I have a small question for those of you that know how the industry works (@slspencer, @Douglas):
When I sew a suit jacket, after I finish sewing the lining to the jacket, I sew the front facings to the front pieces so they stay together as if they were a single piece of fabric. I hand sew catch stitches taking alternatively one stitch on the facing, then one stitch catching only a single thread of the front piece.
I was wondering if there were alternative solutions to these hand stitches, and I was wondering how the ready-to-wear industry was able to sew the facing to the front piece without doing it by hand, and without creating visible stitches on the front of the jacket
I don’t work in the industry but I had my hands on a $6k suit recently, and the collar prominently features what are obvious hand-done catch-stitches.But if you just don’t like visible stitches, 1) I’m totally with you, and 2) maybe what you want to do is a technique I believe is called understitching, where you sew the seam allowance to the lining (only the lining). It’s intended to keep the lining from rolling and showing on the outside. I’m not sure how well this would work on a suit collar, but it’s something to consider.
Yes. It’s called a “blind stich” machine… or in some cases a “felling machine”. Blind stitch machines are commonly used to hem pants or dresses… where you’e able to sew through the hemmed up part and just catch a thread of the outside fabic without showing through. Mileage varies depending on fabric type and weight. Another common use is pad stiching lapels… instead of spending an hour pad stitching a set of lapels by hand, you can run several rows on the blind stitch in less than a minute. We also use to blind stitch a canvas piece to the under collar to give it shape. And yes… you can blind stitch the facings to the canvas to hold them in place. The way a blind stitch works is there’s a cam on the undeside of the fabric that pushes up the 2 layers of fabric in a ^, and it has a curved needle that loops horizontally, and depending the thckness of the fabric, and how much the cam is pushing up (set by that dial) , determines how much of the bottom layer the needle catches every stitch. For the most part we always used a light weight clear nylon monofilament thread… but in some cases we would use a lightweight poly thread in a matching color. The clear thread does not strech and can cause puckering… that’s where using a poly thread that has some stretch elimnates that.
A felling machine is a simliar concept, but it’s mainly used for hemming the lining to the bottom of jackets. Chances are if you have any off the rack suit jackets, the hem was felled.
We had both type of machines at the shop… a blind stitch is easy to use… even easier than a regular straight stich machine. It’s just a single thread machine that creates a chain stitch. If you mess up, you can just pull the end the thread the right way and it just pulls right out. A felling machine on the other hand takes a knack to using… which I never quite got the hang of.
This is a typical US Blindstich machine… albeit newer than the ones we had:
Just so we’re talking about the same thing. To illustrate, this is a jacket I did in Valentina. I overlapped the front, canvas, and facing here (there’s 2 other parts to the canvas not shown) … the red line indicates where commerically they would blind stitch the facing (with the lining turned back) to the canvas. Which keeps the facing in place, and prevents it from opening up, pulling the front of the coat and lapels, and doing funky things.
Oh… another thing we would do - we would tape the break line using the blind stitch. Here’s a tip… the tape needs to be about 1/2" - 3/4" shorter than the break line… you pull the tape while stiching, adding fullness, and it helps the lapel to roll.
Thank you so much for this detailed answer, I didn’t know that machines like that existed
I’ll try to find a video of a felling machine, I’m very curious to see how it works
Yep ! That’s what I was talking about
My question was more about the step after the one you described @Claudine , the seams that prevent the facing and lining from “inflating”, as @Douglas described in his last message, but thank you very much for your reply
It’s quite an odd machine… they’re used when you have a lining hem that folds up, allowing the jacket to give without pulling on the hem. It’s usually the last sewing step… at least on a well made jacket.
Here’s an even crazy machine we had one of…albeit in better shape than the one in the picture. It was mounted on a huge table like 5x6 feet… it’s called a Jump Baster… and it’s literally used to baste through the front of a coat, canvas lining and all to keep every thing in place. You would just move the jacket front around, hit the pedal, and it would do huge basting stiches. Again it’s just a single thread chain.
There is a hemming stitch on most modern sewing machines, but I don’t think it will work in this instance and it does take some practice to use on hems. Personally, I only use it when I’m really, really lazy and it’s casual wear.
What I suggest is, find yourself a good movie that you’ve been wanting to watch, and just knuckle down and do the stitching by hand. I normally find it very relaxing and therapeutic.
If it’s the stitch I’m thinking of… we hated it. We occasionally would get costumes back that customers used that stich to hem something, and since it’s still a bobbin stich, it’s a PITA to remove.
Yup… that’s the stich. Thing is you can’t just run a seam ripper down the stitch like you would a straight stich, so you have to pick at it stitch by stitch. It’s fine for the home sewer who is only going to hem some piece of clothing once, but has no place in costuming where garments are constantly being altered. On the other hand it is better for hemming pants than using hotglue, which we’ve had customers do.
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