a nice super 160's cloth and london
Published: Monday, December 10th 2007
I have almost finished this suit below for one of my clients.
The cloth is a really nice Super 160's light coloured fabric with a subtle broken over checked pattern from one of my local cloth merchants.
The picture below shows a section of the left side of the jacket.
I have baste pulled most of the jacket because the fabric is so light in weight, it makes the pressing off of the jacket SO much easier.
If I leave the baste stitches in because of the way I make my jackets, I press my jackets a little at a time as I make them, this would leave impressions in the the cloth that are very hard to remove.
You can see one of these slight impressions I am talking about behind the breast welt pocket.
The next picture shows a closer shot of the collar and lapel.
You can tell the collar has been hand drawn ( hand sewn ) as you can see the slight irregular stitching that joins the collar to the facing/lapel.
The difference between hand sewn and machine sewn is easy to distinguish with this particular seam, a gentle tug on the collar to lapel will 'ease' the stitches apart when done by hand.
When this seam is done by machine, it will be as tight as a drum with very even stitches with non of the machined stitches showing, it will have no slight irregularity, or 'roughness' to the seam.
This is just one of the areas you should be looking carefully at to make sure your tailor is giving you a Bespoke garment, if this is what he says you are getting!
The next picture just gives a slightly closer shot of the cloth, and the breast welt pocket.
The nice subtleness of the cloth comes through in this picture.
I was in London this weekend seeing new clients, and conducting fittings on existing ones.
I am quite lucky as my brother Mark lives in London ( he married a 'southerner'! ) so I normally go down the night before and stay at his house.
This is convenient as it saves me the extremely high cost of London Hotels, but throws up a slight problem, it means I do not have a 'base' to work out of.
I don't mind this too much, as I have been very lucky in that most of the people I have been seeing lately have all been situated very close together.
While in London I do have the option of using the fitting rooms of Scabal the cloth merchants at no 12 Savile Row.
I have never used these fitting rooms, which are free for any tailor to use, as I just don't like the thought of only being able to offer customers fabrics that are from Scabal bunches.
Plus, I leave Savile Row for the Savile Row tailors. What I mean by this is I am not a Savile Row trained tailor and I don't pretend to be by using the Scabal fitting rooms located there.
The picture below shows my brother Mark on the right with the brolly, my niece Nicola to the left, Thomas with Louisa in the push chair and Julie and Laura in the back ground.
Further behind is Margaret and David, Mark's wife and son.
I took this picture on the Saturday afternoon at London Zoo, it was chucking it down!
Regardless of the weather, it is always nice to see Mark and his family as we do not get to see too much of each other.
The next picture shows a nice traditional Barathea cloth before it has been cut it for one of my London clients.
I have actually now cut this cloth, and conducted the fitting on my client.
This will be a three piece dinner suit with a single breasted jacket, a peaked lapel, single button front to the coat and a 'Wooster' style waistcoat with lapels.
A Wooster style waistcoat is one which cuts down to the front, rounded from the chest with a short buttoning front of about 4 fairly close buttons.
At least that's what I think of one as!
I shall try to remember to take some pictures and post them for an update on the whole outfit.
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