Fun With Fleece Part 1

Polyester fleece is a fairy new and readily available material.  It's got a lot of nice properties.  It absolutely won't ravel, it's warm, light, wears well, has a little stretch, and embroiders well.  The usual use for fleece has been blankets and active wear style jackets.  I decided to explore different possible uses for fleece and came up with a few.  This series will explore some of the more successful experiments.

One great pattern for fleece is McCall's 5252.   This pattern has been around a while, possibly because it's such a wardrobe staple.  The pattern was originally designed for fleece and comes in variants with a hood or as a vest.

For the purple edition of the jacket, I embellished it with Art Deco Swan designs from Embroidery Library.

The swans on the front were difficult to do: the straight lines of the frames were very hard to keep straight so near the edge of the fabric.  The feather designs on the sleeves have a tendency to curl; the designs are a bit too dense for the fabric.  Still, it's a striking and useful jacket.

A different version of the jacket was originally intended as a cycling jacket.  That's the reason for choosing the very bright chartreuse color.  This version has elastic in the bottom and ends of sleeves to keep the wind out. 

I decorated this jacket with metallic embroidery, including one design on the upper back.  The metallic thread has held up well over several years.   However, fleece isn't particularly wind proof, so this jacket has some major downsides for cycling.

The third edition of this jacket was the most successful.  The light blue color is for the sky, and it's decorated with hummingbirds.

Each of the 8 hummingbirds is unique and I chose them all to residents or visitors to southern Arizona.  The hummingbird designs are dense, but they are also so small that they don't cause problems with the fabric.  This jacket is very popular among my bird loving friends.

Jeans

 I like a good pair of jeans that really fit.  I've found that I need to make the jeans myself to achieve that good fit.  Last week, I discussed how to make that good fit happen.  This week, I'll talk about how to achieve that classic 5-pocket styling in a pair of jeans.

I used an out of print Kwik-Sew pattern, but McCall's 5894 is an current pattern for classic jeans.  Jeans are different from slacks in a number of ways.  First, they feature a back yoke, rather than just a single piece with darts in the back.  Second, the pocket arrangements are different and a lot more flattering on most people.  Finally, the seams are both reinforced and celebrated with top stitching.

The back pockets of jeans usually have some decorative stitching, but it's a great place for adding embroidery.  It's easy to embroider anything you like before the pockets are attached.  Denim is a nice heavy material and can support even quite heavy stitching.  For this pair of jeans I chose a design featuring calla lilies.  Often, I make the pocket designs the mirror reverse of each other, but with this nearly symmetric design, I made the pockets identical.

Top stitching is important to the classic look of jeans.  Top stitching works best with special top stitching thread.  I've tried a couple of kinds and the Coats and Clark thread works best for me.  I can even use it with a regular jeans needle, rather than needing to use the special top stitching needle.  There's a lot of switching back and forth between regular thread and the top stitching thread in making the jeans.  I've read that some people with more than one sewing machine will set up one with dark thread and one with top stitching thread.  In either case, regular bobbin thread to match the fabric is used for all the stitching except the embroidery.

Here, the coin pocket is attached to the pocket lining.  The pocket lining should be made of some much thinner material than denim.  I generally grab some polyester-cotton blend broadcloth out of my stash that mostly matches the color of the denim I'm using.

Lots of different thread went into making these jeans.  Just for fun, I collected them all for a group photo.  There's 7 colors of embroidery thread, plus black embroidery bobbin thread.  There's two colors of regular sewing thread.  I used the orange for the basting to check fit, as described last week, and finally, white top stitching thread.  Wow!  That's 11 different threads!

As for the rest of the details of making jeans?  It's easy, just follow the pattern directions and change threads a lot.

Come back next Saturday for more Fun with a Sewing Machine!

Fitting Jeans

Jeans are a wonderful wardrobe staple.  Everyone wears them: men, women, and children. They can be work pants or dressy pants.  They go with pretty much everything.

The challenge with jeans is that they have to fit.  For those of us who are pear-shaped, jeans that fit in the hips seem to be always too loose in the waist, sometimes by several inches.  On tighter fitting styles, the seat still seams to be somehow not right.  The good news is, all of this can be fixed with proper pattern modifications.

Basic sizing of jeans is accomplished by adding fabric to the side seams, hems, and top at the waistband.  However, for those of us with an especially curvy butt, that's just not enough.

The first thing to do is to add to the back of the pants at the crotch.  As seen with the line of pins here, make the center back seam longer and taper into the inseam.  I cut the back long the pattern or the pins, which ever was bigger.

The back yoke also needs modified for best fit.  Take fabric out of the center back seam, tapering to nothing at the yoke/back seam.  Add extra fabric to the top of the pants at the center back.  

Assemble the pants in a different order than the instructions call for.  First, put the zipper in the center front.  Skip the pockets, because fitting the jeans might change the pocket locations.  Sew the back yoke to the back.  Then, baste the side seams, inseams, and center back seam.  I like to use contrasting color thread to make the remove of the basting stitches easier. 

With the jeans basted together, try them on for fit and adjust the side seams and back part of the inseam as necessary.  Yes, even pear shaped women can get jeans that just fit, without being excessively baggy anywhere.

At this point, the jeans should fit well, so it's just a matter of adding all the special touches that make jeans special.  Come back next week for a discussion of pocket embroidery and top stitching.

Bright Shirts for Winter

It's starting to look a bit like fall here in the Tennessee Valley.  One of these days, the breathless heat and humidity of summer will give way to cooler temperatures, possibly with some tornadoes along the way.  It's time to think about refreshing my winter wardrobe for a new season.

The basis of my winter wardrobe is going to be jeans and brightly patterned collared shirts.  I have some shirts, but unfortunately, most of them don't quite fit any more.  I need to make some new shirts with some modifications so they fit me better.

I just happen to have a nice collection of cotton prints in my stash, all in appropriate lengths for making shirts.  I know all you quilters love fat quarters, but I buy my cotton prints in 3 yard lengths, which gives me a lot of flexibility for what to to with them.

I bought nearly all of this fabric when I was traveling, because there's limited resources in my hometown.  The lovely Hawaiian prints are from Fabric Mart in Honolulu.  They have various locations on Oahu, all with lovely fabrics.  The dragon print are from the Calico Cat in the Kaimuki district of Honolulu.   Others are from Kaimuki Dry Goods, also in Honolulu, High Fashion Fabrics in Houston, and SR Harris in Minneapolis.

So... which of these lovely fabrics to use first??  How about the one with the chameleons from SR Harris?

The pattern I'm using is McCall's 8053, which has been out of print for quite a while, however, McCall's 7629 is similar.

One of the problems with the older editions of this shirt is that the sleeves are not quite big enough around.  A second issue is that the shirt is too small over my hips.  To fix these problems, I added 1/2: on each side of the sleeve, tapering to nothing at the cuff.  I also added 1/2" to the front and back, expanding to 2" at the hips.

The collar on this shirt calls for the inside of the collar to be hand sewn to the shirt.  That's not fun.  Instead, after sewing on the collar, I pressed a crease about 1/2" from the edge of the inner collar.  After pinning, the collar is sewn on the outside, for a neat appearance.

After completing this shirt, I made two more.

This one is a lively Hawaiian print featuring plumaria and hibiscus.  The fabric is from Fabric Mart.

I just couldn't pass up this fabric with jellyfish from Kaimuki Dry Goods.

Come back next Saturday for a look at finishing long sleeves using the continuous lap, a traditional technique for traditional blouses such as these.

T-Shirt Embroidery

Last week, I shared how I was working with a new material, linen jersey knit, and making a T-shirt as a test garment.  There's no reason not to embellish it and test out that aspect of how the material works.  There were some real challenges with the fabric, but surprisingly, the embroidery went smoothly.

The fabric is extremely light weight, so it can only support a low density design.  With the summery fabric and light blue color, I opted for a design that reminds me of the beach.  The design from Embroidery Library can be found here.

For my T-shirts, I like to put the embroidery high, to emphasize the neckline, rather than a more traditional placement in the center of the chest.  Designs that are at least vaguely V-shaped work best for this.  The design I chose isn't completely symmetric, but it works.

For design placement, I printed a copy of the design at exactly the same size as it would stitch out and set the horizontal placement to clear the neckline seam.  The center of the design is on the center of the shirt.  The original colors of light blue and yellow weren't going to work on my blue fabric, so I opted for an off white for the center and tan for the rest of the design.  In the photo, I'm placing the spools on the fabric to see if the colors are pleasing together.

I chose Floriani no show mesh for the stabilizer.  A knit needs a stabilizer that will stick to the fabric somehow to keep the fabric from stretching as it's sewn out.  The no-show mesh stabilizer has a temporary heat bond to the fabric, after stitching, it becomes a lightweight cutaway to permanently stabilize the fabric while not making it stiff.   I was very careful to not move the iron sideways on the fabric while attaching the stabilizer, given my previous problems with ironing this fabric. 

The finished design shows no puckering and blends well with the fabric.  It's more subtle than my usual style, but everyone needs variety.

Come back next week for more Fun with a Sewing Machine!

New Materials: Linen Knit

It's always fun to try out new materials, techniques, and styles.  While in Minneapolis, I found some linen jersey knit.  I've worked with woven linen fabric and some knits, but never a linen knit.  So, I bought enough to make a T-shirt as a test garment.

Most fabrics I buy go straight into the washer before I even think about cutting them out.  Pre-shinking the fabric means the final garment will still fit.  In this case, washing before cutting may have been a serious mistake.  The fabric came out of the dryer with a very serious roll to the selvages.  I decided to iron the fabric and take care of that problem.  BIG MISTAKE.

Ironing did remove most of the roll, but in the process, the selvages were stretched relative to the center.  A second trip through the laundry didn't fix the problem, nor did an attempt to stretch the middle of the fabric with an iron.  Lack of recovery (not returning to the original shape after stretching) seems to be an issue with this fabric.  After a third trip through the laundry, the problem wasn't all fixed, but it was at least better.

The roll at the edge of the fabric made it impossible to line up the pattern pieces on the straight of the grain in the usual way.  I tried to lay out the fabric straight, then applied the pattern pieces.  I'm sure there's some error in the placement, but with a knit fabric, maybe that's OK.  Also, due to the earlier differential stretching, there wasn't a consistent grain anyway.

I my standard T-shirt pattern and construction techniques, described in detail in a previous post.

Unfortunately, a fold of fabric got caught up in the neck seam.  I was able to fix the problem, but in the process, I got some small holes in the thin fabric.

I was able to fix the holes and hopefully the repairs won't be too obvious.

I'm not sure that I like this fabric.  Maybe I don't know the right ways to deal with it, or maybe I didn't have the right application for it.  I'll wear the shirt a while and see how it goes.  Linen is a wonderful fabric for summer, very cool and comfortable.  Here in the South, we've definitely got some more warm weather coming this year.

Come back next week for a post about the embroidery on this shirt.

Lizards, Anyone? A Simple T-Shirt

JoAnn Fabric has these lovely knit fabrics in the juvenile section.  They are perfect for T-shirts.  I saw this blue print with green lizards and decided I needed it.

The fabric is a 100% cotton summer weight knit.  I supposed they figured that this would be perfect for little boys, but why should they have all the fin clothes?  I made a shirt sized for myself.

I used Kwik-Sew 3766 for the pattern.  It has options for sleeve length and neckline.  This shirt was made with the higher neckline and short sleeves.  This pattern is one of my patterns that I return to again and again: a solid pattern for a wardrobe staple.

The pattern calls for 1 1/8 yards for a short sleeve shirt.  I've found that often isn't quite enough, so I buy 1 1/4 yards of fabric for this shirt.  The front and back must be cut before the sleeves, because the fabric has to be folded differently to cut out the sleeves.

Stretch is great in a knit shirt, but not on the should seams.  Adding some non-stretchy material, like this hem tape, to the should seams helps the garment to maintain it's shape.

The neckline seam is the hardest one in the whole shirt.  The neck band is smaller than the neck hole, so it needs to be stretched evenly all the way around.  Using lots of pins to distribute the fullness equally, then stretching the fabric slightly as you sew the seam does the trick.

I've tried a bunch of different way to hem a T-shirt without a serger.  The one I like best is to use a knit or stretch stitch to finish the edge of the fabric, then fold up the hem and sew it in place with a straight stitch.

There you have it -- an easy and colorful addition to your wardrobe, perfect for warmer temperatures and more casual summer dressing.