construction by basting the cotton flannel and crinoline to the bodices and arm bands, and then basting the pieces together. December is a busy month for us all, so it took some finagling to get the girls all here for a fitting. Fortunately, just the bodices really fit for these dresses.

Then after the fittings I sewed the bodice pieces together permanently. I decided to use just four pieces of spiral steel boning in the bodice lining, another economical expediency. For a customer, I would probably have sewn in boning casings to the crinoline layer by hand, or sewn a separate boned corselette, and added a waist stay, but these dresses really just needed a very light bit of vertical support to counteract gravity and a close fit. I attached the lining to the upper bodice edges, sewing down the back arm bands and leaving an opening for the front arm band. Then I understitched the neckline and basted the front arm band in place so I could double check the fit before sewing it permanently by hand after the next fitting. I added hangers to support the weight of the dress and prevent stretching during storage, and to keep the dress on the hanger. Once the bodices were completed, I constructed the skirts and gathered the upper edges; douppioni does not like to gather on the crossgrain, so I had to fight the gathers just a tad.

The Boning Slips In the Casings

Then I inserted the boning in the casings and sewed the open ends closed by hand on the wrong side. I inserted an invisible zipper, taking care to keep the waist seam matched at the center back, added a hook and eye to be covered by the lining when folded down. I then sewed the skirt lining to the waist seam allowance, and finally pinned the bodice lining in place along the zipper and waist seam before sewing it down by hand.

The Lining is Pinned and Ready to Sew By Hand

Next, I added Swarovsky buttons about an inch apart to decorate the center back closure. These are the same buttons on Claire's gown and on my dress. Since everyone's back waist length is different, I needed to adjust the spacing slightly for each dress. The buttons are on shanks so they wobble, but I am trying not to be so "O.C." that I want to position them precisely every time I see them.

A Little Sparkle

Next, I started manufacturing the 16 rosettes that decorate the juncture of the bodice and armbands. I am calling them rosettes because they look like county fair ribbons to me, and yes, in days of yore I won plenty.

First, I made 64 tubes out of rectangles of the douppioni.

The "Bow" Part of the Rosettes

Then I lapped the pinked ends and gathered them with a doubled thread by hand.

I stacked one gathered bow over the other at a 90 degree angle and sewed them together.

Then I made 16 one and an eighth inch covered buttons and sewed them to the middle of the bows.

After a final fitting to pin up the hems, Claire and I decided to make the dresses to the base of the knee cap, since a slightly longer skirt length is more flattering than just above the knee. We also decided that I would put one inch nylon braid in the hems for a bit of flare without the exaggeration of a crinoline. Since these hems were six yards around, I did them by machine, while for a paying customer I would have done them by hand, with a pretty lace to edge the top of the hem allowance on the inside. Lastly, I attached the rosettes to the arm band and bodice juncture by hand.

The bridesmaids' dresses have taken about 12 hours each to make. They will be worn with custom made silver and blue topaz briolette pendants and bracelets, silver shoes of various heel heights and designs, silver sequined evening bags, and pale grey Pashima shawls if it gets chilly.

The princess bride will have princess bridesmaids, yes?

Sneak Peak!

Next Blog:

The Five Tuxedoes

2010-12-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

The Dressmaker's Daughter's Wedding

Making Claire's Gown: Part Two

I want readers to know that I have my daughter's express permission to blog about this process. Claire has assured me that "None of my friends are going to read your blog, Mom." Nor is her fiance. So, hopefully I won't get in any more trouble than usual.

Preparing for the Basted Fitting:

After deconstructing the muslin, the next step was to cut the actual dress, which consists of the lace overdress; silk charmeuse underdress and underlining; the China Silk lining; and the four layers of the foundation (China silk, cotton flannel, and two layers of crinoline), all of which took about three hours. I had barely enough of the charmeuse and just the right amount of the lace, with plenty left to cut motifs for the veil and to store the scraps for the next generation to use for alterations.

I started preparing the dress for the next fitting by reinforcing the outside edges of the sheer lace upper bodice with strips of silk organza selvage, sewing it to the underside by hand. This would help prevent ripping and stretching, and will later be covered up by the scalloped lace edging. Then I basted the silk organza to the charmeuse wrong side for each garment piece of the underdress, and finally, I basted all the pieces together so I could fit them on Claire.

Fitting the Underdress Back

Fitting the Underdress Front

Next, I constructed the foundation, leaving the side seams basted and leaving out the boning until it was fitted. I sewed in the underwires and cups of one of Claire's old bras to the inner layers of the cups, and I fit the foundation on her.

Fitting the Foundation

To the point of this second fitting took another seven and a half hours.

Sewing the Dress Permanently:

Next, I finished constructing the foundation: adding hangers, the waist stay, cutting and tipping the spiral steel boning and inserting it into the sewn channels between the two layers of crinoline, turning down the upper edge and catch stitching it, finishing the lower edge with some pale blue lace, and adding my label.

All my wedding dresses get a sterling silver double horseshoes charm sewn onto the label. In French haute couture, in days of yore anyway, the workroom ladies used to make a horseshoe out of cardboard, cover it with blue tissue paper, and slip it into the hem of a wedding gown for good luck. I substitute a charm, and I always explain it to my brides or they might wonder why I was sewing horsie stuff inside their dress. For this special gown, I added something blue: a large Swarovsky crystal element, called, and I am not making this up, called a "Crazy Heart."

The Completed Foundation, with Hook and Eye Closure, Waist Stay, Hangers, Built-In Bra, and Label.

They Don't Call it a Crazy Heart for Nothing!

Then I sewed the charmeuse underdress permanently, removed all the basting, clipped and finished the seam allowances, and pressed them open. I made very narrow bias tubing out of charmeuse to make button loops for the upper back, and I sewed them to the overlap.

Next, I trimmed all the scalloped edge off of the lace and measured it, ensuring that I had enough to do all the edging that I wanted to do. I then hand sewed some of the scalloped edge to the sheer upper back along the strap, neck, and armscye edges to finish them, and I gathered the lower strap edge in the front where it would attach to the cups.This took another five hours.

Then I sewed the lace overdress, which was an exercise in patience and a gentle hand. Embroidered tulle is fragile, and beaded embroidered tulle can be maddening to work with. If I were a good little dressmaker, I would have carefully removed all beading from the seam allowances and secured it by tying off all loose threads, or gluing them in place, but instead Bad Barbara put a #16 needle in the machine and sewed over the beads, which worked fine for the sequins and bugle beads but NOT for the pearls. If I got stuck, I lifted the presser foot and nudged things along, and I broke many needles and beads, all of which came flying up into my face. There was a flurry of broken beads and cut sequins on my workroom floor.

I used a narrow double stitched seam for the lace pieces. This means that I stitched one row on the seam line, then stitched another line of stitching about one eighth inch into the seam allowance. Then I carefully trimmed away the excess seam allowance close to the second line of stitching. This is durable but not visually distracting. For the godets, I reinforced the upper point with a small circle of silk organza, and trimmed it close to the stitching after the godet was in place.

Then I basted the lace overdress to the charmeuse underdress along the upper edges, and I basted the sheer upper back and strap pieces to the underdress by hand. I completed the lining, and sewed it to the gown right sides together, trimmed and clipped the seam allowances, and turned the gown right side out. I normally would baste the lining to the gown wrong sides together, then turn down the seam allowances on the upper edge and catch stitch them in place in preparation for sewing the gown to the foundation, but something told me that a future bride might want to wear the dress without the foundation, so I sewed the gown with a finished upper edge. Good thing, as I was to find out later, the hard way!

At this point I inserted the invisible zipper, after carefully reinforcing the lace at the end of the zipper opening and then basting the raw edges of the underdress and lace overdress together along the seam lines. Then I sewed on a white hook and eye and slip stitched the lining to the zipper tape.

I sewed Swarovsky crystal buttons to the upper back and along the zipper. The buttons along the zipper are decorative rather than functional. They are on shanks, so they wobble, but I refuse to be offended by the wobbles. Finally, I hand felled the foundation to the upper edge of the gown and added swing tacks at the center back.

Felling the Foundation to the Gown

I then hand sewed more scalloped edging to the gown's upper edge and to the cup seams. Another 14 hours readied the gown for hemming.

In the Bag, Ready to Hem - Or So I Thought

The Meltdown!

I try to be Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and make every bride's fantasy come true, and I try to control the thousands of variables inherent to each gown I make, but sometimes I make mistakes, and then I pay for them.

Claire came over after work for the second fitting, put on the dress and her four inch bejeweled heels, and both of us promptly had a little meltdown. I had made the gown and the foundation a bit snug on purpose since Claire, like every other bride on the planet, was planning to "loose a little weight before the wedding." However, I couldn't get about half of the hooks and eyes on the foundation done up much less zip up the zipper. Worse, the cups looked wonky. They stood away from her torso, forming a gap where the cup attached to the strap.

Now, this didn't have me too worried, because I know that dressmaking is a process, and it is as much an art as a science. I am not God; I don't know everything; I try to always do my best work, but sometimes I try something extra fancy that does not work. When that happens, I try to analyze and fix the problem, one logical step at a time.

Claire, however, despite two and a half decades of living with a dressmaker, did not seem to know this. She stamped her foot (which she has been doing since she was a very small child), scowled, snorted, and declared that she didn't like the way her boobs looked (another common bride thing!); she hated all the blue bows attached to the hangers; she picked at the scalloped edging on the cups under her arm and said the area "looked matronly" and said the underarm line on the cups needed to be lowered, and that the edging felt itchy on her arm. Of course, Claire saw this design line TWICE before and never said she didn't like it. And of course, beaded lace feels itchy. What did she think it would feel like, mink?

I will admit I became a bit weepy. I asked her to take the dress off so I could take out one of the bra cups and see what would happen. I opened up a cup lining dart and surgically extracted one of the bra pieces, had her try on the dress again, but it still looked wrong.

I have made dozens of boned foundations before, all with great success, but I hadn't made one for this particular style of dress. It was a fancy idea that didn't work.

I asked her to take the dress off again and wait, topless, tired, freezing in the cold room and seething, while I attacked it with a seam ripper (the dress, not my daughter!); I removed the foundation completely.

Then I helped her into the dress again. A miracle occurred: without the foundation the dress zipped easily and looked almost perfect; I only needed to pin out a bit of fullness in the cups, changing the dart to a princess seam.

All was well, and I helped her up onto my hemming platform so I could pin up all the hems.

It took another six hours to hem the lining and underdress, and to hand sew about seven and a half yards of scalloped edging to hem the lace overdress.

I removed the boning, waist stay, label, and hook and eye tape from the foundation to use again.The label went back into the lining of the dress, with only one blue bow for the "something blue" and the hangers secured with only two white bows. I nailed the *&*^$!^%$#@!! foundation to my garage wall, to keep me humble, like a white albatross around my neck (as in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner).

The Albatross, Nailed to the Wall

Making the Veil

There wasn't enough of the scalloped edging left to use on the 50 inch long veil, so I suggested using individual lace motifs that I could sew to the edge of the silvery sparkle illusion. I pinned several to a piece of tulle so that Claire could see a sample, which she approved.

To start, I cut hundreds of motifs from scraps of lace. Since all the beading threads were loose, I squirted Fray Check on the backs and left them to dry.

Fray Checking the Loose Threads

Then I cut the rounded edge of the lower veil to shape it. I gathered the upper edge, finished it with a French binding in silk organza, and sewed it to a clear plastic comb. I had a few inches of the scalloped edge to sew over the gathers to cover the leading edge of the comb. Then I started sewing motifs to the edge of the veil, shaping them around the curves, and stopping to cut and Fray Check more motifs as needed.

Shaping the Motifs around Curves

Front and Back of the Edging

I tried to vary the position and selection of the motifs so they would look organic and natural. I added a few extra beads along the way. The veil took seven hours to make.

Redemption

I basted the new princess seam into only one of the cups, bought five sets of sew in bra cups with various degrees of padding, and asked Claire to come back one more time for a quick double check. She brought me one Godiva chocolate that she got free that day at the Mall as a peace offering, which I ate, since I certainly needed chocolate therapy. She also brought her stick-on, "chicken cutlet" style front clasp bra cups to try with the dress.

We spent the next twenty minutes stuffing an assortment of bra cups into the dress and looking at Claire's boobs. Finally, she decided that the chicken cutlets looked best, not the biggest, mind you, but the most natural.

Suddenly, I saw Claire's shoulders relax. She looked into the mirror, running her fingertips down the edge of her veil as her face caught the light, and smiled. The fairy tale, for both of us, came true.

"Are you happy?" I asked, and my daughter replied, "Yes, Mom. I look like a princess."

Finishing

Today, I re-sewed the new princess seams on the cups and cup linings, tacked the lining to the cup seams, understitched the lining upper edge by hand, re-sewed the scalloped edging on the upper bodice in case it came loose as I ripped out the foundation, added beading to the cups for extra blingy boobs, sewed swing tacks to the lower side seams between the underdress and lining, and finally I sewed that blue Crazy Heart back into the dress, where Claire won't see it, but it will still work its magic.

Fifty five and one half hours in, there might be one last fitting in spring in case I need to take the gown in a bit and in case we decide to bustle the train, but stick a fork in it, it's done.

Sneak Peak!

Next Blog: The Bridesmaid's Dresses

2010-11-24T14:43:00.000-05:00

The Dressmaker's Daughter's Wedding

The Wedding Gown - Part One

I don't know that I have ever actually told a customer that I treat all my brides as if they were my own daughter, but I do. Some of them might have found this irritating. My own daughter has informed me that some young women find this approach condescending, but to me, it is just nurturing. I'm a mom; it takes a village; and in my humble opinion a young person cannot have too many mothers, even surrogate ones. I haven't made dozens and dozens of wedding gowns just to make money or satisfy some itchy aesthetic urges; I do it because I enjoy helping others.

Now my own daughter is getting married, and I am helping by making her dress, too. I am not paying for the rest of the wedding; my contribution is about four months of free labor to make all the clothing for the wedding. November is the month to make her gown.

To tell the truth, making her dress feels like another job! I am very, very happy to be making her dress, but I have seen no cherubic angels whispering sewing blessings while hovering over my sewing machine as I work; I am not weeping with joy as I hand stitch the ornamentation; I am simply going through exactly the same set of steps that I go through with my paying customers, and with the same passion to please the bride by understanding what she wants and needs, and by following the same complicated technical process as I do for everyone else's dress.

The Design Process:

The first step, as usual, was the consultation. I met with Claire to get her measured and talk about exactly how she wanted to interpret her intended design.

Lots of people think that "designing" means drawing pretty little pictures, and inventing something new. Most of the time, the basic lines (what you would see if you made a black and white line drawing of a dress) of most garments have all been done before. That said, designing means not just figuring out the lines, but also figuring out colors, textures, proportions, and all the other visual factors that turn an idea of a dress into an actual garment.

Earlier this year, to get ideas, Claire and I went "snoop shopping" at an expensive bridal boutique so that she could try on dresses. She loved an $8,000 designer dress made of unembellished Alencon lace with a silk charmeuse under dress and synthetic lining. This RTW dress had princess seams; shaped Empire waist; fitted cups; wide shaped sheer lace straps, shoulder seams, and sheer upper back fastened with buttons and loops over the shoulder blades; and a very low open back that was bare down to below the waist. There were godets (piece-of-pie shaped pieces) inserted into all the lower areas of the seams of the lace overdress with an extra large and long godet in the center back seam extending into a short train. Since bridal shops don't want you to actually look at the gowns they want to sell you (see "New Reality Show" blog published last summer), we only had a very brief glimpse at the design lines and construction of the sample dress, which was not very sophisticated, in terms of construction, anyway. This heavy dress was supported only by the sheer lace straps with no reinforcement other than a skinny little spaghetti strap running from the top of the front cups to the shoulder seam. The lace over dress's seams were sewn with only a single row of stitching with huge, wide, untrimmed and unfinished seam allowances flopping about. Maybe the assumption was that they would be finished after alterations, but the seam allowances on the godets were huge, too. There was nothing special about how this dress was made, despite the astronomical price!

So, I had my own ideas about how I wanted to construct this design, and my daughter wanted a bit more coverage for the very low and open back. We collected several Internet images of this design (I've seen very similar designs from the late 1930's - early 1940's; nothing new here!) and drew in the seam and other construction lines on the photos.

Then we talked about materials. Claire and I could have gone shopping locally for laces, but we would have paid twice as much as if I ordered something from one of my Internet sources. So, I started emailing her images of various laces. After getting opinions from her bridesmaids, she chose a beautiful soft silver metallic embroidered tulle embellished with beads and sequins, with a double scalloped edge that I could remove and re-applique on the dress's edges. This lace was $100/yard, which is close to a wholesale price for an embellished and embroidered tulle.

I am always a bit nervous about ordering a non-returnable lace from an Internet resource, but really, lace always looks far more gorgeous in the hand as it does in a photo. We were not disappointed when six yards of it arrived! It is blindingly gorgeous. For a girl who claims to hate sequins, there are plenty on this stunningly sparkly lace!

Speaking of sparkly, I happen to have about TWO GROSS of small clear faceted Swarovsky shank buttons left over from a criminal bride who bounced a $2,000 check for a deposit and materials about a decade ago. They were one of the few materials I couldn't return to various vendors. I have used some of them on other bridal gowns, and I used some on my MOB gown, but I have always hoped to use them on Claire's dress. They look like little circles of sunburst! As it happened, I needed buttons to close up the upper back of her gown, and these went perfectly with her sparkley silver lace. I talked her in to letting me put some along the invisible zipper, too, to draw the eye up and down.

We decided to use white silk charmeuse for the under dress, which I ordered from my usual New York resource, and to underline it with silk organza for some non-clingy firmness and to line the gown with China silk.

We also discussed the possibility of mounting the dress on a boned foundation. The fact is that as often as not, you can't wear a bra with a backless dress, especially one with a very low back! So, to hold up the weight of the dress and of Claire, I decided to build a boned foundation with the underwired cups of one of Claire's old bras implanted inside of it.

The Drafting:

The Printed Draft

I used my Auto CAD based drafting software to draft a very basic, princess lined chemise and then flat drafted the design details. First, I entered in her measurements, specified basic lengths, and some of the design features. Then I printed out about 40 legal size pieces of paper. All of these I then taped together, and then I cut out the major pattern pieces.

Cadbury likes to help with the drafting!

Then I drafted the godets using my tape measure like a compass:

Next, I started working on drafting the cups. First, I joined the front and side front pieces along the seam lines and then I rotated the side seam dart to the waist dart. Next, I located the design line for the upper edge of the skirt front and the cups. Then I cut the pieces apart.

Then I established the shape of the upper back pieces and the lower back opening.

I added seam allowances and cut out the paper pattern in muslin.

Next, I transferred all the construction marks to the muslin and stay stitched all the seam lines to prevent distortion during the fitting process. Then I basted the muslin pieces together and put them on a dress form to make sure that they looked like the intended design.

Finally, I fitted the muslin on Claire to check the fit and design.

The fit of the muslin was spot-on! Claire wanted a bit more coverage at the side back, so I adjusted the muslin and changed the seam lines a bit. After marking the few changes and deconstructing the muslin, I was 8 hours in to making her wedding gown.

Next blog: Making the actual dress.

2010-11-15T14:16:00.000-05:00

The Dressmaker's Daughter's Wedding

I have made many, many hundreds of wedding gowns, bridesmaids dresses, and mother of the bride and groom's gowns over the past 23 years of business, but for the next few months I am declining paying work in order to undertake a very special project: I will be making all the apparel for my own daughter's wedding.

That includes my mother of the bride's dress, my daughter's wedding gown and veil, four bridesmaids dresses, and five tuxedos for the groom and groomsmen. I will be writing about the experience here periodically over the next few months, and I will be documenting both the technical process and the human process. I will show process photos and cropped photos of garments, but images of completed garments on the wearers I will share after the wedding!

Sewing is more to me than just cutting and stitching fabric pieces together. When someone sews well for herself, the process of designing a garment, measuring her body, drafting a pattern or adjusting and modifying a commercial pattern, cutting the fabrics, sewing the pieces together, pressing, and fitting produces clothing that embraces her body, enhances her appearance and therefore self esteem, and raises her apparent social status. That's a lot for clothing to achieve, but socially, that's how it functions. Sewing for yourself is the ultimate act of self acceptance and self affirmation: this is who I am; this is what I am; I love myself and will live my full life exactly as I am.

I perform this same dressmaking process for others for a fee; however, it's not just a financial transaction, at least for me. Unlike slapping down your plastic in a store, dressmaking is an intimate exchange between one human being and another. I don't just sew for you. I give you my talents, expertise, and cosmic energy, and that gift helps you feel good about yourself and helps you live your life to the fullest.

When a mother sews for her daughter's wedding, this equation explodes: Expertise X Energy Expended = Emotional Involvement to some Exponential Degree. In other words, the clothes I will make in the next few months may not be the fanciest or the best that I have ever or will ever sew, but they are the most important. They're for my baby girl.

The Mother of the Bride's Dress

I am making all of the clothing in order of least replace-ability, in case I get hit by a truck before the wedding. I am making the garments that I could not buy first and the ones that could be easily replaced by RTW last, so, the order of production will be: my dress, Claire's dress, the BM's, and then the tuxes. I am hoping to complete Claire's dress in November, the BM's in December, and the five tuxes in January and February. My last paying dress went out the door in late October, so I made my dress the last week of the month, around Halloween, which is somehow appropriate.

Any readers who have met me probably know that I am socially gauche and a bit phobic, and that is putting it kindly. The idea of being one of the principal players in a social event with 150 guests including lots of strangers and odds and ends of relatives scares the be-jeebers out of me. I am also a very large person, so I naturally attract attention whether I want it or not, and people look me up and down; that is human nature. So, my attitude in terms of design is, let's give them something to look at!

Nearly a year ago, I scored two ten yard pieces of silk shantung for only $5 a yard, which is a tremendous bargain, thinking that they might work for BM dresses. Since then my daughter decided that she wanted light blue for her maids, and these pieces were navy and a greyish blue color. So, with Claire's blessing, I decided to use them for my outfit.

A while back I used a Victorian design pattern for a bridal skirt for a plus sized bride that looked really, really good on her. I also made a couple of jackets for myself out of a historical pattern for a Victorian Cuirass, modified a bit, that I also liked. No, I would not even think of wearing a Victorian corset with anything, although I do make them.

My original plan was to use both colors of the shantung, in hopes of blending in with all the blues and silvers that Claire is using in her wedding. So, I made the skirt up in the navy shantung and lined it with some blue cotton sateen that I had purchased for the BM dresses and decided not to use. Then I made the jacket up in the greyish blue, underlining in silk organza for some non-clingy firmness and shape, leaving the neckline open so I could pin the ubiquitous corsage on the revers, with a row of closely spaced Swarovski buttons marching up the center front closure and extra fullness in the sleeve cap for a bit of extension across the shoulders. I planned to pull the disparate colors together with a double ruffle made with both colors plus some silver trim down the center, using this combo around the six plus yards of the skirt hem and probably up the center fronts of the jacket on either side of the buttons and around the mandarin collar.

Of course, I did a sample of the ruffle.

It's a good thing I did, because I hated it! Some fabrics don't ruffle very attractively, and this shantung did not look good if ruffled no matter what grain line I cut the samples from; it was just flat and blah looking. Also, I decided I did not like the navy and bluish grey together, and no 8-9 yards of finished ruffles would pull the colors together as successfully as I had envisioned. Cutting about 60 yards of ruffle strips, sewing them together, hemming and gathering them before hand sewing the whole shebang to the garments would take many, many hours of work, and it just didn't look the way I thought it would.

So, back to the design drawing board. Luckily, I liked the untrimmed greyish blue jacket that I had completed at this point and I had LOTS of that fabric left to play with. I could have made a new navy jacket, but the jackets are much more work than the skirts, and I didn't want to do all navy, which would be very dark, for a wedding. So, I decided to cut another skirt in the greyish blue to match the completed jacket. To save a little time, I surgically extracted the sateen lining from the navy skirt to reuse it. I can still wear the navy skirt, although I am not sure where. My daughter called it "very Carolina Herrera," when she saw it, referring to the designer who nearly always wears a dark, long skirt and white blouse at fashion shows. If you see some large woman running through the Costco in Columbia, MD next summer in a very full, long, navy silk shantung skirt, sandals, and a white cotton blouse, it's me.

I also decided to add a bit of crinoline that I had laying around to the new skirt, sewing it to the lining so the net is inside the layers of the skirt and not against my skin. It rustles, I hope attractively and not annoyingly. I have never worn a dress with a crinoline before, but my theory is that the bigger the dress looks, the smaller I will look in comparison! That's also why I put sleeve heads in the jacket to support the puffed leg-o-mutton sleeves! I was thinking of using the 10 yards of silver trim that I had purchased on the new skirt, but I decided that the beautiful fabric, the shape of the two pieces, and the row of Swarovski buttons down the front were plenty. I am going to be channeling my inner Vicky in this dress, and I hope will look large and in charge.

Sneak Peek!

Next blog: The Wedding Gown!

2010-11-04T15:04:00.000-04:00

Inside a Couture Gown

For a military ball, the Colonel's wife
looks elegant, feminine, and dignified in iridescent blue silk taffeta.

In the Ready- To-Wear world, shopping for an evening gown that fits and has sleeves can be an exercise in frustration and humiliation.

With a custom made gown, you get exactly the dress that you want and need, with friendly, warm, supportive service.

There's more to a hand made gown than just what you see on the outside.

With custom, you get much better construction techniques than in RTW, and those techniques make the garment attractive and wearable. Like the engine in a car, what's in the inside of a garment is what really makes it run.

For example, couture gowns are usually underlined, often with silk organza. The term refers to the process of adding an extra layer of fabric to the inside of each garment piece and treating the "sandwich" as if it were one piece of material. Underlining supports the intended architecture of the garment, helps prevent seam slippage (that fraying and shredding along seam lines in closely fitted garments), and it conceals inner construction details such as seam allowances and dart folds. It adds opacity for light colored garments, and it substitutes for a lining. Note that typically RTW garments use linings rather than underlinings because the construction to make them is cheaper. However, linings can often cause distortion on the outside of the garment, so except for outerwear, they are seldom used in couture clothing.

Lots of little touches of hand work distinguish the inside of a couture garment.

The inside of the waistband is sewn down by hand with a tiny pick stitch.

The end of the zipper is bound to prevent poking.

The hem is supported by two inch wide nylon braid for a beautiful flare, and the hand hem stitches go through the organza only, so no stitches show on the right side of the skirt.

Simple on the outside and complex on the inside: jacket seam allowances are clipped to allow the curved shape of the garment pieces to conform to the curves of the body, finished to prevent raveling, and pressed open to reduce bulk and enhance the drape of the garment (no 1/4" serger seams!); facings are lined for a smooth finish and tacked by hand to stay in place; two layers of narrow nylon braid supports the shape of the bust curve in the front princess seams.

The armscye is hand bound in organza for comfort.

Sturdy snaps on the underlap hold the jacket closed, hand covered in matching taffeta.

And on the underlap.

Hem lace for a bit of pretty.

Each piece is signed and dated, and made in the USA!

The next time you go shopping and you can't find what you want, look inside the RTW garments and you'll realize how little you get!

For quality construction and fabrication, contact Barbara Deckert Couture!

2010-09-05T12:48:00.000-04:00

Runway Version

New Reality Show!

The Wedding Dress Detective

Recently I have met with several brides who wanted copies of expensive, designer wedding gowns. In one such case, the bride was in love with a dress that cost about $7,500 according to the designer's website, and she referred me to photos of the dress on that site. She told me that she had tried on "the dress" at two bridal shops, one in New York and one in Chicago, and that "the dress" cost between $2,000-3,000, which she thought was the "discounted price." Of course, these samples did not fit her at all. She surreptitiously snapped photos and even took video of each of these dresses when the salesperson wasn't looking.

Bridal Shop Version

As I examined the designer's website images and the bride's snapshots, I found significant differences in the designs. The dress on the designer's website had numerous lace appliques sewn on so that they looked 3-dimensional on the bodice cups, and the lower skirt back was very, very full at the hem, a look that because of standard fabric widths, could only have been achieved by using circular shaped pieces for the lower skirt that were seamed to the upper skirt.

On the two dresses the bride tried on, the satin fabric looked different from the original, and each of the dresses that she tired on had a slightly different looking lace. The bride said there was a waist stay on one bodice but not on the other. The appliques on the bodice cups both looked different from the designer dress, flat rather than 3-dimensional, and they looked different on each of the try-on dresses. Even the shape of the cups looked different on all three dresses. Most importantly, the lower hem of the skirts was far less full and the pleating less deep up the side seams on each dress that she tried on as compared to the designer's runway dress.

At first, and this is what I told her during our consultation, I thought that maybe when the dress went into factory production it was modified to enhance profits: less labor on the appliques, maybe a cheaper lace, and less fabric and labor for the skirt. This often happens, thus the expression "runway look," meaning a design that is more exaggerated than the version sold as ready-to-wear.

Then later, Barbara the Wedding Dress Detective thought about these three dresses a bit more, and I realized that the two dresses that the bride tried on were probably knock offs! No wonder they didn't look as nice and were far cheaper!

Unfortunately, the bride thought they were all the same dress. She wanted an estimate from me, probably not because she wanted quality workmanship and custom fit, but because she thought she could get "the dress" cheaper. The problem is, she was looking not at "the dress," but three different dresses. She was comparing an apple and an orange and maybe a banana.

Barbara Deckert Couture Version

Silk Duchesse Satin Skirt with Attached Crinoline,
Chantilly Lace Bustier with Hand Sewn 3-D floral Appliques,
and Chantilly Lace Shrug with 3-D Floral Appliques and Hand Appliqued Scalloped Edges

So, does Miss Barbara also sew "knock offs?" Yes, and no.

No:

The word "knockoff" usually refers to a cheap, poorly made copy of a dress. For example, if you Google a particular designer gown by style number you can easily find Chinese websites that illegally steal the designer's runway and website photos of very expensive dresses in order to market "copies" that cost about $300. On these numerous sites, there are no images of their actual products, which I am sure would look like white plastic trash bags. They would probably not even vaguely resemble the original, would be made with cheap materials and shoddy construction, and would not fit. These are factory made dresses. You get what you pay for.

Also, it is a dirty little industry secret that sometimes even brick and mortar bridal shops in this country often show brides a designer sample, or they even show them a knock off in the store as the sample when the bride shows them a photo of the runway dress. Then the bride orders the dress, and the bridal shop hires a workroom overseas to knock off a cheaper copy. The dress is sold with no labels or fake labels, the shop enhances its profits, and the bride doesn't know any different. This is not what I do!

Yes:

I often make copies of garments, but they are "after the fashion of," and I never pretend that the resulting garment is of someone else's making. My labels go on all my work, not someone else's fake label or no label. My workmanship is the same as that of a designer's workroom.

I always ask that customers bring me visuals of what they like, as a way of communicating clearly. Even when a customer requests a line for line copy, I explain that when we use different fabrics and trims, different colors, and different construction techniques, the resulting garment will look similar to but not exactly the same as the picture.

Matching Bubble Skirt for the Reception!

Copying garments is completely legal in the U.S., since garment designs are not proprietary, that is, they are not protected by copyrights or patent laws. A sleeve is a sleeve is a sleeve, and there are a finite number of ways to wrap fabric around an arm. Really, there are no new designs under the sun: it has all been done before, and all designers copy and build upon the work of other designers who have gone before them.

In addition, I frequently suggest design variations to enhance the look of the garment and make it truly unique. Some design changes are mandatory. For example, I don't embroider, but lace or embroidered sheer overlays give a similar visual effect as embroidered fabrics, and that substitution changes the design. Or, an unusual looking lace on an original may not be available, but another lace would be just as beautiful and would make the design uniquely yours.

So, if I copy an expensive dress design for you will you "save money?" Not always, but you will get a better dress: better fabrics, better construction, and better fit.

On the other hand, a custom made dress does cut out the middlemen who all get a slice of the profit pie. Normally, I can make a copy of an expensive dress for far less than the designer price. However, it is unlikely that I can copy an inexpensive, factory dress made with cheap overseas labor for less than the retail price. Until we meet for a consultation and work out all the details, I can't really know for sure, so let's meet and I will plug in the numbers and then you can make an informed decision.

Snoop Shopping for Wedding Gowns With My Daughter

My daughter, who is also a bride, and I recently went "snoop shopping" at a local upscale bridal boutique. Among the many, many hundreds of gowns ranging in price up to $8,000, not one had any labels inside them. No designer labels, no fiber content labels, and no cleaning labels. Now, federal laws require all textiles to be labeled with fiber content by percentage and country of origin; I guess bridal shops didn't get the memo. Apparently, no labels in wedding gowns is the norm in bridal shops in this country. Also, although we asked to only see dresses made of silk, each and every one of the dresses we were shown were silk on the outside and all synthetics in the many inner layers.

Also, in this shop, the designer dresses carried the name of the dress, such as "Magical," on the store's hangtags, but they did NOT specify the name of the designer, such as "Monique L'Hullier." Now, why is that? If they were really selling a designer's dress, why wouldn't they want their customers to know it? People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing.

Notes on Famous Labels from an Alterationist:

A dressmaker friend recently altered a Vera Wang gown purchased at Filene's Basement's annual "Running of the Brides" sale. First, the supposedly $5,500 dress was filthy and showed obvious signs of wear. The label stated that the lace was 100% cotton, which was probably correct. Also, the label stated that the organza was made of silk. However, there was no organza in the dress, at all! There were five layers of fabric, and she worked on every one of those layers, but there was not a scrap of organza anywhere! The fabric underneath the lace was polyester duchesse satin, two layers, and there was a lining and slip layer, both also polyester. The label did not specify the fiber content of these four layers underneath the lace. Completely contrary to what the famous label claimed, there was not a fiber of silk in the gown at all!

Brides, beware!

Even when wedding gowns have labels, they may be misleading or contain outright lies!

More on labels, from the Federal Trade Commission:

The FTC specifies that all wedding gowns, including samples have either sewn in or hangtag labels with the following information: (1) the identity of any one business in the distribution channel, such as the manufacturer, retail store, or distributor; (2) The garment's fiber content by percentages of weight; (3) The country of origin; gowns can be labeled "Made in the USA" only if the materials are also made in the US; otherwise, the label must say "Made in the US of Imported Materials;" (4) care instructions. If a shop removes a tag, it must replace it according to the laws stated above, and it must keep records for 3 years regarding the removal. Violations can result in a $16,000 fine PER VIOLATION! If these laws were enforced, that's $16 grand X a ba-jillion unlabeled wedding gowns in this country = a tidy chunk of revenue for our country!

So, every unlabeled dress in this shop that my daughter and I visited could have been a knock-off, and no bride would be the wiser.

Note that designer dresses in the $7,000 - 10,000 range are usually made in workrooms, by a team of 5-10 highly skilled sewing professionals who use high end, labor intensive, construction techniques with lots of hand work. Most dresses costing $5,000 and less are made in a factory by less skilled machine operators using ready-to-wear construction techniques with little or no hand work.

My advice to brides: when you comparison shop, be wary of comparing prices on dresses because you may not be comparing the same dresses! Be a Wedding Dress Detective, too! Educate yourself as much as you can regarding fit, fabrics and construction techniques, which is what you actually drag down the aisle and what everyone sees, not the two inch square designer label, which could be fake.

2010-02-20T13:53:00.000-05:00

Getting a Green Gown

Photo courtesy of http://www.balanceweddings.com as modeled by Jeanette, hair and makeup by Aveda, at the Green Wedding Showcase http://www.greenweddingshowcase.com/ .

Are you an eco-conscious bride? Plan your wedding to be as green as possble. Few ready-to-wear gowns are really eco-conscious. Where are they manufactured, and how are the gowns shipped here? What are they made of, inside and out? Often, wedding gowns made of plastic polyester are shipped from the far side of the planet using even more fossel fuels, and even dresses that are made of natural fibers on the outside use cheaper synthetic materials on the inside.

With a custom made green gown, you have better choices.

Locally made with high quality craftsmanship.
Your choice of materials such as breathable, compostable, natural fibers like silk, cotton, linen, wool; organically grown fabrics and trims; or peace silks, made without killing the silkworm.
Custom design means that the dress expresses your taste and values, not anyone else's.
Custom dressmaking gives you expert advice, personal attention, nurture rather than stress.

All photos courtesy of http://www.balanceweddings.com/

The Process:

Meet for a consultation: bring your photos, sketches, and ideas, and we'll put together a gorgeous design for your dream gown.

Get measured

Muslin fitting

Final fitting: pinning up the hem.

Add more pretty stuff.

The result: an eco-conscious, one of a kind gown.

Photos courtesy of www.balanceweddings.com

as modeled by Jeanette, hair and makeup by Aveda, at the Green Wedding Showcase

2009-12-05T16:00:00.000-05:00

Are You Boobalicious?

If your bra cup size is anything more than a B, then ready-to-wear (RTW) clothing made of woven fabrics will not fit.

T-shirts, sweaters, and other garments made from knitted fabrics will stretch to cover the subject, but most women who are amply endowed like to wear clothes made of woven fabrics, and they like to wear clothes that are fitted to their figures. In earlier decades, women almost always wore very fitted clothing, like the costumes on the television show Mad Men. Nowadays, most of the clothes that we wear are looser by design, but for formal attire, like wedding gowns, a close and precise fit is essential.

Most women know their correct bra cup size, but did you know that clothes have a cup size, too? They have to. A bra has to fit your breast size, and fitted clothes have to fit correctly over that bra.

Most clothing sold today is drafted to fit a B cup. Most commercial sewing patterns are also drafted to fit a B cup. If you are a C,D, E, F, G, H or I cup, you are out of luck when it comes to RTW. There are important reasons for this shortcoming.

Drafting is the process of drawing the complicated shapes of the pieces of cloth that make up the clothes that we wear. Some garments only have 3-4 pieces of fabric in them, such as a tank top, which might have a front, back, and maybe a neck and armscye (armhole) binding. Other garments can have 40 or more pieces of fabric in them, such as a menswear-styled tailored jacket or a woman's wedding gown. When the shapes of these pieces are drafted, each of the individual pieces must be the right length, width, and shape to fit the various parts of the wearer's body; each of them must fit together precisely; and each of them must comprise the intended design of the garment after they are sewn together. That's complicated!

Drafting garments is a very technical process. There are generally two approaches to figuring out what size and shape to make the pieces that make up a garment.

One is draping. With this method, pieces of inexpensive fabric, usually muslin, are layed over a dressform that has the intended design lines, such as seam lines, neck lines, and so on marked on it with black tape so the draper can see the lines through the muslin. While paying very carefull attention to grainlines (the direction of the weave of the fabric), the draper uses her hands to "sculpt" the fabric into the intended design, pinning and cutting as needed. When the drape is completed, the right and left sides are trued, or adjusted, construction lines are marked, and seam allowances are added so that the garment can be cut and sewn. Draping works well, especially for some types of garments, but in the RTW industry the draping is nearly always done on a standardized dressform that is tall, thin, and has a B cup size. Sometimes draping is done on an actual figure, but in RTW, that figure is always about the same as a commercial dressform: no G cups to be found in industry.

The second method is flat drafting. There are hundreds of hand drafting systems around that use paper, pencil, rulers, compass and other tools much as an architect would draw a blueprint, using the basic principles of geometry. Nowadays, drafting is nearly always done by computer using Auto-CAD programs. After the first pattern drape or draft is completed, all the pattern pieces for a garment are enlarged in length and width to make larger garment sizes using a process called grading. The grading process assumes that everyone gets proportionally and regularly taller as they get bigger around (we wish), and it assumes that no one has any figure variations, in other words, that we look like standardized dressforms.

When fitting women's busts (the polite and professional term for "the girls"), this process gets even more complicated. Breasts vary tremendously in size, shape, and position on the torso. As anyone who has tried to follow those little measurement charts in lingerie catalogues to order a bra can tell you, there is much more to cup size than numbers.

Cup size is really a kind of short-hand way of describing the difference in circumferences around the torso from the chest above the bust, to the fullest part of the bust, to the torso just below the bust. Cup size also describes the volume of the breasts.

To explain this geometrically, the base of a breast is basically a circle. Imagine two circles drawn on your chest where your breasts are. The size of these circles varies tremendously with the size of the woman. For a tiny woman, that circle might have a diameter of 5 inches, while a large woman's breasts might be represented by a circle that is 10 inches in diameter. If you remove a segment, (think of taking a slice out of a pie) from this imaginary circle, and then you bring the cut edges together, you get a cone shape, which looks like a breast! If you take out a relatively smaller segment, the cone on its base will not be very high. If you take a larger slice, the resulting cone shape will sit up much higher. The larger segment or slice corresponds to a larger cup size. Both the size of the circle and the size of the segment vary with body and breast size, and they need to vary with garment size and cup size to fit each body.

Those pie shaped segments are like darts in fitted garments. Darts are those triangular or diamond shaped folds that are stitched down inside a garment to fit the bust, as well as other areas of a body. The size of these darts must correspond to the cup size of the wearer or the garment will not fit correctly. The position of the darts on a garment must also correspond to the position of the bust on the torso.

Even more complicated, many garments are not fitted only with darts, but with dart equivalents, such as gathers, pleats, tucks, shaped seams such as princess seams, yokes, and so on. The fit for the bust can be hidden in numerous design details.

Because RTW is mass marketed, profit is far more important than fit. That is why RTW doesn't even bother to tackle the cup size issue, and consumers just buy what they can find.

Alterations can help, but if you are boobalicious, you need custom clothing that has been adjusted to fit your cup size, or you need to adjust patterns for cup size if you sew for yourself. My first book, Sewing for Plus Sizes, shows you how.

More later on how to judge good fit.

2009-11-25T16:09:00.000-05:00

Why Kelly Can't Find Clothes that Fit

After three plus years, I have finally fixed the RSS feed on my website, and I can blog again!

I occasionally receive emails from readers of my book, and I am always pleasantly gobsmacked that someone has taken the time and trouble to track me down, generally to thank me.

The email from Kelly H. that I received today said:

"So often I think it is ME that is shaped wrong or that I'm too fat for clothes to fit comfortably and look nice. I don't hate my body, in fact, I think I am beautiful. But I also don't feel I've found clothes that express me in any way."

Well, Kelly, you are not alone and there are good reasons why you can't find attractive ready-to-wear (RTW) clothes that fit. Learning to sew well or using a dressmaker is one of the best investments that you can make towards your happiness and self-esteem.

The best kept secret in the fashion world is that RTW is not really RTW. Most purchased clothing does not fit anyone well, because it is made to fit dress forms instead of real people. Dress forms are usually thin-ish, even in plus sizes, and they are very uniformly proportioned. There are no G cups, love handles, hanging bellies, hyperextended calves, or ANY of the more than 80+ nameable figure variations on standardized industry dress forms. No dress form assumes that people can be 4'5" or 6'2", either.

"Designers," if they ever fit anyone at all, use these very regular dress forms, or in high end lines they might use a fit model, who is a woman whose measurements match their intended market, in other words, her measurements are close to their ideal: no prominent backsides or hump backs to found on these ladies! The average consumer, however, and especially the plus size consumer, has plenty of figure variations! Of those 80-some nameable variations from the ideal, I have over 40!!!!

Most perfectly normal consumers have dozens of figure variations, and that number increases with body size and age! It's completely normal to have these figure variations (don't anyone dare call them "flaws!")

It's so freaky to NOT have figure variations that some women can make a living just because they have figures that look like dress forms: we call them "models."

This is one of the many reasons why nothing that anyone buys will fit properly, off the rack. Some people might sometimes get lucky. Some people aren't too fussy about how their clothes fit, and most consumers wouldn't know how to recognize good fit if it bit them. Knits will stretch to at least cover any shape of body, but not attractively!

More later on the consequences of ill-fitting RTW, and some solutions.

2006-12-31T12:07:00.000-05:00

Bad Barbara Burns a Book, and Why

I have never in my life burned a book before today, but in the spirit of New Year's resolutions, I have one roasting on my barbecue right now, and a tasty morsel it is, indeed.Smoldering in my Weber yet no longer in my heart lies a tale that needs telling.

In addition to being a custom dressmaker I am also the author of two books on sewing. One of my jobs as an author is to flog my books relentlessly for as long as they remain in print, in order to continue to earn the approximately $1 per book sale that eventually ends up in my pocket. I have frequently received telephone calls and emails over the past seven years from reviewers, journalists, and writers of various other stripes with questions regarding my books or about the sewing work that I do. Since there is ordinarily honor among thieves, I had never been concerned that these writers might fail to credit me or my book with whatever information I gladly gave them in the dozen or so interviews that I have given. And indeed, these professionals credited me properly; I helped them get their piece written; and I flogged my books dutifully. This is how the system is supposed to work.

On March 23, 2004 I received a telephone call from someone who identified herself as Alexandra Benwell from the Richmond, Virginia area at (804) 222-2165, who had been referred to me by the administrator of my professional association. Benwell stated that she was doing research for a chapter on clothing and appearance for a book called Five Minute Fixes to be published by Reader's Digest. Benwell stated emphatically that my book, Sewing 911: Practical and Creative Rescues for Sewing Emergencies, would be given textual or bibliographic credit to me and to my professional association. Such credits are routine, where there is honor among thieves.

So in the spirit of helpfulness and in order to promote my book, I spoke with Benwell by telephone again on April 1, 2005 (should have told me something, yes?) regarding sections of Sewing 911 regarding oil spots on clothes, water spots, scorch marks, press marks, and similar concerns. As we spoke, I took careful and extensive notes in my telephone log. Once again, I requested that she and the author, Jeff Bredenberg (whose name appears only on the next-to-the-last page of the book; how telling), credit me appropriately. Benwell stated that Five Minute Fixes would refer to me as "Barbara Deckert, author of Sewing 911 and member of PACC." I gave her my mailing address and asked for a courtesy copy of the book to be mailed to me on publication, also routine.

Benwell called again three days later with more questions on handling pet hair on clothes and with questions on gaping necklines. Over the next month or so, she called again and repeatedly asked confused-sounding questions, to the point of being a pest. A professional interviewer contacts an author only once, not a half a dozen times, and does not act as if she is a high school girl who is trying to con you into doing her homework for her.I began to worry about the situation but chose to think the best, as I usually do.

A year sped by. In early January 2005 I had not received the promised courtesy copy. I found the book on Amazon and bought a used copy.

I was appalled but not surprised to find that the bulk of Part Five, "Clothing and Appearance" had been plagiarized from Sewing 911 without any reference, citation, or acknowledgment to me or my book.

Here are some examples of the plagiarized sections: (NOTE: I am unable to copy and paste the following with the original charted format, so I have labeled each quote from the two books below and I hope readers can follow along.)

Incidents of Copyright Violation in Reader Digest's Five Minute Fixes (Reader's Digest 2005) from Sewing 911: Practical and Creative Rescues for Sewing Emergencies by Barbara Deckert (Taunton, 2001) and Telephone Conversations

Theirs: p. 255, "Getting Rid of Pet Hair Pronto. . . . Lightly mist your hair-covered garment with water from a spray bottle. Then put the garment in the dryer with a damp towel . . . .tumble dry. . ." Talked about removing pet hair using this method in telephone conversation on 4/05/04 See telephone log notes.

Theirs: pp. 255-256, "My dress's neckline keeps gaping open. Keep it in place with toupee tape. . . .Double-sided toupee tape will come to your rescue. Products such as Vapon Topstick will adhere to your skin and the garment . . .The tape comes in segments about 2 inches. . . long. . .Look for it in beauty aid supply shops." Telephone conversation on 4/05/04. I read her the brand name and dimensions as we spoke from a box in my desk drawer. See telephone log notes.

Theirs: p. 259, "I have small pinholes in my garment. Dampen, rub, and iron the holes.. . .To close such holes, wet your fingertip and use your fingernail to gently move the weave closer together. Or dampen the fabric around the holes with a small wet paintbrush. Then ironing with a press cloth should close the weave." Mine: p.118, "For pinholes. . . For washable fabrics, moisten your fingertip and use your fingernail to gently rub out the holes. . . . Paint the holes sparingly with water using a tiny paintbrush, then cover with a press cloth and press." (NOTE the paintbrush method is proprietary.)

Theirs: p. 259, "I have a snag in my sweater. Pull the snag through to the inside. . . A needle and thread will do the trick. Put the eye-end of a threaded needle through the fabric from the inside. Wrap the thread on the end of the needle around the snag and pull the needle and thread and the attached snag to the inside of the garment. Don't clip the little loop -that would cause a hole. Mine: p. 120, "Insert the threaded, eye end of a needle from the wrong side of the garment through the base of the snag. Manipulate the snag into the loop formed by the eye end of the needle and the thread, then grasp both the needle and thread underneath, and pull the snag to the wrong side." (From an earlier paragraph on the same page about snags:) "Do not clip them, or you may end up with holes." (NOTE: the needle and thread method is proprietary.)

Theirs p.260, "My sweaters are looking fuzzy. . . . brush the fabric gently with a piece of extra-fine sandpaper. Mine: p. 141, "Use it (fine sandpaper) to remove pills from fuzzy fabrics. . . ."

Theirs: p. 260, "The buttons keep getting pulled off my sweater. Add a second button inside . . . .sew a small clear button on the back of the fabric. . . . Line up the holes on both buttons and stitch right through from bottom to top and back again." Mine: pp. 135-136, "Backer buttons are perfectly plain, typically clear plastic buttons. . . . . help strengthen and stabilize large buttons that take a great deal of stress on thick or easily torn materials. . ." (Process paragraph and illustration follows).

Theirs: p. 261, "I have a pull in my skirt. . . . the threads bunch up in an ugly line. . . Stroke the material with your fingernail. This will pull the thread back into position." Mine, p. 120, "Pulls on woven fabrics occur when one thread gets caught on something and forms what looks like a line across the fabric. You can often stroke them out with a fingernail."

Theirs: p.261, "The crease in my pants is gone. Press in fusible thread. . . . . Place a long length of the thread in the crease, on the inside of the fabric. Then press over the crease with an iron. The thread melts onto the fabric, creating a permanent crease. Getting a straight crease is tricky. . ." Mine: pp.60-61, "Cut a length of fusible thread. . . Slip the fusible inside the crease, and position it right on the crease line. This will require some touchy-feely fiddling. When you have it as close as possible to the inside of the crease line, press it in place." (NOTE: this method is proprietary.)

Theirs: pp.265-266, "I've struck oil, but it's on my clothing. . . . Cover the remaining spot with an absorbent powder. After about 30 minutes, brush the spot. . . . Coat the spot with a clear degreasing dish detergent . . . ." Mine: p. 116, "Sprinkle the (powdered) chalk over the oil spot, allow it to sit a while, and brush away the chalk. . . . I have had excellent results using a dishwashing detergent that is advertised to 'break up grease on contact!'" My suggestion to use Dawn in this manner is proprietary) Also discussed spot cleaning techniques during telephone conversation of 4/1/04; see notes.

Theirs: p. 266, "I have water spots on my dress. Dampen the area and press. . . . . The water didn't cause the mark. Rather, it's something in the fabric, such as dust, dirt, body oils, or even fabric softener. . . . Put an absorbent rag, such as an old gauze diaper or an artificial chamois, over the mark. Spray this covering material with a fine mist of water from a spray bottle until the material is damp. . . . Press the covering material . . . . The extra moisture will often disburse the ring, while the heat from the iron dries the sprayed area. Alternative: Dampen a small artist's paintbrush, lightly brush over the water spot, and use a pressing cloth to iron over the spot." Mine: p. 118, "Place an absorbent press cloth, such as an old gauze diaper, an artificial chamois . . . over the spot. Spray the press cloth with a fine mist from a utility sprayer and press. The extra moisture will often disburse the ring. . . . Paint the holes sparingly with water using a tiny paintbrush, then cover with a press cloth and press." (NOTE: use of a gauze diaper, artificial chamois, and paintbrush are all proprietary.) Also explained the causes of water spots and treatments during telephone conversation on 4/1/04; see notes. See also quote below from p.121 regarding causes of let down lines: RD author has confused causes of water spots with causes of letdown lines.

Theirs: p. 268, "I lengthened my dress, but the old hem's crease still shows. Dampen with vinegar solution and iron. . . . . Sponge the crease with equal parts of white vinegar and water and then iron. . . . If there's a mark, as opposed to a crease, where the original hem was, use a spot remover to erase it. Or hide the mark by adding a decorative row of trim." Mine: p.121, "Use a water and white vinegar spray as described on p. 114. . . . Launder or dry-clean the entire garment or spot clean it. Be sure to pre-treat the letdown line and press after laundering. Since letdown lines are often more of an accumulation of body oils, fuzz, and debris than just a crease, sometimes laundering alone will do the trick. . . . . If all else fails, cover the line with trim. . . ." (also on p.144: described use of water/vinegar solution to set and remove creases.)

Theirs: p. 269, "I scorched my favorite dress with the iron. Use peroxide on thin fabric. . . . place the garment on a folded white towel. Then mix a 50-50 solution of hydrogen peroxide and water and pour it on the mark. Leave the solution on for several minutes; then blot with a clean towel." Mine: p. 112, "For woolens, you can also try a solution of one-half hydrogen peroxide and one-half water on the scorch. . . ." (This method for woolens is proprietary.) I discussed spot cleaning techniques, fiber contents, and bleach agents on pp. 116, in back matter, and during several telephone conversations.

Theirs: p. 269, "Use sandpaper on thick wool. . . . . On a thick, fuzzy wool fabric, . . . use extra-fine sandpaper. Very lightly abrade the surface of the scorched fiber until you see undamaged fabric beneath the surface." Mine: p. 112, "Sand it. Use fine sandpaper. If a scorch is on a thick and fuzzy woolen, you can sometimes use fine sandpaper to lightly and carefully abrade the upper layers of scorched fibers away to reveal undamaged fabric underneath." (This use of sandpaper is proprietary.)

Theirs: p. 269, "My iron left unwanted lines on my clothing. Press them out. You went a little heavy on the ironing, and one of your favorite garments now has ridge lines and smashed-looking fibers or unwanted creases. . . . Place a press cloth over the area and see whether the heat of the iron will fix the problem. The press cloth can be a white tea towel, anything made of muslin, or an old diaper.. . . try steam. Don't put the iron right on the cloth, though. Hold the iron just above the fabric and let the steam spray. Then use your fingers or a brush to fluff the area. . . . Try misting the press cloth with water, then pressing.. . . . Mist the press cloth with a half-and-half solution of water and white vinegar; then press . . . ." Mine: pp. 113-114, "When press marks happen. Overly enthusiastic pressing will leave ridge lines, smashed-looking threads and fibers, and other unwanted creases and marks on garments. . . . . Use steam only and brush the area with your fingers or a clothes brush. The steam will fluff up the area and usually eliminate the marks. . . . Using water in a utility sprayer, dampen the area, gently massage it with your fingers, and lightly re-press. . . . You can also try spraying the crease with one-half white vinegar and one-half water. . . and pressing." (See reference to old diaper, p. 118) Also discussed during telephone conversation on 4/1/04.

As you can see from the examples above the plagiarism is flagrant, of the sort that would get any college freshman in a Composition 101 class flunked fast and hard. Unfortunately, however, plagiarism is not illegal. It is immoral, lazy, unprofessional, and utterly reprehensible, but it is not illegal.

According to my publisher, it would have cost $100,000 just to walk into a courtroom to sue Readers Digest for copyright infringement, and subsequent research on my part has taught me that even if I did take them to court I probably would not win. Copyright violations are difficult to prove, and corporations like Readers Digest know it. This is why they make millions from kindling like Five Minute Fixes; plagiarizing my book and no doubt plagiarizing dozens or even hundreds of other authors whom the "research assistant" interviewed is like swatting a fly, a very minor inconvenience.

Now, there is a very slight possibility that either the research assistant or the author requested a standard citation and it was nixed by Readers Digest, but I doubt it. A letter from Reader's Digest's attorney to me said that Benwell denied promising me any citation, so either Benwell lied to Reader's Digest's attorney regarding her promises to me or the attorney lied to me about what she said to him. Those lies aside, plagiarism is plagiarism, and it is easily and routinely avoided by competant and respectable researchers, authors, and publishers by merely citing sources. The author has never contacted me. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. It is part of a crass coorporate ploy to enhance profits.

Someone once said that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, but I don't feel flattered; I feel had. Chumphood is the price authors pay for being in the public eye, and I have hereby paid in full. So be it. The book is burning on the barbie; the year is new; and I am looking forward to better days.

blackjack strategy

2006-08-26T12:32:00.000-04:00

Project Runway: When Fashion is a Hate Crime

Abject fat phobia and bigotry was clearly demonstrated by Project Runway over the last two episodes. Two weeks ago, a contestant was eliminated after judges complained that her paper dress made her model look plus sized. Mentor Tim Gunn asked the designer if her model was "bigger" to start with, which is to say that being bigger than a broomstick is a handicap in the fashion world. More hatefully, host Heidi Klum chided that the model looked like a "fat Mini Mouse" in her dress.

In this week's show, contestants were challenged to make an outfit "for the everyday woman." The models for the garments were the mothers and sisters of the contestants, who had to design for someone other than their own relative. Two of the "average women" were thin, one was truly average, and the rest were decidedly plus sized. The larger ladies probably had bust and hip measurements over 50 inches. Of course, when the contestants took turns at selecting models, the thinnest were chosen first and the fattest were chosen last.

These last chosen are in excellent company. In this country, the average woman aged 18-25 has measurements at bust, waist, and hip respectively of 38 - 32 - 41 inches, and at ages 36-45 the average woman measures 41 - 31 - 43 inches. These dimensions correspond to standardized pattern sizes 16 and 18, respectively. Ready-to-wear sizes, thanks to the marketing concept of vanity sizing (if you put ridiculously tiny numbers on clothes, women are more likely to buy them), for off the rack apparel are so inconsistent as to be utterly worthless.

So half of the RTW market, by definition, is for plus size apparel. Yet the dirty little secret of the fashion world is that designers have no idea how to design for, much less fit larger women.

This was painfully clear on this week's Project Runway. The everyday outfits were supposed to reflect the taste and wishes of the models, and they were supposed to be "fashion forward." The best of the outfits produced for the plus sized women looked no better than a typical offering from an average fat women's budget apparel catalogue, and the worst were utterly appalling. Among the worst was a dress made by a contestant who was frankly hostile and rude toward the mom who was his "client;" she was in tears because he completely disregarded her requests and suggestions for style features. When this dress was modeled in the final fashion show, judge Michael Kors cracked that it looked like "Comme des Garcon goes to the Amish country." Let me tell you, most Amish women sew beautifully, and would not be caught dead in such an ugly, ill-fitting, and poorly made garment. He would have been closer to the mark had he said, "It looks like an Amish lady sewed while on crack."

So why did the Project Runway contestants do such a poor job of making clothing for these "average" women, who by definition are plus sized and make up at least half of the market for RTW apparel? Part of the reason may be simple size bigotry. We live in a society in which frank hatred of fat people is rampant and largely unchallenged. Size bigotry is the last socially acceptable form of discrimination. We are bombarded daily by thousands of media images of unusually thin people who are portrayed positively as attractive and successful, yet we only rarely see images of fat people depicted in a positive manner. Most fat characters on television and in movies, for example, are portrayed as poor, stupid, mentally ill, hapless, either sexless or oversexed (go figure), and generally undesirable and unsuccessful. Most fashion designers are never exposed to a positive, artistic aesthetic that includes large sized designs. They don't know what big and beautiful looks like. They only recognize thin and beautiful. While there are plenty of images of big, beautiful women in art, there are virtually none in the fashion world. Most fashion designers do not develop an eye for the lines, textures, shapes, proportions, colors and other design features that make plus size clothing attractive.

In our own lives, however, most of us know fat people who are attractive, successful, creative, loving, productive and well loved members of our society, including our friends, co-workers, and mothers and sisters. Clearly, Project Runway contestants love their moms and sisters and would not want to humiliate them. So why did they?

Here is another dirty little secret of the fashion world. Fashion designers simply do not know how to design for average, much less plus sized women. In design schools, half of the U.S. population is completely disregarded. Most commercial dressforms used for designing and draping patterns and most live models are a standardized pattern size 10 or 12, with bust - waist - hips of 32-25-34.5 to 34-26.5-36, with a B cup size. Most fashion models weigh about 125 pounds at most and are close to 6 feet tall. Neither the forms nor the models have any of the 80 or so nameable figure variations that are common to real women of all sizes, such as a sway back, dowager's hump, any cup size larger than a B, or a short back waist length. Exaggerated tallness and thinness is a given aesthetic in the fashion world. Most design students never learn to fit real people. If they learn to fit at all, they practice on other students, who are likely to be young and thin.

Actually, sizing for plus sized RTW is merely an extrapolation from large sizes; typically, two inches are added to bust and hips for each size increase, and other dimensions are extrapolated without regard to the form of actual large sized womens' bodies. This is why plus sized, RTW clothes are usually too big through the shoulders, armscyes, and necklines, too long in the sleeves, and too small across the hips. Like most RTW, they actually fit no one well.

The Project Runway contestants who designed for the plus sized moms and sisters had probably never before made a garment for a larger woman. It's no wonder that the contestants performed so badly, or that some felt hostile about being asked to design for a large woman. They had no idea what to do.

In the fashion world, plus sizes are low budget and low prestige. Flip through any catalogue that sells plus size apparel and ask yourself, "What assumptions have the manufacturers of these garments made about large women in order to market to them?" The answers are not flattering. Most of these clothes are either drab and matronly or extremely bright, faddish, and over embellished, with very little in between. They are cheap and poorly made, and seem to be sized for women who are large-busted and small hipped with arms the length of an orangutan's.

All of this was evident in the show's clips of the contestants supposedly making these garments. Of course, Project Runway, like all so-called reality shows, has little to do with reality and is merely entertainment. In the filmed clips, the contestants were shown taking what appeared to be bust, waist, and hip measurements, even though many, many more measurements are actually needed to either flat draft a pattern or to pad up a dressform to drape a design. Then the show showed them "fitting" the garments on the skinny dressforms. What for? They might as well have hung them on wire coat hangers. Actually, they were doing what others in the fashion and RTW world typically do: they just guessed at the fit, because they were disinterested in the shape and size of the real women for whom they made the clothes. They simply disregarded the needs of the women before them. The contestants and the show's producers created an opportunity to redeem themselves of the previous week's hate crime, but even if they wanted to, they were not technically up to the task.

In contrast, the custom dressmaking process embraces and celebrates the rich variety of human forms and personal aesthetics. The complicated steps that a custom dressmaker takes to make an evening gown, for example, for a tiny woman are exactly the same as for a very large woman. This process does not take a day, either. We know exactly how to design for and fit women of all shapes and sizes, and the process is inclusive, not exclusive.

When it comes to large sizes, ready-to-wear fashion is so exclusive as to be a hate crime.

2006-06-14T13:18:00.000-04:00

June 16, 2006

You Have A Choice: Exit the Mass Marketplace!

If buying your clothing makes you look and feel miserable, what else can a woman do?

1. Use a dressmaker.

2. Learn to sew.

Use A Dressmaker

The process of having clothing made just for you is as old as time. Custom dressmaking is NOT just for rich people. Even as little as twenty years ago, many people of the middle to upper middle economic classes used dressmakers and tailors for their best clothes, and only purchased clothing that did not need to fit well, and for which long wear and sturdiness were more important than overall appearance, such as uniforms, work and play clothes. When I was growing up in the sixties in a pulp mill town in the Pacific Northwest in a economically depressed town of about 8,000, there were several custom dressmakers and tailors who had storefronts. People used to invest as much as they could afford for a few well made and flatteringly classic garments, and they wore them for many, many years. There was no cheap and disposable clothing.

Nowadays, many sewing professionals work out of their homes to help reduce the cost of running a business. We use a variety of job titles to describe what we do. Here are a few:

A Sewing Professional is the broadest term, and describes anyone who makes his or her living by offering sewing services. As well as sewing for others, this person may also teach sewing, write sewing books or articles, sell sewing supplies or fabrics, and so on. She may work part time, full time, out of a shop or out of her home. Most sewing professionals have specialties, such as those below. She or he may be any or all of the following:

A Custom Clothier is someone who makes garments one at a time for an individual customer to meet that customer's specific needs and preferences.

A Custom Dressmaker specializes in womens' apparel such as day and evening dresses, suits and other careerwear, sportswear, or lingerie.

A Tailor makes custom menswear-style jackets and the skirts or trousers that go with them. Tailoring encompasses a set of unique sewing, basting, and pressing techniques. Sometimes the word is used to refer to any male sewing professional. Note that there are male tailors who may work exclusively with men and there are women tailors who work only with women; the custom clothing process is rather personal yet strictly professional, so many sewing professionals work with both sexes of customers. Note that the term "tailor" is often misused to refer to someone who only does alterations, as in the expression, "I need to have this jacket tailored." However, a custom tailor is much more highly skilled than most alterationists. Any tailor can do alterations, but by no means can any alterationist do tailoring.

An Alterationist or Alterations Specialist adjusts the fit of ready to wear garments or restyles them. Taking in, letting out, and hemming are common alterations. She may also do repairs, such as replacing broken zippers or mending.

Designers think up combinations of line, texture, proportion, and color for garments. They mostly work for the ready-to-wear industry and may not work for individual customers. They may only sketch but may not be able to sew a stitch. Remember, most design schools in the US do not require that designers learn to sew and fit, and many do not even teach these skills at all.

Patternmakers, Sample Makers, and Fitters are professionals who usually work in the ready-to-wear industry but may offer services to individuals.

Home Decorative Sewing Specialists sew custom draperies and other soft furnishings for the home.

Wardrobe Consultants or Fashion Advisors may sort through your closet and recommend flattering colors and styles.

A Wearable Artist makes uniquely embellished garments as if they were an artist's canvas.

A Seamstress is someone who sews seams. It commonly refers to a machine operator in a factory, who may not have the skills to make a custom garment from scratch. It is also an old euphemism for "prostitute." In pioneer Seattle, for example, at the turn of the last century 80% of the city's revenues came from taxes on "seamstresses," who placed a sewing machine in their windows instead of a red light. No doubt respectable dressmakers and tailors moved their machines away from the windows and had to sew in the dark.

Do not call a dressmaker a seamstress!

How to Find A Dressmaker

Visit www.paccprofessionals.org for a free referral. The referral service is organized by state and specialties are included with the listings.

Ask friends for referrals. Many customers want to keep their dressmaker all to themselves, so you may have to be persuasive.

Check with local fabric stores; many keep books of business cards or sales clerks may be familiar with local sewing professionals.

Check the Yellow Pages under "Dressmaker," "Designer," "Tailors," "Wedding Services, or "Bridal Shops," depending on your needs.

Screen by Telephone or Email

Determine the dressmaker's specialties, availability, and business procedures. Request a brochure or review her website. Next, make an appointment for a consultation. Most professionals charge for the consultation; many refund this fee with the first garment order.

During the consultation, determine her qualifications. Ask about her training and experience. Some professionals may have attended a design school, but may highly competent dressmakers have been taught by talented family members, sewing teachers, or employers, or they may be self-taught. Experience makes a difference. Someone who has sewn well for forty years will be much, much better than someone who has sewn for four years. Ask about professional affiliations. Be sure that she uses written estimates and contracts, and that she has written business policies. The contract should itemize all labor and materials charges, with as much detail as possible. Ask to see any sales tax or occupational licenses that are required in your area. Never deal with anyone who is working "off the books" or "under the table." That person is not a professional!

Learn About the Dressmaking Process

Remember, you're not in the mass marketplace anymore. Most dressmakers do two to three fittings. The fittings may last 10-20 minutes. The entire dressmaking process is less time consuming than the average shopping trip to your local mall. The dressmaker should explain exactly what is required of you, and should establish a schedule for the entire process. Does she custom draft or do you need to select a labor-saving commercial pattern? Who supplies materials? Note that no one "whips up a dress" overnight or in a few days. Most dressmakers need six to eight weeks per garment, and about six months for wedding gowns or complicated evening gowns. If you need something more quickly, expect to possibly pay a rush fee for the dressmaker's overtime. There's an old saying, "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." If you do have a rush job, be honest about your availability for fittings. If you have three weeks until your event, but you will be out of the country for one of those weeks, say so!

Examine Her Portfolio

While some dressmakers keep sample garments to examine, most use a portfolio. These photos may be professionally modeled and photographed, or they may more likely be unretouched snapshots of actual customers, who come in all shapes and sizes and have all kinds of taste in clothing and grooming. Bear in mind that photos of garments that you see in magazines are pure fantasy. Lighting, skeletal models, and computer enhancements make media images completely unrealistic. When looking at a portfolio, look for good fit and overall attractiveness.

Pricing

Custom Clothing should not be cheaper than a similar off-the-rack garment. If it is, something is wrong. Custom goods in general cost more than mass-produced goods. Remember that you are not just buying a mass-market dress; you are hiring a highly skilled professional to create a one-of-a-kind work of art especially for you. The exception to this pricing rule may be with very high priced luxury ready-to-wear. For example, a ready-to-wear French Couture house's off-the-rack suit might cost $10,000; a dressmaker might make a similar design using comparable materials and sewing techniques for $2,000, and it will fit. If you wear that suit once a week for 20 years, the cost per wearing would be a bargain. Similarly, an off the rack luxury ready-to-wear bridal or evening gown that retails for $5,000 -10,000 can be reproduced for about half, without hidden charges for alterations, because you pay the craftsman only rather than all the other many hands that are stuck into the retail profit pie.

Generally, custom clothing prices are commensurate with the skill, experience, and reputation of the dressmaker, and to the labor required and cost of materials for your desired garment . Note that not all dressmakers are equally skilled, and we don't all use the same construction techniques. Some use techniques closer to industrial production, while some use more labor-intensive and valuable couture techniques. (Couture is the artform of sewing.)If you want a "jacket," for example, it could be a simple, unlined, unfitted cardigan jacket in a solid color that might take 2-4 hours of labor using industrial techniques, or it could be a hand-tailored, custom drafted, princess-lined, lined and underlined menswear-style jacket with four welt pockets, ten bound buttonholes, three vents, and hand-applied trim in a plaid fabric that could take 40-50 hours of labor.

Dressmakers may charge by the garment or by the hour. Generally, payments are made as the work progresses, with a deposit and payments at each fitting.

Please do not choose a dressmaker by price! You need to have a clear and detailed understanding of exactly what you are getting for the price: what skill levels, what sewing techniques will be used, and what level of expertise and reliability you will be paying for.

Your Responsibilities

Decide exactly what you want before the consultation. Your dressmaker may offer guidance or design detail suggestions, but most would not be so presumptuous as to tell you what to wear. We cannot make you a dress if you don't know what you want. If you need ideas, throw out the magazines and catalogues, which only picture clothing that sells well in the mass marketplace. Look at commercial pattern designs, books on fashion, fashion photography, couture clothing, and historical costume for uncommon design ideas.

Select fine quality fabrics. It makes no sense to put expensive labor into cheap materials.

Communicate your needs and desires clearly. Dressmakers are not mind readers.

Don't change your mind about a design in the middle of a project and expect your dressmaker to make changes for free. Changing a design mid-project is not like cutting and pasting on the computer. Ripping and re-sewing for any reason risks damage to the garment. Some changes may not be physically possible, or the dressmaker may not have time in her work schedule to make them. If you have concerns, voice them as early as possible, and expect to pay for any additional labor involved.

You are not your dressmaker's only customer. Be respectful of her time, as she is with yours. Be on time for appointments. An appointment is a promise to show up in a particular place and at a particular time. Keep your promises. Do not call on your cellphone at three minutes before your appointment time and assert that you will be there in a half an hour or so. Your dressmaker may have another customer scheduled for that slot, and she must manage her time very carefully to stay in business. If you need to reschedule an appointment, give 24 hours notice.

Always wear the exact same undergarments and shoes at each fitting that you will wear with the custom garment.

When your garment is completed and you are happy with it and have enjoyed the dressmaking process, take a minute to write a thank-you note or email to your dressmaker. Your payment might help buy the groceries, but your compliments will feed her soul.

Next month: Learn to Sew: It's Not just a Hobby; It's Another Way to Get Your Clothes

2006-05-24T10:31:00.000-04:00

May 24, 2006

If you try on 20 pairs of classic black pants and none of them fits, how do you feel about yourself?

Miserable?
Hopeless?
Exasperated?
All of the above?

Do you think that there is something wrong with your body? Well, there isn't anything wrong with your body. Your body is perfect exactly the way is is, right here and right now. There is, however, something very wrong with all the pants you have tried on.

The Tyranny of the Mass Marketplace

If the only way you know to get your clothing is to shop, you are going to waste a great deal of time and you are going to feel badly about yourself. This is because the mass clothing market seeks to sell the greatest number of garments to the greatest number of people in order to make the greatest profits. Most of us consumers are very cut off from the sources of all the things that we buy, and that includes our clothing. It helps to understand how clothing is produced for the mass marketplace.

Why Doesn't Mass Marketed Clothing Fit?

Clothing manufacturers use standardized sets of measurements to make garments in various sizes. These sets of measurements generally have nothing to do with the measurements of actual people. They are merely extrapolations by regular increments from one small size. In real life, human bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and we don't get larger by regular two inch increments at bust, waist, and hips as we gain weight.

Some manufacturers may use customized sets of measurements that they think correspond to their targeted customer market, and some better designers may use live fit models, who are women whose measurements correspond to the smallest size in those customized sets of numbers.

In general, however, for most apparel sold in this country, designers start to manufacture a design by making a sketch, and then using AutoCAD pattern making software to draft the pattern pieces used to cut out the pieces of the garment. These pieces are then graded by computer, or increased by regular and precisely prescribed increments (which may not correspond to anyone's actual body size and shape) for the larger sizes in a line. Note that standardized sizing and the grading process are meant to fit a very regular, young figure with high, average sized bust, well defined waist, and fairly flat abdomen. In other words, they fit a dress form, not a real body.

Dress forms will stand still for hours without whining and they will not sue you if you jab them with pins, but they do not look like real people. They do not have any of the figure variations that are common to all women, such as a small or large bust, a prominent abdomen or fanny, narrow or broad shoulders, swayback, Dowager's hump, bowed legs, knock knees, short or long waist, and so on. (There are about 85 nameable figure variations, and I have about 40 of them!) The resulting file is then emailed overseas to a factory so that the clothes are manufactured with cheap labor. These garments are then shipped back here and sold to unsuspecting consumers without ever having been fitted on a human body. That is why they fit no one.

Fortunately, there are options to the mass marketplace. Before mass produced clothing was the norm, all clothing was hand made, one garment at a time, for one individual wearer. There were no standardized sizes, and size was never an issue. No one had to try on twenty pairs of pants, because all pants were made to fit individual consumers.

This option is still available today.

Next Post: You Have a Choice!

For more information on the option of custom clothing, visit http://barbaradeckertcouture.com

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