Sewing with Shoulder Pads

I've been making a tailored jacket out of a royal blue linen/rayon blend. I thought I'd share my technique for adding shoulder pads. Now just because this is not the 1980's, doesn't mean that a taylored jacket or blazer doesn't need shoulder pads, albeit much thinner ones. I sew them into the shoulder seams. I don't know when or where I learned to do this (probably in the '80s), but I've been sewing in my shoulder pads this way ever since I began making structured jackets. In the first photo, the needle is coming up through the seam. Then take it back down again as in the next photo. The stitches on the outside of the jacket need to be very tiny. I usually only catch one or two of the seam threads. On the under side of the jacket, where the pads are, I usually make the stitch about a scant 1/4 of an inch.

That's all there is too it.

Welcome

I used to have a section of my website that I called the "reading room." It contained pages of things I loved and was thinking about at the time. Then came newsletters, Facebook, etc. and those pages were pushed away and eventually taken down. I've decided to resurrect the concept, but in a blog format.

I love sewing most of all, but I also love cooking and gardening. This is a place where I can share these things - maybe with no one but me <grin> whenever I feel inspired.

Above is a photo taken on the south coast of England, on the English Channel. It was taken for the cover of one of my books and I'm holding up my arms to "hold" the words in the title of the book.