Order of Work: Why a Garment Is Assembled in a Particular Sequence

Interfacing, darts, pockets, buttonholes, topstitching, decorative work, embroidery — all of it is far easier on a flat piece lying on a table than on a piece already joined into a tube. Buttonholes especially. A buttonhole worked on a flat front band is straightforward; the same buttonhole after the shoulder and side seams are sewn means wrestling a whole garment through a machine. So read the whole instruction sheet before starting and note which steps are flat-work. If an instruction has you close a seam and then do flat work on the other side of it, that is usually worth reordering — which you can only see if you read ahead.

Once a second seam crosses the first, the first can no longer be pressed properly — the iron cannot reach into the corner and the allowances are trapped. So the sequence is: sew a seam, press it, then sew the next. That feels slow and involves a great deal of walking to the ironing board, and it is the difference between a homemade-looking garment and one that is not. The same applies to FINISHING the raw edges. An allowance is easy to overlock, zigzag or bind while the seam is open and accessible, and awkward once it is enclosed by a lining or a facing.

Many garments are assembled with one side seam left open until near the end — often the left one — precisely so that the whole thing can still be laid flat for the awkward steps. That is why a shirt collar goes on before the side seams, and why a waistband is often attached with one end still open. The choice of WHICH seam to leave is made by asking what still needs flat access. The cost is that the garment cannot be tried on properly until that seam is closed, so fitting has to have been settled earlier — on the toile. The two habits support each other, and skipping the toile is what forces early assembly and awkward late steps.

The hem goes last because its position depends on everything above it. A shoulder taken up by 10 mm raises the hem by 10 mm, and a hem finished before that is 10 mm short for ever. Hang the finished garment for a day before marking the hem, especially anything cut on the bias or with a bias-ish flare. The cloth settles and lengthens, and a hem marked before it settles goes uneven afterwards — the grain rung's point arriving at the end of the process. Buttons go on after the buttonholes are cut and the garment is tried on, so their positions are marked THROUGH the finished buttonholes. Marking them from the pattern instead is how a front ends up not quite lining up.