Liner Notes

Chapter 75

As the weeks of summer wend ever onward, the average guy who aspires to dress like a functioning member of society may come to an impasse; for there are some days that wearing a jacket --any jacket-- seems like an impossible task. A jacket, as I hope I have impressed upon you by this time, is an indispensable part of dressing not just well, but merely adequately.

In previous installments, I have alluded to the Bermuda suit and the unlined jacket for dealing with the heat on vacation, the classic Aloha shirt for casual days at home, as well as the jacket-and-scarf combo for tropical seaside resort wear. But what about those interminable weeks where you are simply going about your business at home and about town? How do you deal with the rising mercury then? Do you give up on proper clothing, put suits on hiatus, and break out the suntan oil and flip flops for the trip to the market or the walk to class?

I hope not, for there is a solution. Not all summer jackets have to be those cotton or seersucker candy-colored featherweight jobs. That's fine for the beach, but it may raise some eyebrows at the office. It's entirely possible to wear a perfectly normal-looking jacket that is no thicker or heavier than a shirt. It's all about what happens under the surface.

A great deal of the comfort of a jacket has to do with the lining. A silk or satin lined jacket serves two purposes: it slips smoothly over your shirt and waistcoat without snagging, and it serves as insulation. Most jackets are fully lined: that is, every bit of the interior surface is covered. Very nice in the winter...but it can be a bit stuffy in July.

The jacket I introduced you to last week is half-lined: silk on the front, sleeves, and shoulders, but the back is a single layer of shell fabric. Sometimes the raw edges of the back seam are covered with a thin roll of silk to prevent fraying. Quite nice when, for instance, you have to sit in a chair for extended periods. Having just that one breathable layer on your back makes a world of difference.

Taking that a step further is the quarter-lined jacket. In this case, the front and back are bare of silk, and the only lining is in the sleeves, and small triangular panels over the shoulders. In fact, when most people refer to an "unlined" coat, they actually mean quarter-lined. They are usually quite loose and unstructured: since there is no front lining, there is also no chest padding nor canvassing.

We can go even further, to skeleton-lined jackets. These have no lining at all except for the sleeves, and all the raw edges are covered with rolled silk strips. Since these don't have shoulder padding or chest padding, they have to be rather carefully fitted so as to not look overly sloppy. Some of the summery resort jackets you find are constructed this way.

Ultimately, jackets can be completely unlined: nothing in the sleeves, nothing on the edges, and but one layer of fabric all 'round. All the raw edges are rolled and basted in place. These jackets have to be fitted nearly like shirts.

One might think that the less lining a jacket has, the less expensive it would be; after all, there's less stuff to sew in, so it would be less work, right? Not at all! Lining covers a multitude of sins, raw edges, and sloppy needling. The more you can see of the interior, the more finished it has to be. Seam turn-unders have to be perfectly even, all the edges have to be carefully dealt with, and the pocket bags are hanging out on the inside and not hidden by silk, so they have to be very carefully made and finished as well. The overall cut is more sensitive to errors: instead of hanging off of the constructed shapes of the pad and canvas on your shoulders, the jacket simply hangs off of YOU.

The solution is simple. Either shell out three times as much for an off-the-peg summer jacket, or hire a tailor to make one for you. But what is the Average Guy to do? We can't afford to throw down good cash for  luxuries like unlined summer jackets...right?

I think you know where I'm going with this. That's right: we're going to make our own! This is a fun, quick-and-easy project at its most basic, or you can go into as much finishing work as you want to...it's one of those things that you can do no matter how much needling experience you have. If you've been following along with The Island of Misfit Clothes, it'll be a piece of cake!

A few caveats, first. This, like all the tailoring projects we handle here, is a compromise of factors. We'll start from a fully-lined jacket, and strip it down as far as we can, hot-rod style. The ugly interior will be exposed, and we'll clean up as best we can, but the result will be decidedly "function over form." Without a lining, the jacket will not drop into place as you are used to; it will be have to be more carefully placed and smoothed to remove snags and wrinkles. The upshot is you will be rewarded with a "stealth" jacket that looks and works like any other, but is as light as a shirt...and it will cost you nothing but your time.

This is the jacket I'll use. It's a salt-and-pepper tweed that is a light and loose weave. I've had it a couple of years now; it's an old alteration that started out as a size 44. It fits well enough, but I have other tweeds I like more for the cooler weather, and other linens I like more for warmer weather. So it's sort of an orphan, always passed over. Gutting it and using it as a "summer unliner" will give it a lot more use!

The point is, don't do this with a new jacket. Start from a secondhand model at best, and preferably use a donor jacket that you're saving from the dustbin. Unlined jackets wear quickly, so this should be reserved for those jackets you're giving a last lease on life.

First, get a good sharp X-acto knife (or a seam ripper) and settle into a comfortable chair. Start by freeing the lining from the rear vent, then the bottom edge, all the way around.

When the bottom hem is loose, start working your way up the front edges. You will see many new and interesting things, as shown here. Cut as far up as you can. In most cases the chest pocket overlaps the lining and into the lapel fabric. No fear; just cut up to that point on both sides for now.

Then turn your attention to the sleeves. Remove the cuff buttons, and cut the lining loose all around the cuff. There may be a stitch or two that holds the sleeve lining up inside the sleeve around the elbow: carefully nip them if needed. Since the sleeve lining is still held in place at the armscye, turn your attention back to the inside of the jacket.

Start from the back of the collar, and carefully release the lining, working around the lapels and down to the top side of the chest pocket. Now you can get to the armscyes and release the sleeve lining, and pull them out. You can see the shoulder padding and chest canvas now, as well as all the raw edges along the seams. The top of the chest pocket bag is tacked in place; nip those off, and the entire lining should now be held in place by the ends of the two chest pockets. If there are any other tack stitches in odd places, now is the place to nip those as well.

About an inch from the mouth of the pocket, cut the lining free. Don't cut the pocket bag! Just the lining, and don't cut it too close, either.

Now is the time to take some attention to prettying up those pocket bags.There's nothing we can do about the fabric or the color, but at least we can hide the raw edges and make things square. Fortunately, it's not hard; just roll the edges under and sew them in place with a hidden running pick-stitch, and press the edges flat. Pay particular attention to the mouth of the chest pocket, and don't inadvertently sew the pocket shut! (Yes, I've done it myself. More than once.)

This is what the pocket bag looks like when it's neatened up.

With the pockets taken care of, unfold the lapel and turn your attention to the canvas. This jacket was pretty lightly canvassed in the first place: the fronts and lapels were interfaced along their length, and the chest pad is a pretty small package of felt and horsehair. If this was a hand-padded and canvassed jacket, it would be a shame to rip it out...fortunately, this is all machine-made stuff, and easy to nip free of the fronts with a few sweeps of the knife. Pay attention to how the canvas is sewn to the armscye. It might be smarter (and less trouble) to cut the canvas out along the seam if it is sewn to the armscye and sleeve together. Same with the shoulder pads.

With the jacket now well and truly unlined, you're nearly done. Tack the end of the pocket bag in place, to keep the pocket from sagging. Don't forget to replace the cuff buttons, and your jacket can be worn as-is, right now, and you can finish it off to whatever degree you want at your leisure. Primarily, you need to decide what to do with the raw edges. Your choices are 1) do nothing, 2) bind the edges and hold them in place with a blind zigzag stitch, 3) roll and tack the edges and hold them down as you did with the pocket bags, with a running blind pick stitch, or 4) use silk bias tape to bind the edges with a true skeleton lining.

Since I had altered this jacket to fit previously, this didn't generate enough slop in the fit to make further alterations necessary. As you can see, with the internal structure gone, it assumes a much more casual and drapey cut. You may be tempted to take in the shoulders and side seams at this point to get a nice tight shoulder line and silhouette -- but remember the whole point of the exercise is to make as light and breezy a jacket as possible for the Unbearable Days! With linen trousers and a light summer shirt, this is as comfortable a jacket to wear now as anyone could ask for.

Click here to go to the next essay chronologically.

Click here to go back to the previous essay chronologically.

Click here to go back to the beginning.

Let's Get Shanked

(Part 15 of the series "The Island of Misfit Clothes.")

Chapter 74

You didn't think I'd forgotten about our jacket project, did you? It's been a few weeks since we've worked on it, but we're nearly completed now that the lining's been sewn back in. Fits like a glove, doesn't it? All those weeks spent ripping seams, repositioning, and sewing, re-sewing, and sewing again have really paid off...this worthless tent of a suit hangs on you now like a thousand-dollar bespoke item.

Well, nearly so. The shortcuts we've used to systematically and gradually minimize the faults in fit, would make a bespoke tailor blanch in horror -- but the end result is very, very good indeed, especially for a novice needleman like yourself. Well done.

This week we'll look at how to place the buttons, but with a twist -- I'm not going to use the jacket you've been staring at lo these many months to demonstrate. For a change of pace, we'll use a new jacket I just acquired, and I'll tell the story behind it.

We are in the heat of the summer season. It's now time to shift your wardrobe into summer mode, and that means taking your polo, golf, and aloha shirts out of storage and placing them back in rotation. If you followed along last Autumn, when I demonstrated how to store your summer shirts away, you should now have a stack of crisp, folded, tissue-wrapped shirts that await your attention, as the returning of old friends after a long absence: the clean scent and starched folds of your summerwear emerge from their paper-wrapped hibernation, new, unwrinkled, and fresh, and yet also familiar.

In keeping with my own advice given in last week's installment, I decided it was time to "roll over" my summer jackets as well. Yes, it is time for some jackets to go, in favor of others. Out with my light wool Yves Saint-Laurent. Serviceable and about a quarter-century old, but very conservative and very French. I've worn it for years, but it has gotten increasingly less use over time, as my personal style has shifted away from the "mid-century grey" cut.

Its replacement found me by surprise. Shopping with my wife for something else entirely, and strolling through the suit section of a local second-hand shop, I took a double-take at one that caught my eye. I was unprepared, and as I did not have my measurements or tape with me, dismissed it and walked on. My wife, who knows "that look" well, intervened. Forget the measurements, she said, and just try it on. Oh, very well.

I fell in love immediately. Well cut, good proportions, and right in line with all the tenets of Classic Style. It fit nearly perfectly -- no alterations would be necessary; this one is wearable as-is.

Another bonus for this ready-made summer suit: it is made of very light stuff, and is half-lined: that is, the lining only extends across the chest and over the shoulders.

Other than a small strip at the rear vent, the back isn't lined at all. You may not think this would make a large amount of difference, but it does -- it will be easy-wearing on all but the hottest days. The label shows it to be an Anderson-Little, which was doubtless made when the name was owned by Woolworth's, probably in the late 1970s.

This jacket has some very attractive features, like "pagoda shoulders" that terminate in a heavily rolled sleevehead. Notice the outer edge of the lapels point directly to the top of the shoulder. The resulting generous lapels stand well within the limits of Classic Style, in stark contrast to the current fad of wee little skimpy lapels.

Advanced Geometry nightmares?

"Pagoda shoulders" refer to the line from neck to arm: it is a slight concave curve, like the roof of a Japanese pagoda. The resulting saddle-shaped form is called a hyperbolic paraboloid, and takes a fair amount of effort to execute well.

Another nice touch is the strongly shaped collar line. The elegant curves allow it to sit perfectly flat against the curve of the shoulder.

The chest canvassing is very firm and shaped, perfectly smooth, and sits into the waist nicely. It is a very English cut, despite being a thoroughly American jacket.

 The length is shown to be in line with Classic Style as well: long enough to curl one's fingers over the hem with a straight arm. The sleeve is just long enough to touch the base of the wrist. That's slightly long if worn with long sleeves...but just perfect when paired with a short-sleeved shirt, which is in fact my plan.

As perfect as all this seems, it isn't completely perfect, or else I wouldn't be talking about it, now would I? As you know, I need to adjust its button stance to account for my slightly low shoulder. As I've shown this before in a previous installment, you may ask, why go through the process again? Two reasons. One: the first time, I demonstrated the process on a tailor's form. This time, I'll show how to do it directly on yourself. And second, the first example used covered buttons, and our jacket project (and this jacket as well) uses regular four-hole buttons.

Whether your shoulders are symmetrical or not, this will guarantee your jacket will fit as perfectly as possible around your neck, whether you are just moving the buttons slightly, as here, or starting from scratch, as we are with our project jacket.

First, put the jacket on, over a collared shirt. (Make sure the collar fits, of course, and buttoned up. We're getting a baseline dimension, after all.) Reach up, grab the collar from both ends, center it on the back of your neck, and pull it forward firmly. Don't think about your shoulders -- hold them naturally.

Keeping the tension on the collar, slide your hands down the lapels, and bring the fronts together. (Notice that the buttons don't line up with the buttonholes? Typical.) Make sure you are still holding your shoulders naturally.

Slide a straight pin into the button-side by going in right through the eye of the buttonhole. Push the pin all the way through, so the head of the pin marks exactly where the button needs to be. Do this for all the buttonholes.

Relax your arms and your shoulders, shrug a couple of times, and let your arms hang naturally. (Note that the fronts aren't falling away -- a sign of proper jacket balance.) The pins and buttonholes should be exactly opposite each other. It's then a simple matter to sew the buttons in the right place.

Did I say "simple matter?" Why yes, but it's not as easy as sewing a shirt button: you can't just go in one hole and out the other a couple of times and be done with it. You don't want the stitches to show on the fabric behind the button, for one thing; and the other is that little mushroom-stalk of thread under the button, called a shank. The button needs to sit a little "proud" to poke through the buttonhole. How do you do it? Well, first, cut the existing button off, and remove the threads.

Load your needle with buttonhole or upholstery thread. Start your needle on the back side about an inch away from the straight pin, run sideways inside the fabric...

...and come out on the topside exactly where the head of the pin is. Remove the pin, pull the line almost all the way through...

...and secure it by tying it off to a single thread on the front side. Clip the thread on the back side, pull the fabric a little, and the end of the line will disappear into the inside of the jacket. That's a neat enough trick in itself, but there's more!

The secret to sewing a shank button is... [insert drum roll] ...a wooden match. No fancy gizmos or appliances required.

Slide the button down the line, with the match behind it. The idea we're pursuing is to sew the button down around the match. The first two stitches will straddle the match and hold everything in place. This is done as you would expect: straight down through the fabric, and straight up again through an adjacent hole in your button. The difference is, only catch a single thread on the back side of the fabric, and those two wee stitches will be practically invisible.

This is what it looks like from the side. Unlike shirt buttons, don't run the line in a criss-cross through the holes, but work the box: up through top right, down through bottom right, up through bottom left, down through top left.

Work the box three or four times around, but unlike the first two stitches, when you go down through the button...

...tilt the button up and don't go through the fabric. Pull the line through, then take a small sideways bite through the fabric. Go deep enough to grab the canvas, then up through the button again.

The button will be firmly sewn down around the matchstick, but without any stitches showing on the backside.

Slide the matchstick out...

...and wrap the thread tightly around the base of the button about a dozen times, until you've made a stout little trunk.

Stab the needle right through the trunk, twice, to secure the line.

Run the needle sideways from the base of the button, come out on the backside about an inch away...

...and clip the end of the line.

Hide it inside as before, and your button will have no loose ends showing; a very professional finish.

The result is a collar that sits tight to the neck and smooth down the front...

...and when worn open, the buttons are perfectly even.

This little number is ready to take its place in my spring-and-summer wardrobe, where it'll last for years. Oh, did I mention the cost? Forget bespoke, forget off-the-rack, forget big box warehouses. This jacket has hardly been worn, if in fact its been worn at all. It shows no wear, and the original yellow chalk marks under the buttons were still there. Six dollars. Six. You can do it too. And you should.

EPILOGUE:

Setting the buttons also brings us to the end of our jacket project, and with it, we bid a fond farewell to the Island of Misfit Clothes series. Before we go, let's take a look at the actual project suit, after the same button stance alteration that we just went through today.

Here we are! It went well, all things considered: you never would be able to tell that this jacket was a shapeless barrel shaped bag when we started out. This should be proof positive that not only can you make such an outsized suit fit you, it can fit your idiosyncratic posture as well; and you can do it yourself with a minimum of fuss, with basic tools and a just little bit of initiative.

The details that remain can be performed with relative ease using the knowledge you've acquired so far. The sleeves are a tad short and must be let out. After your work with sleeve linings, hem lengths, pressing, and such, it will be a piece of cake for you! (Hint: release the lining at the wrist, remove the buttons, fold down the turn-under to length, press, and re-assemble.) Likewise with the excess girth in the waistcoat -- the side seams can be taken in the exact same way as we did with the jacket. The trousers we've already covered, in the first weeks of The Island. As it turns out, I won't have to take these trousers in, as I seem to have gained about four inches in my waist over the past year: all that was needed was to let the cuff out to gain an extra inch in the leg. And that's a good lesson: when you take an article of clothing in, leave the extra turn-in in place, just in case you gain weight and have to let it back out!

Click here to go to the next essay chronologically.

Click here to go back to Part Fourteen of The Island of Misfit Clothes.

Click here to go back to the previous essay chronologically.

Click here to go back to Part One of The Island of Misfit Clothes.

Click here to go back to the beginning.

Hemming and Hawing

(Part 14 of the series "The Island of Misfit Clothes.")

Chapter 67

This week, we return to The Island to put the finishing touches on our project jacket. To refresh your memories, we left off with all the hard work completed: trimmed down from a boxy size 46 to a trim and much more fitted size 39. Our side seams were re-worked, our shoulders re-cut and narrowed, and the sleeves re-set. From the outside, it looks like a whole new animal -- but the lining is still unattached inside, so this week we'll turn our attention there.

The first thing to do is tidy up the bottom hem. Lay out the jacket on a board, spread out flat like this. Tuck the lining up out of the way to give you room to work.

Using the outside edges as fixed points, turn under the hem to make a straight line. You may have to press some old creases out before you press the new crease in. Then stitch the turn-up in place. Since the inside won't be seen, and the hem doesn't bear any load or strain, you can use a long running pick-stitch along the inside that just catches one or two threads on the outer side. Another option is a hidden pick-stitch, that runs inside the crease and picks up a thread on both sides. There are other more specialized stitches that will also help keep the raw edge from fraying, but we won't bother with those for now.

The lining must be loose on the inside of the jacket. If it's too tight, it runs the risk of gathering the outside fabric into puckers or pulls. And if it's not attached straight down, it can make the jacket look as if it's twisting aroung you! So turn the jacket completely inside-out, and put it on your form. Smooth the lining down across the back.

Turn the lining under and pin it at the bottom edge, making sure that it is a little loose, but not hanging too far down.

Then smooth the lining across the shoulders, and pin it in place just shy of the armscye. This will make locating the lining around the shoulder a bit easier later on.

Lay the jacket on the board again, spread out as before, and run a very loose running stitch to hold it in place. Stitch the lining just underneath the fold to ensure it stays loose, and press over the stitches. There are, again, special tailor's stitches just for this area: a looping zigzag that loosely holds the lining in place but doesn't restrict its motion. It's worthwhile to learn how to do it, but it's not strictly necessary here: if you are careful to keep the lining free, a hidden pick stitch will work just fine if you don't snug the stitches at all.

You will notice that the lining is wider than the shell by several inches. Not surprising, considering how much we took out of its circumference! You needn't worry about taking any lining out: we'll just insert some pleats where needed. Before you stitch, divide the extra length along the hem into two equal parts, and put the pleats directly underneath the armholes. (Oops...Editing error! That green circle is under the existing pleat. The new one is just to the right.)

With the hem stitched and the pleats in place, press the new pleats into the lining.

Now turn your attention to the shoulders. We'll stitch the body lining around the armscye first, and then stitch the sleeve lining on top of that to get back to the original look. Starting from the front, use a hand inside the jacket to smooth the lining from the lapel to the armscye seam, and a hand outside to pin right through to the lining. It'll take every bit of your quilting pin to get through all the padding at the top of the shoulder, but it can be done.

This is what it looks like from the inside. Notice the large amount of extra lining that ends up inside the armscye.

Continue working your way around the armscye. Make use of the pins you placed in the shoulder earlier to smooth the fabric to the back of the scye. Form the pleat under the arm, that is a continuation of the pleat you made in the hem. 

You will need another pleat just behind the top of the shoulder, running to the collar seam. Pin these pleats in place. 

Make a running pick-stitch all around the armscye. From the outside, dip the needle in right at the seam, and keep the stitches fairly short, considering the depth of the padding. You aren't just holding the lining in place now, but all the padding as well. There's no need to trim the excess lining from the sleevehead, as it will sit happily where it is, and be covered by the sleeve lining.

Now it's time to add that sleeve lining. Holding the jacket vertically by the collar, reach into the sleeve from the inside and pull the lining through. Make sure it is straight and not twisted, and the top of the lining aligns with the top of the armscye. Attaching it is a simple matter of a running stitch around, right over top of the stitches you've just done, sewing lining to lining.

With all the seams completed, try the jacket on and take a good look at the overall fit. Even with careful measurement, mistakes can happen. If the lining ends up pulling a bit of the shell fabric around, re-sew that bit a little looser. We're almost done with this one! All that remain are sleeve length and button stance, and we'll tackle those issues on our next visit to The Island. Stay tuned!

Click here to go to Part Fifteen of The Island of Misfit Clothes.

Click here to go the next essay chronologically.

Click here to go back to Part Thirteen of The Island of Misfit Clothes.

Click here to go back to the previous essay chronologically.

Click here to go back to Part One of The Island of Misfit Clothes.

Click here to go back to the beginning.