Fun With Fleece Part 4

It's getting to be a good time for lightweight spring jackets -- a perfect application for fleece, especially since they don't absorb water from those spring showers. 

Here's a jacket in the currently popular hip length style.  It's made from Butterick 6329, which wasn't designed for fleece, but works well with the material.  For the fabric, I chose a hand-dyed look rather than a solid in a very spring-like bright green.

Of course, I couldn't very well just leave it alone.  I chose some designs featuring plumeria flowers and butterflies from Embroidery Library (They label the flower frangipani, another name for the same thing, popular in different regions.) It isn't a spring flower, particularly, since it only grows in tropical regions, but how many people know that?

The original designs had the flowers in white and yellow, but I know that they come in pink as well, so I changed the colors to contrast better with the green.  

The designs on both the center back and on the sleeves are on top of a seam.  Just the seams under the embroidery had to be sewn before the embroidery, with all the other seems sewn after.  This isn't exactly the order described in the instructions for the pattern, but it worked well enough.  Embroidering over seams can be tricky on some fabrics, but it works really well with fleece.  Just just a solid sew-in stabilizer to make sure the design doesn't come apart at the seam later.

I wanted a small design for the front to echo the others.  I extracted this single flower using my Florini Total Control software.  Having the flower the same scale at the others works well, rather than having a whole design made small.

Here's the back of the jacket.  It's fun having something bright and spring like to wear on these days that can still be a bit chilly.

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

School of Fish

I've been working hard with my embroidery digitizing software, Floriani Total Control. 

I had this idea that realistic stuffed fish would make excellent baby gifts, especially when constructed with durable, washable materials.  So far, all of the recipients have appeared to like them, as shown by chewing on them.

(For the fish nerds, the orange one is a flame angelfish, the blue one is a juvenile emperor angelfish, and the black one is a clown triggerfish.)

Next, I had this idea that if the deigns could be perfected, they could distribute the designs.  They are definitely colorful and unique.  None of the designs were perfect the first time.  Honestly, they weren't even perfect the second time.

This little fish is clearly missing a spot.  When I originally digitized it, I didn't use enough points on the curves and the spots were pretty angular.  I redigitized all of the spots, but clearly I missed one.  Oops!

This fin works well with a gradient fill, but extra stitches show through. 

Sometimes, two elements that are supposed to meet, don't.

What did I learn?  Digitizing is hard and takes practice.  My later efforts were clearly better than my first ones.  There's truth in the sew out, and it might take 2 or 3 tries at sewing out a pattern to get it right.  In the future, I will not assume that it's going to be perfect the first or second time I try.  I'm not going to sew on expensive or hard to replace materials without a perfect sample first.

All my attempts have resulted in a whole school of fish.  I'm sure they will all find good homes, imperfections and all.

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

School Club Banner

The School Club Roundup, an amateur radio event where schools and other amateurs all over North America attempt to contact each other by radio, is coming up next week.  One of the participating clubs will be the amateur radio club at Monrovia Middle School in Monrovia, AL.  I made a banner for the table where we'll have all the radios to help the students at the school know what we are up to.

The first task was to decide what to put on the banner.  Obviously, the club's call sign, KD4MMS, needed to be prominent.  Then, a bit of explanation.  The school mascot is the hawks, so Hawks Amateur Radio fit in the space and explained at least a little bit.  The school colors are yellow and black, which made choosing colors for the banner easy.  I used nylon canvas, a fairly heavy material typically used for flags.

The first task was to cut out all the letters.  There's a lot of ways to do this, but I chose to use my Cricut maker and a standard font for all the cutting.  The letters sure look a lot better than if I'd tried to design or cut them.

The letters in the call sign had to be in the design individually because they are nearly at the limits of the 12"x12" cutting sheet.  The smaller letters could be done several at a time. 

I laid out all the letters and tacked them down with a spray adhesive.  They wasn't quite good enough to keep them all attached during the sewing phase, but it was a good start.

Each of the letters was individually sewn to the banner.  I used a 4mm zigzag stitch with a 2 mm stitch length.  All of the sewing was hand guided.

The finished applique of the letters looks good.

Next, I applied a back sashing to finish the banner and deal with all the raw edges. 

The last step was to put grommets in each of the corners.

Let's hope the kids get good atmospheric conditions for next week and that a bunch of them see the banner and decide to come see and hear for themselves what's going on!

Come back next week for another adventure in sewing!

Mass Production

Last month, I discussed designing a patch for Makers Local 256, a makerspace I belong to.  When I passed around the patch I'd made, there was quite a bit of interest in it, so I decided to produce a number of them.

I made three different varieties --  sew on, velcro-backed, and iron on.  I obtained 3" die cut velcro circle and that set the size for all of the patches.  As before, the fabric I used was denim left over from making a pair of jeans.

I cut all of the circles with my Cricut maker.  This ensured that the circles were all perfectly round and exactly the right size.

My local Husqvarna dealer, S&R Sewing And Vacuum had some specialty materials for making patches.

I used a 6"x9" hoop so I could fit four patches in each hoop to use the heavy duty water soluble stabilizer efficiently.

It turned out to be most effective to line up the patch fabric on the sewn die line by looking at the underside of the clear stabilizer.

After the patches were sewn out, the stabilizer was removed by washing in hot water and then the patches were hung up to dry.

Finally,the iron on material was added to the iron on patches and the velcro backed patches.  In the case of the velcro backed patches, it was used to stick on the velcro circles.

The patches are a big hit!  While making them didn't involve a laser cutter, members like them.  It's a different set of materials and techniques than most of them use.  Makers Local 256 has a lot of diverse projects going on and I'm happy to add to that diversity.

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

Fun With Fleece Part 3

Fleece has been largely confined to active wear and casual attire.  I decided to experiment and see if it would work in a more formal setting.

I made this jacket with Kwik Sew 664 (out of print).  The pattern suggests fleece as one of the possible fabrics to use.  I chose black to make it more formal and to use metallic thread embroidery to enhance the idea that it's a formal garment.

The jacket has raglan sleeves.  The challenge was to create a design that was the right shape for each half of the sleeves, so that the sleeves could be embroidered before the sleeve seams were sown.

I started with an Embroidery Library design.  The design was not the right shape, but I figured that I could use an editor to move the stars around to get the right shape.  I ended up going to a friend's house and working with Floriani Total Control for the first time.  I did get the stars moved into a suitable shape and started thinking about buying digitizing software for myself.

Does the jacket work as formal wear?  There are limits. I would wear it for a nice night on the town, like to the Huntsville Symphony, but not to a really formal, wear a long dress, kind of event.  In the climate of Northern Alabama, fleece makes sense most of the winter and wool isn't really necessary.  This sort of jacket works well.  In a colder, wetter climate, I'd choose wool.

Raincoat Fix

I made a raincoat and blogged abut it here and here.   There's only one problem: the hood isn't quite long enough and the top of my head gets wet.  I decided the solution was to add a visor to the hood.  This will lengthen it and even keep the water out of my eyes.

The project started with a drawing of what I wanted the shape of the hood to be.  Because the visor will be symmetrical, it's only half of what I need.

I cut two of the visor shapes from the scraps of the raincoat fabric and two from sew-in interfacing.

All four pieces are sewn together to form a two-sided visor.  I tried using the seam tape on this again, but it didn't work well.

Finally, I opened the seam between the hood and the lining, inserted the visor, and sewed everything back together.  The seam isn't completely waterproof, but hopefully, that won't be too much of a problem.

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

Cork Wallet

I have this old wallet.  It's served me very well for many years, but it's worn out.  I also have this very interesting cork material that I bought at the Houston International Quilt Expo.  Maybe the two of these could meet and create something special.

Here's the old wallet.  Two of the things I like about it are the coin purse (on the outside) and all the pockets on the inside.

The idea is to replicate the wallet (mostly) in new materials.  The exterior is this lovely cork material.

It's a thin layer of natural cork bonded to canvas.  It is very flexible and not at all stiff.  It is a little thick.  I've seen it dyed a variety of colors, but I liked the natural look better.  The piece I bought also had this nice flower print.

The cork is too thick to make all of the lining pieces from it.  I chose to use ordinary polycotton broadcloth.  A binding material is also needed and I chose a 5/8' ribbon type material.  I managed to find both of these a 9PM at Wal-Mart after I got a wild hare to work on the project.

The first parts I made were the pocket sections for credit cards.  There are two sections, on one the right side of the wallet and one in the middle.  Each section has 3 pockets.  The top pocket is made from cork for decorate purposes, all of the others are just broadcloth.  Each pocket is 4.25" x 2".  The first step is to put binding on the top edge of each pocket.

The pockets are sewn to a backing piece that measures 4.25" x 3.375".  The idea is to make them evenly spaced.  The bottom of the pockets are just sewn to the backing.  Since polycotton broadcloth doesn't ravel, the bottom edges weren't finished.

Here's both sections of pockets sewn to the front of the bill pocket, which measures 4.25x7".  There's actually a sandwich here -- one layer of broadcloth, one layer of interfacing, one layer of broadcloth and then the pocket sections.  The left side and top of this piece then gets binding.  There's two hidden pockets between the pocket sections and the bill pocket lining.

Now it's time to assemble the outer part of the wallet.  The lining is a simple piece, 5" x 9".  The loop part of hook and loop tape (Velcro) is sewn to one side, with just enough clearance for the binding.

The real outside is a bit more complicated because of the coin purse.  The cork piece is 5"x7.5".  Then there's a zipper, and then a 1" strip of broadcloth with the hook side of the hook and loop tape.  The whole piece should measure 9" long when finished.  Also, there's a 5"x 3.5" piece of broadcloth sewn to the underside, under the zipper for the coin purse.  The bottom of the coin purse is attached with a line of stitching through the cork, the other side will get caught in the binding.

The outside and lining are put together, then the bill pocket piece is added.  Binding is sewn around the outside of the whole wallet.

Here it is: the inside  of the finished wallet.  I've been using it for a few days and it works great.  I really like the light color and distinctive pattern: it makes it lots easier to find my wallet in my purse.

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