Making a Tuxedo

Guess what I am making now? A tux! Rina and I are working together on a wedding that is coming up in the Fall. Rina is making the dress for the bride, bow tie, and dress shirt for the groom, and I’m making the tuxedo for the groom!

I’m excited about the opportunity, but at the same time, I have a lot to learn. I’ve don’t really dabble in men’s wear, save the occasional t-shirt like this, let alone a full suit! The groom knows this, and still gave me the ok and his blessing to work on his.

For the jacket, I decided to use BurdaStyle Ehren #6049 pattern. It has been a while since I used BurdaStyle pattern, and I forgot how long it took to print out the patterns, tape them together and trace the size of my choosing. I spent a whole night doing that! I will say that the convenience is nice, to be able to download it with one click and there you have it.

For the pants, I was just sick of taping the papers together, so I used the pattern from Burda magazine from 2008. When I was in the U.S., one of my very good friends was from the Ukraine. When she went back home for the summer, she bought me a bunch of Burda magazine, which was awesome! The only catch was that they were in Russian. So I stared at the magazine for a while, trying to figure out the size. I entered “waist, Russian, translation” to get the result for “waist” in Russian, so I could find the right size for the groom. Thankfully for the pants, there are only a few pattern pieces; front and back pants, pockets, and fly. Before cutting the muslin pants, I tweaked the pattern a lot based on the measurements of the best fitting pants he currently owned. I shortened the pants and widened the hip and thighs.

We just finished our first fitting last Saturday. The pants fit the groom almost perfectly (just needs a bit tweaking on hip and thighs), but the tux top needs a lot of modification. I know what happened looking back on the process. The test square in the Ehren pattern turned out to be 11cm x 11cm, instead of 10cm x 10cm. But by the time I saw that, I had already printed out the 50 pages of the pattern and did not want to redo it.

I’ll be updating my first suit making journey here. If you have any tips, advice, or recommended reading for suits making, please send them to my way<3

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