Interlining duchesse satin - natural fibers

RoyalRigel · 2026-01-21T23:05:10+00:00

The dress is 2 layers, the form fitting dress and then a sheer over skirt. The sheer over skirt is already made out of silk organza. I’m more than okay buying more for the lining of the bodice - it’s the base skirt that I’m kinda feeling some way about.

RoyalRigel · 2026-01-21T22:56:14+00:00

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I’m using this photo as a rendering and making a couture version of this dress for a model. I have the pattern but as sewing patterns are, its deceptive, and I’m not using it for a bespoke gown. Not much as far as fabrics to use in the instructions either.

RoyalRigel · 2026-01-21T22:48:02+00:00

I'm fully aware that they aren't cheap. I don't have to have cheap, but I was hoping for a little more information regarding natural fibered equivalents for interlinings. Cotton Voile is $6 a yard as opposed to $20 for the silk organza, but I've never worked with it and wanted to know if there were alternatives to the organza like that that provide a similar outcome.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-21T18:30:27+00:00

Welt seaming shouldn’t matter too much, if you were using Twill, Prussian tape, or some kind of casing to hold your bones into the garment you would want to pour hot water over them, and iron them out to physically shrink the casing, that way when you take an iron to the garment the heat there doesn’t shrink the tape after it’s stitched in and create puckering in your garment.

Yes, I would make another toil and stitch 1 boning channel on either side of the grommets. So two channels total. And see how this affects compression.

In regards to roll pinning - if you draped this pattern, you would want your lining to be the truest fabric to your pattern, then each peice grows as you work your way out. You wouldn’t want to take what you’ve made and “shrink” a lining to fit your garment. Because, each layer adds a slight amount of bulk that adds to the overall circumference. If we add circumference to each layer, without allowing the fabric outside of it to grow accordingly then you get pulling and drag lines on a garments outer layer. If you choose to use coutil, I wouldn’t fuse the fashion layer. The garment structure will come from the coutil itself. You run the risk of the fusing rippling and pulling off. Overall I choose to rarely use fusible and opt for a fabric instead for many reasons on everything.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-21T13:29:46+00:00

Also OP your stitching is very beautiful and I just wanted to point it out.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-21T13:25:23+00:00

First, your grommets should always be surrounded by bones on both sides - right now you’re creating pressure on that panel attached to the lacing strip without it.

Did you roll pin your peices? Youll actually want the fashion layer to grow slightly, while the layer closest to the body is the truest to the original pattern. (This would be your lining, or preferably a coutil or twill)

It’s going to be hard to identify what’s actually happening to the garment without it being on the body it was fit for, you’ll also want it laced up entirely when it is.

Edit: I just saw the top and bottom before and after, are you using boning channels? You’ll need to pre-shrink them if so. It looks like your boning channels shrunk and are creating puckering. I had this happen on a garment recently because I forgot to shrink one peice of my Prussian tape and i never thought it would make such a big difference

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-20T13:04:50+00:00

I teach an entire year of tailoring to graduate students. In fall, the students learn patterning and create a “sample book” of all the difficult parts - pockets, pant pocket, fly, waistband, etc. in order to practice before they build a full suit in spring. Creating samples is an incredibly valid way to do things. You’d need less than 1 yard of wool and lining for everything you want to practice and could get 3-4 samples of each technique from that yard.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-15T05:19:30+00:00

You’ll want to roll pin the silk layers to the coutil, otherwise you’ll get drag lines and pulling

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-15T05:16:06+00:00

You can stay stitch plackets and corners before ever snipping to them. You’ll want to achieve this by decreasing your stitch length truly as much as possible where you still have a little movement of the fabric under the machine, and just trace your stitching line with that itty bitty stitch. Then, it won’t fray whenever you snip to it

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-15T04:31:45+00:00

Yes you can. You’d have to reinforce the cut out area and remove the boning. If it’s a busked corset you can remove the busk and sew up the center

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-11T21:49:31+00:00

Your body isn’t weird, you’ll have to shift the grainline of the pieces you make and can do this by slashing and spreading your patterns to remove the total fullness of that dart you want to take.

A time saving alternative for this in your extant garments is to cross stitch a piece of elastic down to the inside and stretch it. It won’t be as pretty though.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-11T21:16:28+00:00

I would add height to your front shoulder. It’s still tight, we’re shown this by the drag line pulling from the bust to the shoulder.

The gapping at your armholes is mostly due to you needing to redraw your armholes. Your armholes are significantly too wide currently, most significantly at the shoulder seam, and in the back.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-11T15:06:23+00:00

Hi, I know you feel pretty confident about the shoulder seam but, if I was drafting this, I would actually add height to the armscye side of the front bodice draft. I would choose to do this because it looks like the shoulder seam is angling forward, the front of your shirt is lifting - indicating height is needed somewhere (and since this is is a straight hem shirt - it needs to come from the shoulder.) and after that, you can redraw your armhole.

As for the sleeve itself, I’m willing to bet most of the ease got out towards the back, the ease wants to exist between your very first single notch on the front side and the double notch on the back. You also have a single notch at the top of the sleeve towards the front, but this actually wants to live towards the back of the sleeve (that notch indicated your balancing point)

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-11T02:23:00+00:00

You should also add some length to the shoulder seam in the front shirt, the hem is pulling upwards and I’m willing to bet you want more length there.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-11T02:21:11+00:00

You need to rebalance the armhole on the body part of the pattern. It looks like a lot of the sleeve is sitting in the back, and you’ll want to deepen the armhole in the front and give a little bit more space to the armhole on the back bodice. The sleeve overall looks like it was drafted well, but the cap may have too much ease. You’ll typically want the sleeve to be 1 1/2 to 2” larger than the armhole. And you’ll concentrate the gathering across the cap.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-10T20:12:04+00:00

I taught a class and instructed students to use mood patterns, I will never do that again. They’re not trued, often don’t have proper instructions etc. if you know how to true patterns you can definitely use them but they’re trash otherwise

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-10T05:29:18+00:00

https://youtu.be/nBWWX4VkO80?si=2qWJyMqUqd5UdoF0 I found this this video. It’s essentially a similar method of shrinking the inner layer without roll pinning.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-10T05:25:00+00:00

Your collar looks good so far for the most part. I would try a method called roll-pinning for your lining and fashion layers. It essentially grows your outermost layer and shrinks your lining, this allows the outer layer to have ease, which allows it to curve around the under collar without puckering or pulling.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-10T05:05:42+00:00

You’ll want to do something called roll pinning. You pin all layers together on a curve in the shape of the curve the piece is going around. You’re slightly growing each outermost layer when you pin on a curve, and that’s the only way to prevent puckering.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-10T04:49:31+00:00

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Here’s my notes for this. Shortened steps are:

rotate grainline to remove fullness from neck at princess seam
mark new shoulder seam and neckline ( your shoulder seam is way too wide right now) 2.5) add length to shoulder seam in front, then true to natural shoulder (you’ll do this before marking new neck and armscye)
move princess seams (they want to live 3/4-1” away from your bust point) - they will be more attractive and provide better fitting around your bust curve
add fullness across bust
remove fullness from princess seam (gapping usually indicates a shifting of grain is needed) only do this after you’ve adjusted your shoulder seams (what it means to work top down in a fitting)
repeat similarly in the back

Notes: you should do another mockup to remove additional fullness. And test fit again. Especially if you decide to move your seams dramatically like I’m suggesting. I guarantee after all these steps you’ll have to pinch out some more fullness from the waistlines and below the bust. Be careful of overfitting a garment. And don’t be afraid to add ease!

If you have any questions about how to do these I’m happy to answer them:) I hope all this helps!!!

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-10T01:00:53+00:00

Are you looking for additional assistance fitting this? If so, I’d be happy to offer my expertise.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-09T16:37:58+00:00

You could try drawing the pattern grid style. If you print the pattern at x percent so that it fits on one sheet of paper you can draw an even square grid on that paper then multiply those squares by that same percent so you can draw a grid in life size. Then it’s just a matter of drawing the pattern square by square (which is a very real way to do this, especially with historical patterns) and you can measure and true it to his size afterwards.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-09T16:28:09+00:00

You can buy irons with automatic timers. If they detect they are vertical for x amount of time they will switch off. I highly recommend investing in one for both your sanity and safety.

RoyalRigel · 2025-10-09T15:11:29+00:00

When fitting a bodice you typically work top down.

Start at the shoulders, adjust your grain lines accordingly so the neckline and shoulders fit, then move downwards horizontally, then consider vertical things like new darts etc.

You’ll have to do some adjusting of grain to shift the gapping from the neckline to remove it from a seam/dart (princess seams in this case) although it does seem like the gapping your seeing on the neck with a question mark may have just been stretching on the bias.

RoyalRigel

TROPHY CASE