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Thursday, June 7, 2012

Alterations: Leather coat

Most of my(local) work is doing alterations for people and in the last week or so, I've altered a bridesmaid dress, hemmed dresses, skirts and pants, replaced a zipper (my least favorite job) and reset sleeves on a beautiful hand-made leather coat.
leather coat with reset sleeves
I was pretty nervous about the leather coat, because I had never worked with leather before.
I bought special needles to sew leather and the sales-lady at the local sewing machine store gave me some Teflon (tm) stickers to put under the pressure foot, so that it would glide smoothly over the leather.
Once I've saved up some more money, I am going to buy at least one Teflon pressure foot and maybe a roller foot for sewing leathers, velvet and other heavy, tricky fabric.
The customer who had brought me the coat, had taken it to a tailor but he had not wanted to do the job. It was not difficult, just fiddly. All the seams were top stitched, which required  me to redo them. My greatest concern was that it would show.
Thankfully it turned out very well and the customer was thrilled. That makes a job worth while to me, a happy customer.
Some people would say that doing alterations is boring but you can learn a lot from "deconstructing" garments and then putting them back together again. I think my sewing has gone up a notch and the business is good, steady work.

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