These photos chronicle the beginning of the deconstruction process for the jacket.
I started by unpicking the bottom right hand corner as it
was the only part that the lining had been top stitched over, meaning it was
most likely the last piece to be sewn on the coat.
As I expected the lining is revealed along with the pressed
edge of the bottom seam and the inside of the button hole.
I think that when the seamstress made it they reverse
stitched when they got to the first seam going down.
I
carried on unpicking all the way along the bottom seam to the other side of the
zip.
I then cut the thread of the buttons as they had been sewn
through the lining.
This opens up the lining completely so I can now start to
de-construct from the inside.
There
is also a spare button with is sewn into the lining only on the inside of the
left hand panel, I unpicked this as well.
I then started unpicking upwards along the zip line, as it
was double stitched I started to unpick the outer edge first.
I then found that it had been folded and stitched on the
inside as well so it would be best to go from the inside seam instead.
Once the inside seam is open I unpicked the outer seam then turned the lining inside out and unpicked the last seam.
I then did the same for the right side of the zip.
I then unpicked the button loop bracket off of the right
main coat breast. It is top stitched the whole way round so I decided to start
with the seam that was stitched to the jacket breast. After unpicking it I
found interfacing on the inside of one of the panels.
I then started unpicking the parallel double top stitches at
the same time, whilst doing this the button loops came off showing that they
were only secured by the outer top stitch but had only been added in line with
the stitching after the two panels were sewn together.
I
unpicked one button loop and it seemed to just be a sewn together rectangle of
material with each end folded from halfway at a right angle to meet each other.
The rectangle was edge stitched on one side and pressed to keep a sharp shape
and, upon unpicking, I found that it unfolded to 4 times its original size. The
two long edges of the rectangle had been folded in to meet at the center then
folded together and then top stitched to form the button loop.
After this I proceeded to unpick along the top of the lining
by the neckline and hood. This was obviously stitched on from the inside shown
by the needle marks above the seam allowance.
After the lining was fully unpicked from the neckline and
start of the hood, the only place it was still attached to was the ends of the
sleeves. Each sleeve had been top stitched so I set about unpicking that. All
that had been done was the outer material had been folded under by 1 cm then
folded inwards again a further 3cm and the lining was tucked under the folds
and reached the end of the sleeve and then top stitched. I then did the same on
the opposite sleeve.
Once the lining was completely removed I started to unpick
the top sleeve of the lining from the striped panel part of the lining. It had
been over locked and just normally stitched but as the lining was quite thin
and ripped easily it took a while to do it carefully. Once the sleeve had been
removed from the armhole I then proceeded to unpick the two seams holding the
sleeve together, one panel was significantly smaller than the other, as shown
here. These seams were, again, just over locked and had one line of stitching.
After that I was left with the back of the lining which
consisted of plain lining material as the bottom part, striped material at the
top, one thin strip of material keeping them together and the label. I decided
to start unpicking the two lines of stitching that were over the strip of
material keeping the two lining panels together; it had been back stitched at
both ends. The way it was set up was that the lining was the bottom layer, followed
by the striped material overlapping it by 2cm then the strip of fabric over the
top of them both.
The
label was easy enough to pick off as it was just a single layer of stitching
attaching it to the striped lining material.
