This is going to be an exercise called "Let's see if I can take footage that's a
year old and actually make a video out of it," because that's how long I've been
procrastinating on this. So last August I wanted to make an actual,
original practice, historically accurate shift,
and the reason I wanted to make it was mostly experimental. I wanted to see for
myself how the techniques worked, and how strong
it ended up being, and how it the seams looked, and how thick they were.
So I used some nice shift-weight linen, and I bought linen thread from Burnley
& Trowbridge, and I got beeswax, and I just kind of sat down and did it.
In order to come up with my pattern, I looked at some different extant shifts,
I tried out the different patterns in mock-ups, to see how they fit,
and I came up with my own pattern following the guidelines that I talked
about in my shift-patterning video. So if you haven't watched that, that would
probably be helpful to go back and do. But here are the dimensions of the
pattern that I ended up going with.
The first thing you're going to do is sew together the front and back panels
at the shoulder seams, and this shift was originally not going
to have shoulder seams, but you know, sometimes you accidentally cut your
fabric in half. So first I'm ironing over the selvage a
little bit less than a quarter of an inch,
and then I line up the front and back panels, using my seam gauge to make sure
that they overlap by an even inch and a half.
To sew them together, I'm going to use a length of waxed linen thread and start
with a back stitch.
The next stage will be to sew on the side gussets, and do not do it like I
just did there, where I lined up the straight of grains, and then
pinned it with the edges aligned with each other. Instead you want to flip it
so that you're lining up the straight of grain with the diagonal grain,
and then you want to pin them together with the edges just barely offset,
because since you're going to be felling the seams, you would have to trim that
edge down anyway, so it just saves a bit of work.
So I just finished sewing on the first gore with a very tiny back stitch,
and the seam was about 26 inches long, and it took me
about 88 minutes. So doing that math... if I can backstitch 26 inches in 88
minutes, then I can backstitch about 18 inches
per hour.
So the plan for today was to go out and
take video clips with the motorcycling jumpsuit, but as you can see,
that is not happening today. So I think it'll be a sewing Saturday.
Okay so a whole day of hand stitching has produced this.
I have the side gores in and felled and the seams
turned out beautiful. Not quite an eighth of an inch, but
just barely over. I'm getting close. However I did not accomplish much for a
whole day's worth of sewing, so apparently I
still have some speed to work on. Also I did count some of my
stitches, and I was getting close to about 20 stitches
per inch for my back stitching. Which a lot of the extant info I've read
quotes 30 stitches per inch, so I'm not quite
to that level, but it is plenty strong enough for my purposes.
For the side seams, I'm not going to offset them because I'm not sure which
direction I'll be turning them for felling,
and in that case I find it useful to mark the line where I'm going to be
stitching with a water-soluble marker. Then I can pin the side seams together
lined up. And for this I like to start my way from the bottom, and then work my way
upward, so that I can find the center of the shoulder more precisely.
All right, so I have sewn the side seam up to this point
here, which means that I can now accurately find the shoulder seam.
And to attach the sleeve all I have to do is find the midpoint
of it, and then line it up with the shoulder seam to sew on.
And I just want to make sure that I stop sewing a quarter of an inch away from
the end, because I'm using quarter of an inch
selvedges, it will be a lot easier to sew the gussets in if I leave this last
quarter of an inch free. Okay so I can sew this on using my
quarter of an inch line, and then I will be ready to finish
closing up this end.
Once I get to that point it's time to start with the gusset, and I'm also going
to mark the quarter of an inch seam allowances on this piece,
and then I can line up the gusset and use the blue lines to determine exactly
how far I need to stitch each seam on the side, and down the length of the
sleeve. Okay so I have the side seam stitched up
to here, and the sleeve stitched up to here, this
is all open. Pick a side, any side. So
right here where the stitching ends, that will line up
with the intersection of the gusset, and then on this side, we fold it away...
Basically where the blue lines meet, this little square right here, should
line up exactly with where the stitching ends.
And then if you've done your measurements, it should fit perfectly
in between. And you can just finish off that stitching, starting right where you
left off, and ending right where you left off. And
here is that side sewn. So I'm just going to pick up where I
left off on the next side, and exact same deal.
Fold it over.
Line up the stitching with the cross,
and back on this side you just fold it flat,
and then pin the centers. You just keep doing this
until you get back to where you started, and it will end up being nice and flat.
And there is side number two. Just gonna fold down
side number four,
and there we go. Ready to sew down side number three.
And done with the third side, which means that the fourth side
can now just fold down. And it fits perfectly.
And there's the gusset. Which means that now I can start felling this entire...
section.
First you're going to fell just one short sleeve edge of a gusset.
You're going to clip and trim the seams, and then iron it in place
the direction you want to fell it. I felled everything in towards the gusset,
but I've seen other people fell everything away from the gusset. I'm not
really sure what the difference is. So you're going to pin and stitch that
in place, then you can sew in the next gusset.
For this one you want to pick the other sleeve gusset, and this time the gusset
will be folded down with the rest of the sleeve seam, so you want to trim both,
iron and fold both, pin both, and then sew both as
one solid edge. All right, and then the last seam will be done in two parts,
because starting from the back, we have to fold
it in towards the sleeve, and then when we get all the way around
the sleeve, we'll have to fold it back *over* where we started. So you kind of
have to iron it over and sew a ways, before you can come back
and iron the rest.
Like I said, it's a little bit confusing the first time you do it. You'll figure
it out after that. But if it helps, here's a diagram I found
on Pinterest. After all of the seams are felled,
the main body of the shift will be complete, and it'll be down to all the
little finishing details.
Hello hello, so I had to work today but I got a ton
done in my little spare moments. I was able to completely hem the bottom edge,
and I also sewed both sleeve cuffs into bands,
and I was able to sew one of them on. It's not a very full sleeve, which is how
I wanted it, but there is a little bit of excess, and
I did tiny tiny pleats on the inside, so basically all I'm left is sewing the
cuff on the other sleeve, and then turning this around and
stitching it down, and then tomorrow will be all about the
neckline.
And the ends of the sleeves are officially done, which means the only
thing left is the neckline. I think before I start
ironing the neckline, I'm actually going to
bring it out just a little bit more. Not *down* anymore,
but I don't want it to be sliding off my shoulder quite as much as it is,
so I think I'm going to take off about an inch----
So that's what I did wrong. Okay so I've been trying to figure out for like, the
last year, uh, why my sleeves ended up too short.
Because I was pretty sure I had the measurements right, and you can see when
I'm trying it on there, they're hitting right about the right
length. But then you can see when I try it on after it's finished,
why is it hitting this awkward place in the elbow? To where it's either sliding
above my elbow, or it's getting caught on my elbow whenever I bend?
And that would be it. It's because I hiked up the shoulder seam, but I didn't
account for that in the measurements that I took when I was originally
patterning it. Not that that was a bad thing. I think
that the neckline ended up fitting very well.
But you can't just randomly start cutting fabric off from one part of the
shift without affecting the rest of it.
The last thing to finish is the neckline. Luckily, the hem is pretty narrow and the
linen is woven pretty loosely, so you can just double-
fold it to make a casing. However, before I sew that down I'm going to go ahead
and make my eyelets for the drawstring. That's as simple as opening two holes
with an awl, and stitching around them with a thread until they're pretty
covered, but still small and not super noticeable.
In hindsight I would have placed them closer together, because the larger of a
gap you place between them, is just more that's going to bubble up once it's
gathered. After the eyelets are in, I can go ahead
and start felling down that whole edge. A couple more finishing details: I
embroidered my initials in the back of the neckline, like you often see in
historical shifts. And they did this because the shifts
were really similar, and it would all get thrown in the laundry together, so
easy way of knowing. And then something I like to do, when I insert a drawstring
like this, is I like to insert it so that it's
perfectly even, and then in the center back,
just sew a couple little stitches across it to tack it in place.
So that way you don't have problems with the drawstring shifting and getting
uneven. And then to finish it off, I just need to
soak it in water to get rid of the blue marker. I love projects like this that
pulling on the drawstring is the last step, because then it goes from just
being a big old pillowcase, to all of a sudden, oh,
there's a shift. So in general I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out, other
than, as I mentioned, the sleeves ending up
one or two inches too short. I think that I kind of had them too
short already, but then bringing in the neckline that extra bit really kind of
killed it. At the beginning of the video I gave you
my finished measurements, but I would add a couple of inches to the sleeves,
because they're just kind of an awkward length.
So there you have it, the shift tutorial. I don't know why this one was such like
an oppressive thing at the back of my mind, that I just could not sit down and
get the video made. But I think it turned out pretty good, and
gussets are so hard to explain, but I hope it was helpful.
It's the kind of thing that it's really not that big of a deal, once you actually
sit down and start messing with the fabric, you will figure it out.
So, if you've been procrastinating starting your shift as long as I've been
procrastinating making this video, I hope that you will go ahead and get started
on that.