#somewhat historical garment

[icancdramahanfu]

Layer 4, the light green coat/beizi 褙子

The last major garment that WKX wears is his flowing light green beizi, or straight open coat/jacket.  This one does not have an annoying neck placket, thank goodness and his has a sleeve shape the mirrors the rest of his layers.

Again, I used the Hanfu Pattern Drafting book that I’ve mentioned previously.  I went with the most loose and open version of it here.

Drafting this one was a little different with my previous measurements since they were for it to layer one side over the other.

I made all the adjustments and mapped them out on my wrapping paper before following the crook of the neckline to the base corner of the garment.  The dashed lines were the original measurements for the bust and waist but due to the open nature of this coat, you end up connecting the neck to the end making that straight line when it is worn along the front of the body.

You can see all of my measurements for this fourth layer above. The most interesting aspect is that the curve for the neckline actually is a straight line from there to the bottom of the open hem.  This is shown very well on the drafted pattern below.

Here is a closer shot where you can see my dashed reference lines.

Once I completed the pattern I did a test lay on the fabric.  I had washed and ironed this previously, but it seems prone to major wrinkles so ignore that.  My assistant isn’t being very helpful with the sleeve orientation.

I double checked out it mapped out to determine that I could fold the fabric in half (yay!) and cut out both sides in one go.  Why my wrapping paper has llamas and saguaro cacti I’m unsure.  I mean you can only find them in the Sonoran desert (Arizona) and llamas are not a native mammal.

I’d like to note that once I found my limit to fit the long pattern piece, I cut off the remaining fabric for the sleeves.  This allowed me to fold the remaining fabric with the selvedge at the bottom instead of the sides (not ideal) but gave me enough space to keep the fabric fold along the arm.  This fabric was not as wide as the blue and meant I was tighter with my flex space on the fabric. (only 42″ wide).  For the sleeves, I just made the armscye wider (here deeper) to correspond to each layer instead of making a new pattern piece each time.

I just used the ruler to mark off the correct distance as shown here.  Make sure that pattern piece is flat and mark off how deep you want it to be and then connect it to the rest of the curved part of the sleeve.

Of course once I cut out my pieces I overcast them on my machine with a contrasting thread.  Again, I kept the tension at 5 (3-7 are the options) there is some puckering but it isn’t too bad.

I then pinned the right sides together of the armscye from the sleeve to the shoulder line of the main part and sewed them down.  After sewing, I pressed the seam allowance down the arm on both sides with my iron.  With the sleeves attached, I stared at this a bit trying to determine which seam to do next.  I went ahead and pinned the back seam down, right sides together.  I think this is the next most logical one to do.

With less pattern pieces I started out making fast progress on this.  I easily sewed the back seam, then the rest of the sleeves/armpits and side seams with no issues.  I then got to the lining for the neckline/open hem.  This then caused by brain to fart out a bit.  This fabric is really really really slippery and was a total pain in the ass.  I used the cotton muslin that was from my original mock-up for the zhiju to give me a sort of interfacing strip.  I took the green fabric and traced the neckline all the way down to the bottom hem and then cut out a large strip with the marks on it.  Then I took the cotton muslin and also traced the neckline of the pattern.  Next, I removed the pattern piece and then made it 2 inches deep.  You can see the ironed cotton below.

I then overlaid this on the green fabric with it on the wrong side of the silk. With a loose straight stitch, I attached the cotton to the silk.  Then I trimmed the inner part of the neckline away.

I folded and ironed the silk (right side above) on top of the cotton and stitched down the silk on the right side.  This is all so that the left side where there are raw edges can be pinned right side to right side of the garment and then sewn down.

With my iron I then flattened this and then folded and ironed the pseudo-placket into the inside of the jacket.  This is one of those instances where having that sort of tailor’s ham/rounded cushion thing to iron the shoulder curve would have been helpful.  I still need to figure out if I’ll have to sneak in a few hand stitches here and there to keep it down flat. 

I’m not as skilled as the person who made the original below, but you can tell how the fabric drapes that there is a piece that goes all along the neckline and down the front that is folded under.

It is really obvious on his right side (our left) where we can see it is slightly thicker as it comes off the neck towards the chest. 

Anyhoo, I’m getting closer to the end.  I folded the edge under and I’m letting the garment hang overnight to help it take shape a bit better.  I need to hem the sleeves, edges of the side seams and the bottom hem as well.  This will allow me to go back and hem the second and third layer skirt bottoms which I’ve kept unfinished to make sure I could put them on and match them up appropriately.

[icancdramahanfu]

Fabric swatches have been ordered (vibrates with excitement).  Shen Qingqiu, here I come.

Oh yes, I have gone ahead and ordered some fabric swatches to start planning for my Shen Qingqiu outfit.  I still need to make a final decision on which of his outfits to make.  After a lot of staring and daydreaming and procrastinating at work, I have narrowed it down to two.

1.) Vietnamese cover artwork by Higga.

and to my surprise the most recent version;

2.) English language edition by Xiao Tong Kong

Both of these really speak to my vibe of how ‘elegant and refined’ he is.  I mean it is literally the name of his sword and that is how I visualized him in the novel without context.

For the fabric, I went ahead and decided to order some swatches so I can look at the colors in person and also feel them to see how they’d behave.  There is a wide range of silk and silk blends to choose from.  I also ordered some ivory silk for the beizi style jacket from the Vietnamese edition.

I’m also curious about the ‘dewkist’ color and that might be another great coat color as well.

There are pros and cons to both of these designs.

Vietnamese cover -

Ivory beizi (jacket/coat) with gold/yellow trim. Estimating about 3.5-4 yards of fabric.

Teal zhiju (straight hem robe) with bamboo accents. Estimating 3.5 yards of fabric.

Brown belt - Likely 1 yard of fabric.

White under layer (likely zhong yi) with tight sleeves that come past the wrist and a high collar. I’m estimating 2 yards of fabric if top only.  Full length with skirt - 3 yards.

The collar also still has the left-right overlap of the neck placket that doesn’t make sense in my mind.  How does it work?  How does it keep that shape?  Is it anachronistic and more of a Ming style standing collar? This looks like the similar collars we see in the 2Ha comic and artwork for that series as well and in the TGCF donghua for Mu Qing and Feng Xin in their godlet forms.  I need to determine if this is a style choice in all of these series or if there is a reason for them.

I’m estimating 2 yards of fabric if top only.  Full length with skirt - 3 yards.

Pants? - Maybe?

English cover -

Teal/spring green beizi. Darker green trim.  Likely 3.5-4 yards.  Trim 1 yard?

Teal zhiju.  Fancy neck placket pattern.  Estimating 3.5 yards of fabric.  Spoonflower printed neck placket.  1 yard?

Ivory belt, flower belt buckle (?) need to figure out term for this. Long teal belt strands for tightening. 1 yard ivory, 1 yard teal.

Ivory/white zhiju. 3.5 yards?  maybe 3?

Zhong yi set (top and pants) - or just pants and reuse current top.  White/ivory fabric.  Cotton or linen.   Pant estimate ~ 1.25 yards.

Quick summary -

Both of these have parts that are straightforward while other aspects will require more research and messing around with things to figure out how to make them.  And the English cover clearly will require more fabric for sure.  Yet it is very very elegant and flowy.

I will sit down and sketch things out to try to decide which one to settle on making.  Getting the swatches might make things easier as I can feel how all the fabrics behave and it may push me in one direction or another.

[icancdramahanfu]

Hemming complete! As well as things I’ve learned.

Since my last post, I spent the next seven days slowly returning to normal as I indeed had covid (yay -_- nothing like some qPCR results to tell me what I suspected).  I had to dig around to find the dark grey bias tape.  I measured the difference between the red sleeve and the blue sleeve and decided to cut the blue sleeve back by 2 inches.  With pinking scissors I trimmed the fabric down and then ironed the sleeve down flat.  Here I’m holding the bias tape open and you can see where I pinked the fabric.

I then folded the bias tape over the edge and pinned it down.  Annoyingly, I had to pull out the seam ripper to undo a few of the seams at the bottom of the sleeve so I could access the ends of the fabric.

Here is a picture of the edge having been pinned shut.  The sleeve is currently inside out.  I then stitched the bias tape down around the entire sleeve edge.

After getting the bias tape down, I turned the sleeves right side out.  Next, I folded the bias tape inside of the sleeve and pressed it down with the iron.  This created a nice fold that covered the bias tape edge.  For it to look neat, I chose to top stitch the right side of the sleeve with the bias tape completely inside the sleeve folded under. 

In case I messed up, I also went with a longer straight stitch length (4 on my machine, the largest) so that the silk wouldn’t become too tight or pucker a whole lot.  I then put the blue zhiju on top of the red one on a hanger and pulled the sleeves through completely.  Here you can see that the red is just a little longer, giving it that nice layering effect!  The blue zhiju hem also has a nice structure from the bias tape that was folded in and then top stitched down.

Here is a close up of the sleeves.  The only thing that looks a little off is the fact that I used cotton for the red; thus it looks a lot stiffer while the silk on top is more flowly looking.  All in all, I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out and I don’t have enough confidence in my ability to sew well with the silk fabric for edges like this one.

All that is left is finishing up the ties on the zhong yi (middle layer) white undershirt.  And then figure out how I can get some nice pictures of the entire outfit and style a wig which is something I have no great talent with.

What I learned from this experience: (in no particular order)

1.) Be mindful of your overcasting thread color.  For the red and blue layers this wasn’t an issue, I used white for the red and a light purple for the blue layer.  However, for the light green beizi jacket I used a dark red thread.  Which based on how thin the green silk blend fabric was, shows up if you look at the pressed seams closely.  I should have used a lighter color at least.

2.) Pinking seams is helpful.  Drop the money on a pair of pinking shears, even if you overcast seams, you will find it worth it.

3.) Doing a mock-up is essential for the neckline and armpit size check.  Cheap cotton muslin is fine for this, but make sure to do it.  If I went with the 1″ armpit curve as suggested in Hanfu Pattern Making, I’d be in trouble.  That book assumes some really small arm circumference.   I don’t think you’ll need a skirt mock-up, working on the bodice is likely sufficient.

4.) Make a single sleeve mock-up and see how it falls on your arm.  Again use scrap fabric or reuse the fabric from your mock up.

5.) I wish I had a rotary cutter.  Before I attempt my SQQ outfit, I’m going to purchase a mat and rotary cutter.  These garments require cutting out long pieces of fabric and it would have made cutting the sleeves out a lot easier.

6.) Don’t trust fabric that is under $20/meter or yard that is labeled by a shop as ‘hanfu’ fabric.  It will be a total pain in the bum to work with.  I’m specifically talking about this fabric. 

It was difficult to deal with, wrinkled easily, slippery and if you messed up and you had to rip out seams, looked clearly damaged from the previous line of sewing that you removed.

In hindsight, I should have dropped the extra few bucks for this fabric in green as well.  It was much more well behaved.  Or found another fabric at this price point.

7.) Be aware of the dimensions of your fabric.  This caught me with the red cotton calico fabric which was only 36″ wide from selvedge to selvedge and hanfu patterns seem to assume having at least 54″ if not 60″ wide bolts of fabric.  This bit me in the ass when I messed up the red layer cutting out the fabric.

8.) Bias tape is your friend!  On man, it really is with these lightweight fabrics as a good way to get them to hang better and to sew in those raw edges.

9.) Heat adhesive for the edge of the jacket was super helpful.  Having the invisible type allowed for it to hold the hem down and stay in place.

10.) Draft you patterns on wrapping paper with the grid.  The paper is a nice weight and you can write on it with 2B pencil, pen and marker as you develop and modify your pattern pieces.

11.) A straight ruler and curved ruler are all you actually need. Seriously, you can make all of your shapes with these two items.

[icancdramahanfu]

Wen Kexing layer 4 - beizi jacket and tying up some loose ends

I had to deal with some other things and had to put this down.  I also went ahead and bought more bias tape in the sea foam green at my local JoAnn’s.  I had tried to hem the sleeves and it became an utter diaster!  Somehow fabric slid under my seams and I ended up with a total mess that I had to use the seam ripper to correct.  So after the thin bias tape working for the edges of the split seams along the legs I bought more.

Yeah, if you live in my city of ~100,000 people and you go to get sea foam green bias tape in the narrow width.  It is mine!  All mine. 

Long story short, I used the bias tape for all of the hems.  The sleeves and along the base of the coat.  I will likely need to go back and fix the sleeves later but for right now I want to prevent them from fraying.  I’m not sure how I would handle this if the fabric were less light and slippery.  I briefly thought about making strips like for the main coat opening but decided not to do this.  We’ll see if I change my mind in the future.

With this done, I needed to check that everything fit alright.  I still have to hem the bottom of the red and blue layers and hem the blue sleeves.  The first three layers fit pretty well.  You can see that I left the selvage alone the blue sleeves.  I’ll likely use some bias tape and then fold it in from there.

The layers, layer nicely.  I put the green coat on next.  This is the payoff for calculating all of the layers using the Hanfu Pattern Making book!  I’m especially happy with the armpit/armscye situation.

I didn’t quite match the full beizi design; WKX’s has the slit on the front but there is no way in hell I had enough fabric to do it.  I guess if I really wanted to, I could order more, but this fabric was not fun to work with.  In this shot you can see there I folded under the stretch of green silk blend with left over cotton muslin in between. 

I used some fusible interfacing to hold it down after ironing it.  I’m not sure how well this will work, the interfacing was okay but didn’t seem to like to hold well with this fabric.  The back looks like my back.  I think it has a decent amount of volume compared to the original.

Trying to get exciting with the poses in my cramped bathroom.

I can’t do a full length shot, one of the issues of setting your camera to auto shoot with a timer.  Here you can see the narrower bias tape along the edge of the beizi.  I really lucked out I could find a color match.  I couldn’t find anything remotely close to the blue one.  Hence, when I use it on the sleeves, I will have to fold it over be default to cover the grey color I found.

After I finish hemming a few odds and ends, I’ll try to get better pics of everything and have a summary post where I reflect over what worked well, what was confusing and what I’d do differently next time!

[icancdramahanfu]

The second layer of Wen Ke Xing’s outfit; red zhiju (直裾) layer part 1.

With the base layer shirt complete, I turned to making a new layer 2 pattern for the red layer.  This layer is likely some sort of silk/silk blend with a pattern woven into the fabric that has a decent amount of shine and luster.  Since I had already ordered silk fabric for the top two layers, I decided to save money for this layer with the calico print 100% cotton.  It is most visible during the several day drunken bender when Wen Ke Xing removes his coat and belt allowing the blue third layer to hang open.

I really can’t find any great pictures of this where he isn’t drowning his sorrows in alcohol.  It is clear that it was sewn with a top bodice piece and then the skirt sewn on at the waist.  There might be some minor pleat action in the red skirt of the zhiju, but I don’t have a good enough reference photo to determine how many pleats.  Additionally, it would mean even more fabric and as I found out I was cutting my fabric measurements too close for comfort.

We can see the waist seam in the following image and a slight pleat that is parallel to the edge of the blue layer.  Combined with the pleat marks in the previous photo, it is clear there is some minor pleating action happening.

Which I’m going to just ignore.  We are just going to make this a zhiju, straight hem robe, pleating be dammed!

I sat down to draft the new pattern.  With different layers of similarly cut garments, you are only adding to the width of the layer on top and not to the length.

Therefore, I’m only changing, the curve of the neckline, the size of the neck, the width of the, skirt base, bust, waist, back, back armpit (?), the shoulder, and sleeve where it connects to the shoulder.  The length (height) of everything else stays the same including the curve of the armpit.  This is because you have adjusted with the slightly larger armscye and it will help prevent bulk.

As I started to draw out my pattern on the fabric, I realized that the width (42″) of the 4 yards gave me very little wiggle room and I didn’t quite map it out optimally.  After some swearing, I had no choice but to cut the single piece into three.  Of course, I realized this after cutting out the first single piece >_<.  Here is a quick visual of how it cut the fabric (totally not to scale, based on my tiny back skirt sketch).

It was after 9pm when I realized this, so there was a trip to the fabric store the following day.  I purchased another 1.5 yards to make sure I could fit two full sleeves.  While the sleeve fabric washed and then dried on the line in the hot desert heat, I stared sewing the bodice and skirt together.  I pinned the waistlines together, and used a tricot stitch to prevent fraying.  I chose to not overlock since the cotton calico is very thin and the tricot stitch also prevents puckering which was an issue with the cotton I used for the zhong yi (white) layer 1.  I made sure to press all of the seams together and then with the additional fabric cut out the sleeves.  I didn’t even bother making a new sleeve pattern.  Instead, I just marked off the additional 0.25″ (1/4″) and connected it to the rest of the sleeve outline.

The armpit aspect of the sleeve is the hardest part to sew once you have the sleeve attached to the shoulder.  Make sure to sew it slowly and hold the top and bottom down tightly. 

I had been wondering why all of WKX’s second layers seemed to be 6 main pieces and not 2 - with the skirt always sewn on at the waistline.  I then realized that as I was flipping through Hanfu Pattern Making and as I was stitching the armpit together. Hanfu Pattern Making has this page in the ‘extras’ at the end of the book.  It is correct that you can minimize the fabric with less waste around the long single piece.  It includes short cuts and variations you can use with your patterns.

It also mentions that it saves time.  Oh man, that makes so much sense.  It was not unwieldy, but annoying to flip around these long skirt panels that are 33″ long when sewing other parts; like the armpit and the sleeves.  I have my sewing machine on a fairly small desk/table top and I had to keep smoothing all the excess fabric around, while trying to keep the target seams I was sewing flat.

When I get to the blue third layer, I am automatically adding the skirt on after I’ve sewn the bodice and the sleeves onto it.  I can tell it will be much easier that way.

With the most of the layer complete, I did a test fit minus the neck placket, waist ties and hemmed edges.  The way the neckline lays on the previous one is great.  I had a 1/8″ curve on the white layer one and 1/4″ curve with this layer. I’m thinking the blue layer three will be 3/8″. 

Without a neck placket collar on it for the moment, the white collar seems to pop out a little.  Overall, I’m impressed with the armpit fit.  Not a whole lot of puckering and pretty much a single crease in the armpit to shoulder.

I need to hem the sleeves, but I am so happy with the shape!  It looks nice!  I’ll have to futz around with the final sleeve length once I have all of the layers.  I’m keeping all of them as long as possible at the moment.

Neck placket action - or something I find really tedious, but I’m learning.

I decided to work on the neck placket and only the neck placket the day after all of the above.  I stared with a pretty large strip of self-made bias tape shown here.  I found the center of the strip (20.5″) and lined my ruler up with that point.

I decided to use 8″ of interfacing as I only used 6″ for the inner most layer.  I erred on the side of caution with a strip that was over 4″ wide with the edges folded over to make a clean hem when sewn onto the collar/neckline.

Here is some sexy interfacing cut and placed in the center of one half of the placket.  You can see my purple line which will line up with the back seam on the garment.

I trimmed the height of the interfacing to be less than 2 inches but just a touch to it wouldn’t be too bulky.  I then pinned it to the collar starting with the midpoint in line with the back seam.  First, I pinned only the outside part of the placket to the right side of the collar.  I made sure to pin the entire strip to the outside first.

Then I went back, folded it over and used the same pin, already in the garment, to pin both sides down, keeping the pin on the right side/outside.  This is so I can top stitch the outside and know that the bottom layer will also be held down.  Here is the right side of the collar.

This is the inside of the collar.  Since the edge of the placket is already folded under there are no raw edges.

This cotton calico is pretty thin, I didn’t find this too bulky or difficult to work with.  I guess that makes sense since it is normally used for quilting and you are stitching multiple layers on top of each other.

When I originally went to test the collar out, it was too tall compared to the white collar.  I realized that having it be too thick was me being overly cautious.  I then tried it on and folded it down to see what looked best.  Ultimately folding it almost in half gave a nice layering look.  I pressed it down with my iron, pinned it and top stitched it over the original line.  The finished product is shown here.  This took my collar down from being 2.5″ wide to about 1.75″ wide.  Even doubling the placket over, it was easy to sew since the fabric is thin enough.  I actually like how this thickness feels.

To deal with the ‘corner’ of the neck curve, I used a slightly longer stitch length going from a setting of “1″ on my machine to “2″ for the curve.  This allowed for flexibility in that part of the collar and is another way for it to have less puckering, a problem with these cheaper cottons I’m noticing.

Making the neck placket used all of my brain cells for the evening; I decided to stop while I was ahead and pin down two sides of the skirt after folding over the raw edge, pressing with my iron, then folding it over again, pressing with the iron and then pinning it on place. 

I have to admit, I do this completely by eye.  I don’t want it to be too thick so I do my best to make the first fold pretty thin, so the second fold is about 1/8″.

I only have to hem all 6 edges of the skirt, the 3 bottom edges of the skirt panels after this.  And the sleeves.  And and the waist ties.

I will continue with part 2 with more information how I finished this layer.

[icancdramahanfu]

Slowly wrapping up the WKX outfit: odds and ends.  Hemming and more hemming.

I liiiiiiiivvveee - sort of.  For the holiday, I took off the 24-31 as you know, one should.  Unfortunately, two days after getting back from traveling, I started to get a sore throat and it went downhill from there.  I’m waiting for covid test results, but as of writing this I don’t know.  Anyhoo, today was the first day I felt somewhat okay.  Still coughing and got a lot of drainage but the worst is over.  What else can one do?  Work on finishing a sewing project!

As I mentioned in the last post directly related to this, all I had left to do was to hem the bottom of the skirt panels on the red layer 2 zhiju and the blue layer 3 zhiju.

For the the hems to be close-ish I put each layer on a hanger and then measured the differences between the raw edges.  The red layer was much longer than necessary so I bought it up 2″.  As I’d done before, I folded over about 1/8″ of the raw edge, ironed it and then sewed it down with a straight stitch.  Then I brought that edge and folded it up to the 2″ mark as indicated by one of my removable fabric pens.  I then ironed it, pinned it and volia! I finished the red zhiju!  I would have loved to have been able to figure this out on myself, but I lack the ability to look at myself easily (note to get a full length mirror in the future).

The next part was to do the blue zhiju, I had less extra fabric and instead would only fold up the hem by 1″.  As this fabric is a little more slippery, I ironed up the overlock stitches (to prevent fraying) and then quickly ironed it up to the 1″ mark and pinned it down.  This fabric sews best if you keep it under a little tension so I did each skirt bottom one at a time instead of pinning all three and then sewing.  It was a little more time consuming but I still had a pin or two slide out of this fabric due to its texture and weave.

All that is left now is to hem the sleeves on the blue zhiju and I’ll be done!  Oh and put ties on the white cotton zhong yi layer.  I bought ties awhile ago and marked the spots with the pen but then the plaster people got it all dusty I had to wash it again and lost my marks. 

Here is my lazy mock up, it looks funny without the depth of a person wearing it.   I went ahead and pulled the red sleeves all the way through the blue sleeves.

You can’t see them as the blue are still too long.  I could have cut them shorter and hemmed them awhile ago, but as I cut them on the selvedge edge I had a naturally fray-free edge.  However, I sort of regret not making myself do it earlier when I had more focus on it. . . .  The selvedge edges is shown here, which is clearly much longer than the already hemmed red sleeves inside.

What I’ll do next is line these up and come up with a good length to hem it back by that the red just peaks out of the red.  By holding it up to the light you can see the end of the red sleeve just below my right thumb.

This also gives you a good idea on the opacity of the blue silk.  I had also bought some bias tape that is a grey-blue and I may use that to protect the edge of the sleeve before folding it back to hem.  I want to play around with this to figure out how to make the best sleeve cuffs.

If it works better than I’ll know to do this in the future for long flowy sleeves like these begins to day dream about making that Vietnamese style SQQ outfit. Right, back on track, I’ll have a more precise sleeve making method. That’s all I have for now, but wanted to let people know I was still alive and going to start drafting more patterns this year and sewing a few more garments.  I’m really looking forward to making a normal fitted sleeve for the Gu Xiang outfit and then the combination of the fitted sleeve with the large tear drop sleeve that WKX loves.

[icancdramahanfu]

The third layer of Wen KeXing’s blue zhiju.  Part 2.

I’ve been making progress on this garment.  After drafting all of the pattern pieces except for the neck placket I did tetris with the pieces to see how to lay them out on the 4m of fabric.  My biggest concern was having enough for the neck placket and the larger than normal sleeves.

I futzed around with the placement as the fabric was 56″ wide which was just a bit too short to mirror my pattern pieces.  Instead, I had to flip them around so that the flare on the front skirt would fit.

This was a pain in the bum since I don’t have a lot of open floor space.

Here is another shot of me playing around with the layout.  I have only one sleeve pattern piece and I folded over the fabric at the end to replicate the fact that the sleeves only have a hemline on the bottom/armpit.

I was able to take a deep breath and exhale as I figured out how to fit everything with room for the neck placket to cut out later.  I’m not showing it here, but I did make a front skirt for the right side which isn’t shown in this initial stage of sorting out my available fabric. Life then got super busy as work returned to ‘normal’ as in we are dealing with covid but still doing work in person; which was a mess for all sorts of reasons and technology not being ready to go and still isn’t ideal.  But I digress.

To cut out the pieces I put heavy books down onto of the pattern pieces to hold them in place and then slowly cut them out.  The fabric is slippery, so this did cut down on it moving around but wasn’t perfect in parts that were harder to reach when cutting.  Overall though, I was liberal with my seam allowance.

I then did a round of overcasting stitches around the entire piece for the fabric.  I like to use a contrasting color when overcasting so I can see what I’m doing.  This is a personal preference sort of thing so I used a lavender tread left over from previous projects.  I tested out the tension and went with a longer stitch length.  On my machine that is a 2 for length, the overcast is C and I found when the tension set to 5 it was a good balance.

FYI, to overcast with my machine (a very entry level analogue baby lock) it suggested that the tension could be between 3-7.  Here are some of the edges after overcasting.

You can see there is a little bit of puckering but all in all it does a good job of giving the thin and loose silk a bit more structure.  I then did a test lay of the front skirt, bodice and sleeves to see how they all lined up.  The ball to the side are the back skirt pieces also overcast.

And everything meets up pretty well!  I’m holding off on the neck placket as I think about how to navigate it, the fabric is very thin so I may need to put interfacing in all of it or select another fabric as the inner lining and interfacing at the back of the neck/collar.

After learning from the ‘mistakes’ of making the second layer zhiju where I sewed the skirt pieces onto the bodice and then added the sleeves, I will be adding the sleeves onto the bodice first this time.  I am not flipping 33″ of fabric back and forth when adding the sleeves to the main body.  The whole idea is having 3 pieces instead of 1 is to save time, effort and fabric.  This time I am going to do that.  Once I buy thread that matches . . .

I managed to buy some cotton thread which is an excellent match for the fabric and started sewing.  The first step was to sew the sleeves onto the bodice pieces.  After adding the sleeves, I did the center back seam and pressed it with the iron.

I opened the seam on the inside to help it lay flat better as shown here.  You can see my super contrasting overcasting thread.  Again, I really like this because it makes it really easy to sew my normal stitches with this as a guide.

I didn’t show it, but I also pressed the shoulder seams down so that they would fall down the sleeve and set well.  After sewing the sleeves on and doing half of the armpit, it was the moment of truth.  Testing if I did this correctly and it would fit over the previous two layers of cotton.  I still need to iron the armpit a bit better, but it is a huge feeling of excitement that I made the pattern wide enough for my two under layers!

I did not finish the rest of the side seam yet in because if I did mess up royally, I could undo the seam and find a way to add in more etc before sewing the entire side body seam.

I give this two thumbs up for armpit hole size success!  Again, I’m going to do the neck placket later,  I need to sleep on it to determine how to stiffen it so it lays down better.

I’m even more impressed is that this all fits pretty well when I’m still wearing a t-shirt underneath the zhong yi and first zhiju layer.  This will likely fit even better with just the correct layers.  Also notice how the shoulder seam is at about the right place more off of the shoulder than in line with it.

I’m overall very happy with drafting my own pattern pieces!  After checking the fit of the sleeve/armpit I went ahead and added the back skirt panels.  This was pretty boring.  I added each panel to the waist separately and then sewed down the back in line with the center back seam of the bodice.

Here is what I’ve gotten done to this point.

Sleeves are completely sewn and only need to be hemmed.  I made it so the ends were the selvage on the fabric so they didn’t need to be overcast and won’t fray. 

Next, I need to add the front skirt panels to the bodice.  The fabric is a bit slippery; I’ve been pinning it with a little bit of tension and then keeping that tension while sewing.  For the armpit I increased the stitch length to 3 from 2 on the rest.  I figure I can always go back and make certain seams tighter if I so desire. I added each front skirt panel, ironed it and then pressed the seams downward.  I then did a test fit with all the other layers on underneath.  I’m really ignoring that neck placket by doing everything else.  The hips are a little wide, not sure if the pattern overestimated the width or if I’ll have to go back and sew it a bit tighter.

Thankfully, this means I have room to play with to take it in as opposed to worrying about not having enough.  Side view is looking pretty good.  I may take the back seams in a bit later once I have a proper belt made.

I decided to hem 4 out of the 6 edges of the skirts.  Just like with the red layer, I folded it over, pressed with the iron, folded it over again, pressed with the iron and pinned it down.  Then I sewed the hem with a straight stitch set to 2 which makes it pretty tight.

I still need to hem the last two skirt pieces, the sleeves and make the neck placket.  Yaaaaay [that was said with much rejoicing].

For shits and giggles I tested out the drunken bender look. A friend already wants me to get a photo of my doing my best drunken WKX impression.

I’ll def document my struggles with the neck placket part three.  Stay tuned.

[icancdramahanfu]

The third layer of WKX’s blue zhiju - part 3!

I had to put this project down for a bit to deal with real life stuff and finally got back to my most hated part of these garments - the neck placket.  Compared to the cotton fabric, the silk that I’m using is quite flexible so making the neck placket was annoying since I couldn’t just iron it in half and get it to hold the shape of the fold well.

To determine the length I used my measuring tape (the roll type) and measured from the center back seam line to the edge of the neck placket.  It came out to 27″ and I doubled that for a total length of 54″.  I then measured out 56″ of fabric along the selvage line.  This was luck for me since the pattern guide recommends having it follow the selvage edge but to cut it out in the center of your fabric.  Due to my pattern piece tetris I ended up with a long piece of fabric  that ran along the selvage.  Lucky indeed! I made my piece 3″ wide with about 1/2″ of seam allowance.  I cut out 8″ of interfacing for the back of the collar and used the original cotton from the mock up sleeve for a large strip to insert into the placket.  I sewn on the back of the placket with the machine just like I had done previously with the cotton layers.

However, due to how slippery/flexible the silk was I stuck on how to fold it over and cover the raw edge.  I had to first hand baste the front/facing the skin side down roughly. 

What I mean is I folded the edge over to create a hemline and then make a loose stitch to hold it down move about 1/2 inch down and baste.  It was a total pain in the ass as I had to old the cotton/interfacing down and feed it under the silk to add structure.

Since my thread was such a nice match to the fabric, you can barely see the basting stitches here.  Perhaps I should have used the purple for the basting stitches?

My original plan was to hand stitch it down after basting and I did it for half of the placket before I was overcome with annoyance and said ‘fuck it’ and decided to machine sew it down before removing the basting. My rationale was since the thread was sooo close in color to the silk that even if I had a visible seam line on the back it wouldn’t be as visible as the line on the red or white layer. Furthermore, if the placket pisses me off in the future, I can always sew a new one over top with a wider piece of silk since I have enough extra to fix it.

I did a test fit with the other two layers - the white layer was laying in a pile and the neck line needs to be ironed.  Honestly, even with a few ugly bits on the seam overall, it isn’t that noticeable.  This was the first time I made sure to not wear a t-shirt under the white base layer to have a more accurate fit.  As I’ve stated previously, my bust size is quite small at 32″ and being conservative on the curve of the neckline has allowed for the fit along the neckline to be decent.

This gave me a chance to check the overall fit and I noticed that the center back seam was way too loose in the back.  With the other layers underneath, I took a binder clip and pinched it to make it more flush.  I measured the pinch which was 1″.  At the waist seam I turned it inside out, marked off one inch and eyeballed it going up the back a few inches until it was 1/2″ to the current seam line making a very shallow curve above and below the waist line.

I then sewed in a new seam line with a bit of a curve to it which removed a fair bit of bulk.  I haven’t cut out the extra fabric yet - I’ll keep it in place until all the parts are done before making a final decision to cut the fabric.  I may also go back and pull in the back seam on the red layer as well, as I suspect that I’m taking that not quite correct waist measurement through more than one layer After this, I hemmed the final vertical parts of the skirt down from the neck placket overlap.  Again, I folded it over, pressed it with the iron, folded it over again and pinned it in place.  When sewing I kept tension on the fabric to make it a bit stiffer and used a small stitch length of 2 on my machine.

All that is left is to hem the bottom, the sleeves and add the waist ties.  I’m currently hanging the garment to help it fall into shape for the next few days.  I need to return to the fabric store to find some affordable cotton for the waist band and buy green thread for the next layer the straight hem jacket. Making the belt

So, I totally forgot about making a belt to hold this all together.  And I’m procrastinating on drafting the final pattern for the open coat.  I am not going to put a lot of effort into the belt, but stopped by the fabric store on my way home from work today.

For the dark teal part, I went with the fabric that was the best color match.  It ended up being a flannel and I got 1/2 yard (overkill, I know) but I have at least one other hanfu project stewing in the background and having more fabric for belts or neck plackets is a good thing.   I also got 1/2 yard of an off-white cotton.

For the cord, I was excited to find some red cord at JoAnn’s and got 3 yards.  I also saw the pompom cords and knew that was similar to the small bag/pouch that Gu Xiang uses!  But later - another project.  I laid everything out quickly to check and I think I did a damn good job matching the colors even with the terrible lighting in my kitchen.

I hand washed the off-white fabric and it is hanging up to dry.  The teal is currently in the wash with a few other types of fabric and some color catchers to prevent bleeding.  I will iron them once dry.

The pattern making book is vague about belts - I guess they leave you to make a lot of the calls.  I’m going with #2 shown here.  I will sew the red cord onto the white fabric which I will likely sew onto the teal.  For some reason it suggests making it 3/4 of your waist measurement which I’m not keen on.  Interestingly, other belts have a measurement of waist + 4″.  I’m gonna go with that to cover my ass.

This is the most boring calculation and sketch so far but it is always best to draw it out.

I estimate in the photo above the width of the belt is about as wide as the width of a hand.  My hand is about 3″ wide, so I’ll round it up to 4″ for now and see how it looks.  I guess I’ll make a pattern piece, even if it is just a 4″ x 31.5″ rectangle. . . This should come together fairly quickly and once I get this done, I’ll draft the pattern for the jacket.