Couture Close-Ups with Charles Kleibacker: Fabrics and Grain, 1978

I'd like to bring Shelon and a rather grand dress for a grand evening made of the keanu fiber and our main purpose here in addition to showing you the dress is to tell you that this dress was cut on cross grain meaning that we placed our pattern on the course of the grain rather than on the straight on woven Kiana's I find that is the ideal situation I had the great good fortune to be the first one ever to make clothes of the key on a fiber back in nineteen sixty eight DuPont took me on to take the sample yardages that they had made of the first Kiana's and to put them into clothes and it was at that time that i found that woven Kiana's now remember i'm stressing woven Kiana's when i'm talking about cutting on the cross grain i'm never talking about knits or jerseys cutting on cross grain that would be disaster I'm talking about wovens but this dress was cut all entirely on the cross grain and I think you will agree that we see absolutely the most beautifully smooth creamy smooth seams and that is because we placed this woven keanu on the cross grain when we were cutting it I'd like to explain about Kiana a bit it is such a dense fiber which is why it never wrinkles if I'm trying to make an airplane schedule and I'm running late I take the keanu garments and i wad them up and I throw them into a shopping bag and never once have I ever seen a wrinkle we've never pressed this dress which has all of this veggie are degenerate since the day it was made my customers tell me that if they spill a drink on Keanu it rolls right off I have never ever noticed preparation and I think that's important in the way we all wear clothes today so here is an example of cross grain cutting where cross grain on the sleeve we r cross green on the bias this is another example of we held in this fabric I must have held in to this fabric on this deep V at least an inch and an eighth here to give it a whole rather grand picture Sheila may I get you to pick up your foot please we added this bias cuff our ribbon whatever you might want to refer it to I think that can be a beautiful finish for your closed now what we are here are four layers in other words for this three inch strip we have cut this four and a half inches wide I'm sorry twelve and a half inches wide 12 and a half inches wide and this is one time when we did not stretch the bias we put the hem of the dress we slip basted it on to the bias if anything just gently holding that bias in machine stitched that first and then here on the fold we have put back by hand but in this bias ribbon there are actually four layers I am true bias in this particular instance I'd like to bring on Cindy to show you but you stay with this please Sheila to show you another example of the keanu fiber earlier we showed you taffeta in pure silk here i'd like to show you tada in Kiana because I think it is interesting for us to see the different fibers remember there are silks and silks there are wolves and wolves there are Kiana's and Kiana's I search out some very fine Kiana's this wooden ones made by Bianchini in Paris and I think it is an extremely handsome print a bit of a departure of a print on this black background with these vivid colorings it incidentally is only one layer this dress is only one layer only in this cuff do I have something and that is silk gays are if you could find it I find it the ideal for interfacing although people such as you've oh she in Paris make it into big elaborate marvelous ball gowns it is made by Abraham in Switzerland but i find it works so very well as and interfacing so only here in the neckline I do have straight grain seam binding but other than that this dress entirely online as is this dress which is the way fashion is going I like sometimes to add these long rather skinny bias scarves around your neck I think it can be a very good look we let it train and incidentally I'm hoping you wear long dresses long enough I know that it might be a little bit of a problem but I think it is so very beautiful when you go up a step if you are picking up that dress I like them to Train I realize you want to dance but I think you can maneuver that if you will just practice a little bit at home also this is an example of how I try to cover sleeplessness now this young beautiful cindy has no problem but some of the customers who come to me are falling apart a little bit in that area it is where the body begins to get some creases so I try very very hard always to cover this armpit front and back in that way many of my customers even though they might be getting more my age can wear sleeveless pneus this part of the arm I find always stays intact it is only here where we have to be very careful this is an example of buys cutting this front seam is purely on the bias where I preserved the grain and where we hand basted that seem being very very careful not to have cut into the fabric until all of the marks were there and until we had hand basted this side with this side in sections because what i want to do once i get to the machine is stretched like mad as we are stitching that long by a scene from the waist down up in this area to the bust I would not stretch but once we're on this long by seemed under the zip under the bus line then I stretched like mad when we are stitching at the machine and incidentally we are stitching at the machine at the machine all the time in cotton thread the zipper in a garment that is on the bias I try to wind up in the back if that is where I'm putting the zipper on straight grain I find putting zippers in on bias grains utter disaster don't do it you might possibly make it work from the skirt down they are putting a zipper in and the bias is not too bad because the body is not moving there but as you are moving your arms all the time if you are on bias grain against the zipper and you are moving I see the folds of the bias against the rigidity of that tape of the zipper and it is no good fine everywhere bias but not at the zippers please may I bring on Jane who is also in the keanu fiber so we have a story here and on Jane I think we have a rather special story in that often i'm sure some of you there are cutting from patterns from vogue butterick simplicity McCall's and i'm often asked as I go around the country how about my taking a straight grain pattern and putting it onto the bias grain and I say I'd be very careful because that can be very tricky bias can be treacherous but however because I was asked the question so many times I did take a vote easy now I stress the word easy are designed by stan herman which called for the foul line front and back and what i did was to take that pattern and place it on true bias front and back and here is what resulted as it happened the side seam then went on bias and that same story of how at the machine when we were there we stretched that bias grain for all we were worth in stitching the difference I did make from the pattern was that I held in this neckline very definitely front and back because when i asked the model like jane to sit it gapped very much so I held it in we're going to talk more about that but this fabric was held in seven eighths of an inch and eased against straight grain seam binding the only other difference i made was in the back here where the pattern was gouging out at the arm I leave wide seam allowances all the time inch and a half and here I rolled out the fabric a good three quarters of an inch to again cover that part of the body as it happened in the front we covered pretty well the vogue pattern calls for the bows to be boat each time you put it on if you're rushing i think that becomes a bit of a problem and then you have the thing of adjusting we put the seams to the shoulder together and then found that it was very simple just to tie these ears so to speak and make them look as though they had been very casually tied here's that skinny bias again that I favored and I think if you feel you would like a different change of mood say for an evening you might show a good waistline like this one of Jane's with this skinny little true bias or it is an instance where you might very well blues all I think the blue zone is a rather difficult silhouette but if you have true bias and you are feeling a different mood then I think this true bias does blue zone rather neatly we had an interesting time with this dress it never occurred to us but once we had finished it and we got to the hem I realized that we were on straight grain so rather than putting up a seam or ahem rather I asked the girls in the workroom to take a pen and we simply fringe so that the first layer of this fringe is an extension of this fabric I did take a straight grain piece and we fringed another layer and then put it on by machine to give the fringe more richness more of a lush feeling but here you are three examples of the keanu fiber a vogue pattern met four straight grain on the fold front and back now remember if you turn to bias you are going to have to have seen front and back to do this kind of a garment three this three versions of Keanu this shantung here a lightweight seasonless satin and on Cindy the taffeta