New Tools: Invisible Zipper Foot

It's fun to try out new sewing tools and sometimes you find something that's just very useful.  This is one of  those cases.

I've sewn garments for many years, but I've never actually used an invisible zipper foot.  In fact, I've actively avoided garments that required invisible zippers. I tried installing one with a regular zipper foot, with not very good results.

I bought a Viking Husqvarna invisible zipper foot to use on my machines, which are all Vikings.  I'm making a dress with an invisible zipper, so this seemed like an excellent time to try it out.

The zipper good has a large ridge down the middle which pushes the zipper coils to the side as you sew.  First you sew down one side.

Then you sew down the other side.  The needle stays in the middle while sewing, but the zipper coil moves to the other side of the center ridge when you move to the other side.

A regular zipper foot is used to start the seam at the bottom of the zipper, then a regular foot can be used.

The final result is fabulous: an invisible zipper!  I'll be using this technique again!  

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine.  You might even get to see the rest of the dress.

Husquarna Magestic Hoop

Size matters, even when it comes to embroidery hoops.  The biggest hoop out there is the Husquarna majestic hoop, which is currently only usable on the Viking Husquarna Epic sewing and embroidery machine.  I've got one of those, plus a need for size on one of my upcoming projects, so I decided to give the ginormous hoop a try.

The hoop comes with one test design for embroidery and another for quilting.  I decided to sew out the one for embroidery.

Here's the hoop itself, with some muslin.  There's a mount on both sides, under the fabric.  This hoop stitches out half the design, then you flip the hoop and it stitches out the other half.

Here's half the design.  Going to the other half, alignment is critical and some adjustments were necessary.  In fact, the amount of the adjustment required was large enough, it required rehooping to make it work.  That's a tough thing to get right, even with alignment stitches.

The final result isn't perfect, but it's off my only about a millimeter.  Most people will never notice.

There's no sense it letting this pretty embroidery go to waste.  It ends up like a lot of my experiments: as a throw pillow.  Just for scale, this is an 18"x18" pillow.

It's always fun trying out new toys and stretching my capabilities.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine!

Sewing Room Tour

Ready for a peek at where all my projects come from?  Today's the day!  Welcome to my sewing room...

Perhaps I'm lucky enough to have a whole room to devote to sewing.  It could also be said that my sewing tools, supplies, and fabric stash just took over a whole room.  In fact, the sewing activities spill out of this room, since my dining table doubles as a cutting table and all the computing power is also in a different room.

You'll notice that the walls are a lovely coral color.   Once upon a time, they were beige, but that just doesn't stimulate creativity or effort, at least for me.  It goes well with the rest of the house, none of which is beige any more.   The floor is carpeted, definitely not my first choice for a sewing room, where it is really nice to  be able to sweep up all the loose threads and small pieces, but that's a project for later.

Here's my ironing station.  There's nothing fancy here.  The iron is at least 10 years old and I think I bought it from Walmart.  The art is a different matter.  It's a genuine hand painted batik from the island of Bali in Indonesia.   It's a rather different depiction of the classic mermaid -- this one's a lion fish, so watch out!

Some of my tools and supplies, mostly the smaller stuff, is stored on open shelves.   The baskets generally came filled with peaches or tomatoes, so this is an example of reuse.  The paint color on the shelves is left over from a different residence, but it seems to work, at least in my color sense.

It's not possible to have too much art or inspiration in a sewing room, so I hung a quilt by my most talented Aunt Kathy.  The colors go well with other things in the room.

This room comes with a really nice big closet. Two sets of wire shelves from Home Depot just fit and keep fabric and other supplies mostly organized.  With a solid door, this closet stays dark, so there's no light damage to sensitive items.

Here's the grand finale: the sewing table.  It's about 4 ft long, just big enough for my largest machine with the embroidery unit attached.  It's not a special sewing table, it's just a sturdy table from the office section of IKEA.  Currently, it's occupied by my Husqvarna Designer SE LE, a remarkably capable and rugged machine.  The machine is placed right in front of a window.  That provides natural light, which I find preferable for sewing and essential for selection of embroidery thread colors.  The window has a blackout shade for when the room is not in use, to protect the contents of the room.  To either side of the sewing table are racks of sewing and embroidery thread with home made covers that I discussed back in August.

 Come back next week and see what the machine is so busy stitching out!

New Tools: Bias Tape maker

Sometimes, you just have to try a new tool or technique.  I recently tried out a bias tape maker for the first time.  It's a great tool for a very specific task.  This tool is a staple of the quilter's toolbox, but not so much so for garment and home dec sewers.

 First, why would you want to make bias tape in the first place?  You can buy it already made in a variety of colors.  Simple. Right?  Sometimes, you'd like to have bias tape that matches a fabric.  Bias tape can be used for things like armhole binding, like on an upcoming project.  It can also be used as a decorative element, like on another upcoming project, where I wanted bias tape made of satin, rather than plain cotton fabric.   Quilters use it for binding quilts, where matching the fabric in a quilt adds a lot to the final effect.  So, making your own bias tape gives you options. 

Bias tape makers come in a variety of widths, too, so you aren't just stuck with the standard 1/2" width.

The first step of the process is to make a long strip of fabric cut on the bias, diagonal to the grain of the fabric.  A long strip of bias cut material is sewn together to make a loop. However, the ends of the loop are offset.

  Now the fabric is cut in a helical pattern.  The trick is to make the strip a very uniform width.  It should be 1/2" wider than the bias tape.

Unfortunately, on attempt #1, the width of the fabric strip was to variable and too narrow in spots.  There wasn't enough to fold over in some places.  I actually had go give up on this and buy new fabric!

I discovered that using scissors to cut the strip is a disaster.  It's better to use a ruler and rotary cutter.  Also, the 1/2" bias tape maker will actually accept a 1 1/4" strip.  That leaves a little room for error in the cutting, especially since I cut the strip 1 1/2" wide, then trimmed where necessary.  That was a lot of work, but it did work!

The  final step is to feed the fabric through the tool.  It goes in flat, it comes out folded.  Then you use an iron to crease the material.  You use the loop to pull the bias tape maker along the fabric strip.

I did try making bias tape by folding over the edges of a fabric strip.  Don't do it!  Getting a uniform width, especially if the fabric strip isn't a uniform width is very difficult.

Come back next time for some applications of the bias tape maker.

Quick Embroidery Project

Ham radio operators often wear clothing or tags with their call signs.  This helps them recognize other people that they've talked to on the radio, but might never have seen in person.  A friend recently got her first ham radio license and I thought I would surprise her with a gift of a shirt with her own call sign on it.

I bought a simple solid color T-shirt.  I was careful to choose one that wasn't quite as thin as some of the ones being sold -- the embroidery needs some kind of decent substrate and I'm sure the recipient would like to wear the shirt more than once or twice.

Step 1 is to design the embroidery.  Since only simple letters are required, it would have been possible to just use my embroidery machine to do the design.  However, I decided to use my Floriani Total Control software instead.  using the software gives me a much larger choice of fonts.  I chose simple block letters for the call sign, since that's the usual and customary choice.  I opted for a more script look for her name.

Step 2 is to do the embroidery.  I attended the International Quilt Show in Houston last month.  There were thousands of vendors and some of them had products related to embroidery.

This tape claims to be just the thing when you are trying to keep parts of a garment away from the hoop and the needle, which can be a real challenge when dealing with T-shirts.

The tape proved to be noticeably stickier than painter's tape and to be capable of holding the shirt very well.  It left no residue on the fabric.  Overall, this new to me product met my expectations.

There you have it: a simple project, a review of a new product, and a happy ending.

Come back next week for a new fun project that involves a sewing machine!

New Tools: Rotary Cutter

Rotary cutters have been around for quite a while, but I associated them with quilters.  I've been cutting my fabrics with scissors.  Recently, I bought a rotary cutter and mat.  I've been trying them out with a variety of fabrics and patterns. 

Cutting stabilizer with the mat and cutter proved very easy.  Getting the stabilizer cut to the right length was a breeze.  I was working on a project that required lots of pieces of the stabilizer all the same size.  Cutting them on the mat made that a lot quicker.

I tried using the mat and cutter for cutting fleece.  There were lots of long, straight cuts and the cutter made short work of those.  The mat had to be moved to cut some pieces, because the pieces were bigger than the mat, but that's not a big deal.

I also used the cutter for denim.  It worked like a champ.  It handled even the curves on this part of jeans well.  (I also used it for cutting out shirts.  No problem with the curves there, either.)

I used the cutter and mat to trim the hems of jeans.  It went through even the seams with no problems and the mat made getting the trim even and to the right length easy.

My only question about the mat and cutter system at this point is why I didn't try this sooner!  There's a few tasks, like very detailed cutting, that still require scissors.  The cutter is easier and faster than scissors on many different fabric types, including some heavy duty ones.  Measuring with the mat, rather than a tape has some real advantages also.