Bagging Jacket Linings at the Front Facing

I'm feeling quite pleased with myself today. Not only have I made (albeit with the help of Kathleen's post and the one at PatternScissorsCloth) samples of bagged jacket linings and facings, but I got an A+ on my last English essay at college.

But onto the bagging. I've got three different samples: one like Kathleen's, one like it but with a pleat in the hem, and one like the hem of my Trinny & Suzannah coat. All-in-all, I think Kathleen's was the easiest to sew. I expect all my samples would have turned out better had I sewn them from fabric instead of tissues, and used an iron. Still, no hand-sewing required and the patterns are simple and straight-forward to make.

We'll start with the one like on my coat because that's the one I did first (worked it out by reverse engineering) and it has the neatest instructions. They're brief, but I hope you can get the idea. If someone asks, I can do a more in-depth tutorial for any of these corners.

Okay so it's not very neat, but you try marking and sewing tissue (and I mean like Kleenex, not tissue paper). It has a pleat and the lining is level with the hem. Here are my instructions:-

You should be able to get a bigger image by clicking on the one above.

Now for Kathleen's. This one took a bit of working out, but when I finally got it this morning - oh! it was so easy!

The instructions I've written on it for my future reference are:

1. Sew lining to hem allowance.
2. Sew seam A (the corner or facing seam). Clip inward corner.
3. Bring hem/lining unit up so that the hem is level and sew seam C (the facing-lining seam) from hem upwards.

Easy peasy!

Last one: the hem with pleat.

You can see this one has a sort of rounded corner (not very good, I'll admit, but I didn't draw the stitching line or cut the edge until after sewing). The pattern is the same as for Kathleen's except the lining and shell are 2cm longer for a pleat, and the lining is 1cm lower because my mental maths went a little wrong.

The instructions are:

1. Lining--Hem
2. Seam A and clip (as for previous sample)
3. Tack pleat at start (and in real life, blind-stitch to shell)
4. Bring lining-hem unit up with pleat in finished position and sew seam C (the facing-lining seam) from bottom to top.

You don't need a pleat at the hem (see here) but it does look luxe, doesn't it?

I'm keeping these samples and writing out instructions for my own future reference. I may need to reverse engineer my own work if/when I forget how to do these corners. That's one advantage of keeping a sewing blog: it's like a notebook that doesn't clutter up your house! : )