Last week StacySews helped you get the sleeves on your Ziggi jacket, so we are now at the FINAL step of your beautiful creation – the lining! Sometimes constructing and installing a lining makes sewists break out into hives, but it is really not that difficult. Like all things sewing, it gets easier with practice. If you have never put in a lining, let me recommend a good book on the subject, Taunton Press’ Easy Guide to Sewing Linings by Connie Long. It’s a great little book with plenty of pictures and clear instructions.
OK, have you cut out your lining yet? No? Well, no worries, I have a couple of tips for that. Is your lining slippery like mine? Silk charmeuse or poly slippery-like-charmeuse fabric? Try laying out the lining on paper, and then placing the pattern pieces on top and pinning the through BOTH the paper and lining fabric. Basically you want a sandwich with some kind of paper on the bottom, then the lining fabric, and finally the pattern pieces on top. Pin through all 3 layers. I used tissue paper because that was what I had readily available, but use what you have – it really doesn’t matter.
My next tip is to use serrated scissors if you have them. Not pinking shears, but serrated shears. I own a pair of Kai 7240-AS Serrated Edge Shears, which REALLY, REALLY help prevent slippery lining fabric from running away from you while you are trying to cut it out. If you don’t own these scissors or similar ones, the paper trick helps hugely, but I pinned my silky poly lining to paper AND used my serrated shears. (I use all my tools as frequently as possible when I sew to reduce their “cost per use” as much as I can. In my mind it helps justify my frequent tool expenditures. Clever, eh? 😉 ) Here’s the backside view of a few lining pieces cut out with the tissue paper backing.
OK, next up you stitch together your lining. Since you have totally assembled your jacket at this point, the steps to stitch together the lining will look very familiar, with 2 exceptions.
See the stitching on the left in the picture below? That is the center back lining pleat. If you are reading this post and your lining is not yet cut out, my recommendation would be to increase the center back seam by the “pleat width” for the entire length of the center back pieces. That is the “normal” way of getting enough wearing ease into a lining. In the Ziggi pattern the additional wearing ease is only thru the upper section of the center back – and really – it should run down the entire length of the center back seam. If you do go the extra mile and add extra width to the upper back pattern, also be sure to stitch a pleat similar to the upper one at the waist so that the center back edge still fits onto the lower center back pattern piece. Make sense?
OK, now you can just stitch all the lining pieces together in the same relative position as the outer jacket pieces. I didn’t take any pix of the steps because it is the same order/process as stitching together the jacket body pieces – minus all the zipper/pocket hoo-haa. Easy, right? Also stitch your sleeves together, making sure to leave the back seam open where indicated for the sleeve zips. Did you put those sleeve zippers in already? There was NO REASON to wait until the lining step to sew the sleeve zips in place, BTW. If you didn’t go ahead with that when you were mucking with the sleeves, get it done. IMHO, don’t waste your time with the sleeve gusset that Shams described on her blog. She did a lovely job describing the process, but in my book it is just extra fussiness. I have another leather moto jacket that I purchased a couple of years ago, and I have never unzipped the sleeves. But of course, your jacket: your call. Machine stitch your sleeves into the armscye. Don’t worry if there are a few little puckers around the sleeves, they won’t show. I didn’t really get much puckering with my lining. You should have something that looks similar to this when you are done:
Everything on the lining is stitched together EXCEPT the lower half of the back sleeve seam, and the middle front lining piece does not extend across the entire shoulder yoke. See in the closeup how the front shoulder area between the yoke and the front facing piece looks like an “L” ? Also be aware the stitching of this seam stops 3/8 inch from the raw edge at the neck edge. You will see why later.
If you decide to do something to finish off the lower edge of the front facing, you will need to do this before attaching the lining. I added a Hong Kong seam finish to the bottom edge of my jacket facing – you could also serge the facing edge – but I love Hong Kong seam finishes.
One other thing I think is important to do before stitching in your lining: catchstitch the bottom hem and the front facings. If you decide to do this, make sure your catchstitching is far enough away from your raw edge so that you have enough room to easily stitch your lining to your jacket edges, and also keep your catchstitch plenty loose so the thread kind of “floats” on the fabric.
Drum roll, please! You are now going to machine stitch the Ziggi lining to the Ziggi jacket. Remember that you will be using a 3/8″ SA everywhere EXCEPT the neck, which uses a 1/4″ SA.
So, I attached the hem edges first, with the right side of the lining hem on the right side of the hem turnback. You cannot stitch ALL the way up to the facing – be sure to start and stop an inch or so away on both ends. OK, that wasn’t so bad. Next you pin the right side of the front facing to the right side of the jacket facing edge, making sure to match up the notches. Again, do not stitch all the way to the hem edge of the facing. In the picture below the hem is on the right side of the frame, and the facing is along the top of the frame. See the little bit of Hong Kong edge finish in the upper right. Yeah, baby! 😉
At the top of the facing edge, I stopped, or “broke”, my stitching 3/8″ away from the top edge of the facing, and backstitched to secure it. This line of stitching is on the right side of the frame below. Then I connected the yoke lining to the upper edge of the jacket facing using a 3/8″ seam, and backstitching at both ends. This stitching is in the upper center part of the frame below. Finally, I started a new line of stitching using a 1/4″ SA that attached the lining neckline to the jacket collar neckline. That line of stitching is under and to the left of my thumb in the frame below. This might seam confusing to read, but when you actually start connecting the parts it is easier and more logical than you might think. At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it! 🙂
Next you need to repeat the above steps down the other side of the jacket, and you have completely attached the lining body to the jacket body! This process is called “bagging a lining” – which means sewing the entire jacket into the jacket by machine rather than using hand-sewing. If you want to understand the differences more completely, get the book by Connie Long referenced at the top of this post.
The Ziggi jacket deviates from a traditional bagged lining in one respect, and that is because of the sleeve zips. Maybe one of you brilliant Ziggi jacket ladies will come up with a better method, but my process is as follows. Reach down one sleeve and pull the jacket right side out, and then give yourself a big pat on the back. Woot! Now kinda flip the lining over the end of the sleeve so the raw edges of the right side of the sleeve hem and sleeve lining are lined up, and stitch across. I tried to take a pix of this, but trust me, it didn’t work. If you can’t envision this step, you just need to play around with the sleeve hem and the lining hem until you get it right. Place pins along the stitching line, and then turn right side out and check to see if it works out correctly before actually stitching. The lining should be hanging straight down the sleeve, with the section above the sleeve zip unstitched, and the bottom edge of the lining should be stitched to the bottom of the sleeve hem allowance. As you can see, I hand-stitched the lining around the zipper to the zipper tape. There might be some way to machine stitch this too, but for me it was fast and easy to whip the edges down and close up the rest of the seam allowance by hand.
Inside view:
Outside view:
Lining and Ziggi are DONE and DONE!!
Happy sewing!
Maris