Cutting into Top Fabric

For the last two days we have been cracking on with making the real garment. Our fitting is on Thursday and because of Abi's work experience we had planned to leave the construction to the three days prior to the fitting and really focus on getting it done, which we are on track with.

On Monday we ironed and laid down the fabric and planned how best to cut out the patterns. We covered the table in paper so that no dirt would get onto our fabric. We folded the back panel until it fitted on the folded fabric (as discussed in an earlier post). We decided to leave it as big as possible and have a smaller seam allowance on this pattern, we do not think any adjustments will need to be made and so this will be fine. On the other panel pieces we decided to leave 5cm allowance where possible, just to check our backs, in case anything was wrong.

We are left with about 50cm excess fabric after laying out the pattern pieces, which is good and hopefully we will not need it!
We then cut out the pieces, chalked them and tacked them where appropriate.

It is very nerve racking cutting into £50 fabric. It's essential not to make any mistakes as it would be so costly to replace.

Right side of pleats 0.5cm apart with one layer of wadding

Wrong side of pleats 0.5cm apart with one layer of wadding

Right side of pleats 0.75cm apart with 2 layers of wadding.

Because we altered the width of the back panel this meant that less fabric was to be pleated to the yoke and therefore our samples from before were no longer relevant. We decided to do 2 more experiments, as shown above, one where we added more wadding and the other where we made the pleats smaller. We calculated that every 3.3cm of fabric on the back had to be pleated into 1cm to be sewn to the yoke.

The 0.5cm sample worked well, the 0.75 fitted to the right size but the wadding means the pleats are not tubular and look quite irregular. 

We ironed stayflex to the back seam allowance of the pleats as I noticed that most historic garments had pleated with canvas. This has made the pleats more stiff which looks good. We therefore decided to iron stayflex to the front and seam allowance of the robe where we are going to pleat. (see below)

Stayflex ironed to the seam allowance and top of the back panel. 

Paper guide 

Finished stitching 

Remove the paper 

Pulling the pleating together - bunching up 

Finished pleats! 

We had been practising different ways of using a guideline so that all our pleats were evenly space and straight. On the toile we just drew the grid formation onto the fabric and then sewed. Though we then covered this with wadding and seam allowance so it was hard to follow anyway.
We decided in the end to make a large paper grid to sew through and then we could rip it off. This worked well, though you had to pay attention to what was also happening with the stitching on the reverse as Abi had to undo a whole row of stitches as they were uneven.

One thing that we cant seem to solve completely is that you can still see a bit of an indent where the rows of threads are. On the original garment the pleats are very smooth and regualr and I wonder if they used a different method so as to solve this problem.