Now that we have the fabric cut and underlined, its time to start building in the additional support for your jacket.

The extra details we are about to add, which will include pad stitching, shoulder support and a back stay will help your jacket fit, hang and last longer. Its these details that take a garment from RTW to couture...

STANDARD STRESS POINTS

There are a few high stress areas in a coat or jacket which include the back, the shoulders and under the arms.......

We will be adding a muslin back stay to the entire upper back, and hair canvas or fusible to the remaining areas..

Adding a back stay to a jacket not only stops the garment from stretching out each and every time you wear it, but also helps it to retain it's shape while on a hanger.

and its really simple to do...

Pictures from the inside of a Burda jacket I made a couple of years ago.

Of course, you don't have to use muslin! any tightly woven medium weight cotton or light wool will work perfectly...just make sure it has absolutely no stretch and is cut on grain not bias.

and the reason we don't use interfacing or hair canvas? - fusible interfacing has the ability to stretch out and hair canvas would be horribly itchy, the fibers could and probably will work their way through a lining and start irritating you, especially if you like a tight fit on your garments.

(The hair canvas on the front panels will be covered by your facing and the sides portions will not be tight enough to rub against your skin, so its perfectly fine to use it there)

MAKING A BACK STAY

On your back pattern piece, mark down approx 8" below your neckline and 3" below the armseye...then using a french curve draw a gently curve to join the two together.

You can probably see I tried a couple of ways before settling on this one!....what you want to avoid is a straight line, that could cause a ridge that would be seen from the outside.

If you are using a seamless muslin, we now need to first add some seam allowance back to this pattern piece as the the stay and the fashion fabric need to be joined before the stitch line.

I find the simplest way to do this is to place the back piece on a piece of muslin you will be using, just shy of the fold and mark around it.

I added 5/8"all around .... and I built in a little ease to the width by adding a 1/4" to the fold so that the muslin has a little give when you wear it. You don't want it so tight it will be straining on the seams.

I then used some carbon paper to transfer the lines to the underside..