Back yet again

Just a quick update on the suit progress today.

I cut and made the back and fronts of the suit for the moleskin version last weekend.

I am basing my pattern on a dissected old Honest Dragon suit I bought ages ago. The suit wasn't up to much, so it a cheap sacrifice to get a decent pattern for my own version.

I am trying to keep things as simple as possible, so am only changing the pattern as and when inaccuracies are found, or where the suit failed to fit badly, which it did often!

The back of the suit is relatively easy, and did not require much in the way of recutting. Seen above I am about to cut the material for the back. The extra bits at the bottom are used to make the vent in the back.

I took measurements of the back belt from the Honest Dragon suit, and compared them to various photographs to ascertain how many pinstripes it should ideally cover (five). I then cut a pattern for it based on what I had found.

The belt was cut in moleskin, interfaced with iron-on interfacing and the long edges folded and pressed to make it to the right size (as seen here).

I then carefully pinned it to the sewn back, just above the split, being careful to keep things nice and square. When I top-stitched it into place, I made sure I didn’t catch the back vent fabric in with the belt, as I would need to attach the lining to it later. 

All went well, so I put the back to one side until it was needed again and moved onto the fronts, which were much more of a challenge.

The cut of the lapel on the Honest Dragon suit is pretty bad. It has a peculiar curve to the edge where the lapel folds above the top button. I needed to totally change this as the front edge needs to follow the line of the pinstripes.

I am not an expert on cutting lapels, so it took me four or five attempts in calico tests to get the shape right, compared to the collar.

Eventually I got there. The finished pattern is seen here, although there were a few things I needed to get right: the front edge up to the lapel needs to be totally vertical, so it would follow the line of the pinstripes; the line of the darts to tailor the front again needs to run parallel to the pinstripes; and the little curve at the bottom front edge, which is used to create a neat and tidy hemline.

I'll show a bit more about the lapel when I get round to doing the collar.