Thar, I fixed it!

[janestarz]

At work we've been doing "series of sizes" for certain clothing items that sell well. Willemijn usually cuts these, so they're all packed up in plastic and ready to sew. You grab a baggie, find one or two copies of the same pattern, all pieces cut and interfacing already pressed. There's a bag for each size, so after a week's worth of work you've got one (or two, depending on demand) of each size sewn and done.

This week was the week of training shirts, which looks just like a man's shirt but has a bodystocking bottom so his shirttails don't fly up when he dances. These shirts are a lot of work for us, with at least four hours of work in them. Sewing the panels is the easy part, the collar, cuffs and buttons take more work. Four hours is the standard, but if you sew two shirts at the same time it can happen you're still sewing the buttons on the next morning.

I finally finished the last black shirt of the lot and I put it on the ironing board for a final pressing before I hang it in the store. And the iron decides to cough up a little something as a parting present, which promptly melts into the two center-back panels.
I show it to Kim and we agree, this will not do. The fabric is molten and it's right on the shoulderblade where it will show "on the floor".

We decide it's probably a similar amount of time to sew a new one as it is to rip out the entire center back, but since Willemijn points out we're running out of this type of fabric, we instead decide to rip out the offending panel and cut a new one. I sit for half an hour, perhaps more, ripping out the topstitching, seam, serged edges and everything. The panel connects to the side-back, collar, sleeve and front panels, so this is pretty fast work, all in all.

I take out the roll of fabric, cut a new center-back and center-top-back panel, and put it with the rest of the shirt.
And wouldn't you know it, the colours don't match! This shirt was cut from the old roll, from which we have finally used up all the scraps. There is no scrap left that will fit the panels and we can't use the new roll since the black is more blue than the original roll.

In the end, we decide to cut the panels from the red we have as a contrasting colour. The whole shirt is black, except for the center back which will show on the shoulders on the front and when the man turns, which is awesome. And then we cut the other panels in the new black too, since we still need a black shirt in this size after all.
In stead of throwing a lot of work out, we add a little extra work to have two shirts, and one to show off an awesome idea: That we can cut these shirts in contrasting colours every which way they want.
There, all fixed!

Comments

[muizenstaartje.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a happy accident. ;)

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

We have this fabric in many colours, but the ones we sell most are the plain black training shirts. I am still madly in love with the brown/panther combination we made, so I want to show off more combinations, but there's only so much fabric and so many customers willing to buy one of the rad combo's....