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Custom Wedding Dress & Kimono Upcycled Clothes | オーダーメイドウェディングドレス&着物ドレス

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Making a Tuxedo 2:: More Muslins

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making a tuxedo banner vivat veritasAs I previously wrote, I am currently making a wedding taxedo. It is in the collaboration with Rina, as she made the wedding dress, groom’s dress shirt and bow tie and I am making a tuxedo jacket and pants. The pants have been completed. I just need a proper model for the photos, and if I can get Channing Tatum for this task, I will be most pleased.. Since it is just my dream, I will have to convince Andy to put them on for some pictures. Making the tuxedo pants went pretty smooth despite the fact I used a pattern that was written in Russian, but I will save that story for another day.

The jacket has been extremely time consuming. If you are wondering why nothing new has been updated in the shop, this is why. The first muslin did not fit well, as you can see in this post. I think it would have fit him alright with a few miner adjustment like shortening sleeves, but the problem was that I used a regular fit jacket pattern and the groom wanted a slim fit. I didn’t realize that was what he was going after until the first fitting session. After that I made major pattern adjustments to the BurdaStyle Ehren pattern. It was pretty stressful since I don’t have much experience in sewing men’s clothes except for a few easy t-shirts. But after three muslins and 1 wearable muslin jacket for Andy, I think I finally got the patterns right.

To accomplish the slim fit, I took measurements of the slim fit suit jacket he owns and fits him well. Then I took in a lot on the side, front, back, shorten the jacket length, sleeve length, and changed the shape of the lapel. I wasn’t a big fan of the round collar-ish lapel (not sure how to describe it) that the original pattern had.

If you happen to be on a train during rush hour, you’d notice many business men with super slim fit suits. I don’t know what is up with this super slim fit suit trend in Japan, but some guys look ridiculous with skinny jeans shaped trousers with crotch area that are embarrassing to look at. Thankfully, the groom I’m working with is looking for more regular slim fit than super tight.

making a tuxedo vivat veritas cutting patternsChieSignature

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Making a Tuxedo

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in process2 copyGuess what I am making now? A tux! Rina and I are working together on a wedding that is coming up in the Fall. Rina is making the dress for the bride, bow tie, and dress shirt for the groom, and I’m making the tuxedo for the groom!

I’m excited about the opportunity, but at the same time, I have a lot to learn. I’ve don’t really dabble in men’s wear, save the occasional t-shirt like this, let alone a full suit! The groom knows this, and still gave me the ok and his blessing to work on his.

For the jacket, I decided to use BurdaStyle Ehren #6049 pattern. It has been a while since I used BurdaStyle pattern, and I forgot how long it took to print out the patterns, tape them together and trace the size of my choosing. I spent a whole night doing that! I will say that the convenience is nice, to be able to download it with one click and there you have it.

For the pants, I was just sick of taping the papers together, so I used the pattern from Burda magazine from 2008. When I was in the U.S., one of my very good friends was from the Ukraine. When she went back home for the summer, she bought me a bunch of Burda magazine, which was awesome! The only catch was that they were in Russian. So I stared at the magazine for a while, trying to figure out the size. I entered “waist, Russian, translation” to get the result for “waist” in Russian, so I could find the right size for the groom. Thankfully for the pants, there are only a few pattern pieces; front and back pants, pockets, and fly. Before cutting the muslin pants, I tweaked the pattern a lot based on the measurements of the best fitting pants he currently owned. I shortened the pants and widened the hip and thighs.

in process1 in process3We just finished our first fitting last Saturday. The pants fit the groom almost perfectly (just needs a bit tweaking on hip and thighs), but the tux top needs a lot of modification. I know what happened looking back on the process. The test square in the Ehren pattern turned out to be 11cm x 11cm, instead of 10cm x 10cm. But by the time I saw that, I had already printed out the 50 pages of the pattern and did not want to redo it.

I’ll be updating my first suit making journey here. If you have any tips, advice, or recommended reading for suits making, please send them to my way<3

first fittingChieSignature

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