Time to Tailor

As many of you are no doubt aware, I like to do a little sewing from time to time. I did this one a few months ago. As you can tell from my pasty white skin, I was indoors studying a lot at the time, and this was a good way for me to unwind from school. This was the most involved project that I had attempted to date, and I was very proud of the results.

I like to troll the thrift stores wherever I am to look for bargains, from time to time these bargains include a nice suit. Usually I just taper the pants a little and I am good to go, if the jacket is too big I just leave it for another lankier (or thicker as the case may be with different suits) guy to find and utilize. For this suit though it was in such great condition and it was such a good price ($15 for a three piece suit) I talked myself into attempting a riskier job. I was going to shorten the bottom of the jacket by three to four inches.

As you can see below, this suit was much to long for me. I am not sure what kind of string bean was wearing this before me, but dang.
The first thing that I had to do was unpick the lining and figure out where I was going to put the seam that would curve around the bottom of the jacket up to the buttons. This is the most visible part of the project so I was a little worried. You can see below where I marked from a template that I copied off another jacket and inked it on there and then pinned it. What you cannot see is that it took me about three or four tries sewing and unpicking til I finally had it right. The other side only took me two tries though, so I did improve on this project.
The next step was difficult as well, mostly because you can change a seam, but you cannot unpick something that you have cut off. In order to get the corner right on this jacket I needed to make sure that the seam would lay flat once I cut off the excess material, but I could not do that until I started cutting, catch 22. I finally bit the bullet and did my best, and it turned out, after a little tweaking. Below you can see that first seam finished and cut.

I was pretty proud of that corner, I really think that I did a good job and people seem surprised when I tell them that I did it myself. Surprised in a good way. After the corner I just needed to cut off all the excess along the bottom of the jacket, press the cuff part (that is one of the trickiest parts of tailoring I think, how much pressing the fabric comes into play in making the garment look right, I have actually considered getting some tailors tools that you use just for pressing stuff and shaping fabric) and then sew it up. I sewed all of the bottom part of the jacket, the lining and the back corners by the vents by hand. It actually did not take too long and was really good practice. Plus, on something as visible as the bottom of a jacket I did not want to risk the blind hem.

Here is the jacket when I had finished one side. This is good to see how much I had cut off as well as to compare my work with the original tailoring of the jacket. If I do say so myself, I did a pretty good job, especially for a rookie.


I thought I took some after pictures without my hands in the pocket, but I do not know where they are and do not want to look through a bunch of folders tonight for a picture that may or may not be there, so here is one that I did find. This was really a picture to show a cool tie and shirt that I got at Goodwill, but it will do. This was actually a really fun project. I got to try some stuff that I had never done before and my confidence is a lot higher with sewing now. I know that I can just be careful and unpick if it does not work out. Next project? I am currently tapering about five pairs of pants that I got on my run of D.I.s that I made when I went from L.A. to S.L.C. I went D.I.s in Las Vegas, St. George, Cedar City, Provo, Midvale, and Salt Lake, not to mention a few Saver's on the way and some Goodwills in California. It is the summer of thrift for sure. Look for future posts highlighting some of my finds!