I think about my own persistence with a problem – a recent one is a sewing problem I ran into when making a shirt from the Pendleton wool fabric I had bought in Portland in June. Construction went smoothly until I got to the sleeve placket – the trim on the slit in the sleeve. The wool was too heavy to do a single piece placket with folds at the top – it was just too bulky to lay flat. I struggled with the problem until I finally decided to use some silk dupioni I had in my stash to make the placket – that turned out all right but I wasn’t completely satisfied with the result (although the colour of the silk blended in with the shades in the wool.) ( The placket doesn’t show in the photo – but this is the “Pendleton” shirt.)
I wrote to Pam Erny (a professional shirt designer and maker) about my problem and she sent me a link to a two piece placket she uses, particularly on heavy fabric. She also sent a link showing the reverse engineering of a men’s shirt sleeve placket.
I saved the links and when I set out to make a second wool shirt from the grey striped fabric I also bought in Portland, I printed out the photos from the reverse engineering article and improvised the shirt placket. This one turned out nicely! The placket is flat without any puckering in the sleeve.
I still wasn’t satisfied with the process because I’d had to guess at the size for the pieces of fabric for the placket – I wanted “pattern” pieces that I could reliably use – so I dug some more until I found an article in Threads Magazine that provided a template and straight forward instructions for making a sleeve placket. I’ve put that information with my shirt pattern to use on my next wool shirt which I will make from some lovely cherry red fabric I bought at the rug hooking shop (River House) in Petite Riviere.
This is the typical way I go about problem solving – to keep at it until I’m completely satisfied with the result. I’m happy to live with approximations as I go along, but I work toward “perfection” – or as close to it as I can get.
The thing is, I can’t remember being praised for being persistent, not by parents or teachers. Mind you that’s a long time ago – so maybe I’ve forgotten. I just know I always was willing to keep at something until I was satisfied with the outcome.
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