A Guide to Shaped Designs, Tailor Finishes, and Elegant Detailing

A whole garment may be constructed of shaped designs, artistically arranged. To do this, first draw your design on paper, lay your material on this and either pin mark it through or trace it on your cloth. Each piece is thus gone over, and when you have all the separate parts together on the paper, baste, stitch and tear away the paper.

You then have your garment ready to baste up. In such work, great care should be exercised to bring out good lines, and not to accentuate breadth if length is desired, and vice versa.

Fancy Waists are many and varied. They may be elaborately trimmed with insertion, tucking and applied trimmings in the form of fancy braids, bits of elegant lace, a touch of velvet, here and there a spray of embroidery, or perhaps herringbone work. Any of this work if properly applied will go to the making of a fancy waist.

If a tailor finish is desired, your work should bear the most minute inspection — every line should be in the right proportion, every stitch on the machine should be perfect and every seam should be of an even width.

Many ladies prefer to effect the tailor finish in all their garments — and on most people it really looks well — while on some a tailored effect makes them appear stiff and awkward. But on any and most all occasions the tailor-made girl or woman may consider herself well dressed and in the best of taste.

To copy styles from the fashion books is easily acquired with a little practice. Outfit yourself with two or three first-class fashion books and spend one hour each day for two weeks, copying designs on paper from the illustrations. After you have acquired a fairly good knowledge of this, then put what you have learned into execution by using material and making different garments, or parts of garments, exactly like copy of the picture in the fashion book.

After you have spent many hours in the study of these illustrations, you will find yourself trying to add to or take from these pictures, and gradually you will find yourself master of a whole lot of originality in designing — and that is what makes the modiste valuable to her customers and gives her power to command first class wage for her labors.

To secure a professional look to a finished garment, great care must be exercised from the very beginning of your work — do not slight it in the least instance. In handling your work, handle it as if it were something precious and rare and not as if you were using a dust cloth; each little wrinkle or fold that is carelessly pressed into new material takes away that freshness so much desired. Ripping should be avoided as much as possible, especially machine stitching, as it not only mars the goods but actually wears it out. Avoid the use of pins as much as possible on delicate materials as they are bound to leave marks. On very dainty fabrics it is advisable to use steel needles instead of pins. In applying trimmings fasten securely but do not give your work a pasted down appearance.

In the cutting of waists, collars, cuffs, skirts, etc., always be certain that your measures have been accurately taken, also that the measures by which you are cutting these articles are the actual ones taken for them as you are often bothered and may have the wrong figures, thus ruining valuable material and wasting still more valuable time. Always allow for all seams in cutting and cut lines true and accurate.