As it is, I have to zig zag to prevent unraveling.
Which reminds me, one of my bedsheets had become unsewn from the elastic at one corner. I was able to fix this all by my lonesome. Not that it was that difficult, besides trying to keep the elastic extended to the limit of the fabric's stretch, and feed it through the presser foot at the same time, but it gave me a little bit of satisfaction. Ok, so I used black thread on a maroon sheet instead of white. It was what was in the machine.
Arm/torso/leg proportions, musculature, and size have a great impact on the fit and fitting of garments, especially shirts, jackets, and trousers. Men with a less common combination than the suit and shirt manufacturers cater for are more likely than standard fit blokes to try sewing their own.
Being of the gorilla shape and an RAF officer, my father had to fit his non-average body into a smart uniform (on occasion - for every day stuff he wore uniform trousers and a 'woolly pulley', and for flying a combination of G suit and immersion suit*), which had to be tailor made to look like anything on him rather than like a sack tied at the knees. So did all his suits. If he bought 'off the peg', he usually got that stuff from the tailor's RTW range as he got a better fit that way. For anything not involving fishing, rugby, crawling under a car to fix something oily, gardening, or flying, he looked reasonably smart. I bet you have some of the same problems as he did in getting stuff to fit!
DH has a different fitting issue: on measurements alone, he's pretty standard 40" chest, 36" waist, 31" inside leg, and about 6' tall (he's lost an inch to a prolapsed disk). He *ought* to be able to buy an off the peg suit, but always manages to look a mess in them. When I made his suit, one of the things I found that hadn't really struck me when looking at him is that he has very flat shoulders: a far less than average slope from neck to shoulder point. This makes a HUGE difference to the drape of a jacket across the shoulders and to the roll line at the front. This was sorted by a combination of using a thinner but stiffer shoulder pad and cutting less of a slope on the jacket shoulder seam line.
FIL is different again. For many years he had severe difficulty getting trousers long enough: he was 6'3" (he's 87 and has shrunk a bit in the back department), and most of the extra inches were in his legs. He deconstructed a pair that fitted for width and added length where needed. He made himself many pairs of casual slacks after that, and succumbed to the tailor route for suits, not feeling that fitting a jacket to himself was something he really wanted to tackle. he uses a basic ancient Singer hand-crank and gives his trousers a Hong Kong finish. :)
He also used to make skirts, jackets, slacks, and occasionally a blouse for my MIL, a tiny lady of 4'11" in her UK size 2 high heels!
*All also tailor made, like his flying helmet, only not by Gieves & Hawkes! Somehow they never looked as smart as his suits and uniforms... ;) )
Me too! Though sometimes I just serge ahead anyway...
Good for you! It's sometimes tricky keeping the tension fore and aft the needle even and letting the feed dogs feed the fabric through. If you have one, a 3 step zz is a good stitch for this sort of thing.
And who cares what colour the thread is: on the bed, who's to see?
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