Raincoat Part 1

I live in Alabama and it does rain here.  I don't have a proper raincoat that fits and it seemed like the time to remedy that situation.  Besides, I found Vogue 1564 at the fabric store and it seemed like a very interesting pattern.

There's a very limited selection of fabrics available in my town, so I've been looking for online sources for fabrics.  An search for raincoat fabric turned up Fashion Fabrics Club out of St. Louis, Missouri.  I ordered a nylon fabric with a waterproof coating on the back.  The fabric as reasonably priced, arrived in a good amount of time, and was as described on the website.  I plan to use then for future purchases.

The coat does have a lining, fortunately, I had some suitable lining material left over from another project sitting in my stash.

Once I got the pattern home and started really looking at it, I discovered that it really wasn't going to create a really waterproof garment, just one that was most water resistant.  That might work fine if I was looking for something to keep off a list misting rain between the car and the grocery store, but I really did want something that could handle a heavy rain and keep me dry.  The fabric I bought is waterproof, so the challenge is to keep the seems and front opening from leaking.  The original pattern calls for latch closures -- 8 of them.  I did find some at my local store, but they were about $5 each.  Ouch!  Not only are they expensive, they don't keep out the rain very well.  Buttons aren't any better in terms of keeping water out.  Also, the welt pockets where the water can just run right down into the coat?  They have to go. 

I got this garment out of the closet as inspiration and a source of ideas.  This is the top for sailor's foul weather gear, more or less designed to keep you from getting more than just damp while in a car wash or a storm at sea.  One of the features of this coat is storm flaps protecting a zipper to close the front.  There's one flap on each side of the zipper and they close together with Velcro, completely covering the zipper.  The second feature is that the seams are taped on the backside with special seam sealing tape.  The original pattern called for flat felled seams, which does help with water intrusion, but a flat felled seam sealed with tape is waterproof.  After surveying the available options online I chose this heat-sealed tape.  It's designed for garments, not tents or packs.  The pockets on the foul weather gear are completely external.  You can get things in and out of them without compromising the waterproof integrity of the coat.  Finally, the sleeves have adjustable tabs with Velcro so they can be tightened around your arms and leak a lot less.  Fortunately, the original sleeves already have decorative tabs, which can be adjusted to a new purpose.

Now that the basic design is set and all the materials have been decided on an obtained, it's time to move on to making the garment while maintaining the waterproof integrity of  the fabric.  We'll take that up next week.

Spoiler alert: The day after I finished this coat, it rained about 2" and  I had errands to run around town.  That's a serious test of a raincoat and this one passed!

Custom Dive Flag

I received a request from a friend to make a dive flag for the Wake Island Scuba Club.  This isn't something they could send out locally because Wake Island is a tiny sandbar in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and a long way from anywhere.  The idea was to use embroidery and/or applique to create the design.

Here is the original design.  The essential elements are apparently the red and white "divers down" flag, the outline of the island and the shark.  This design does have details that would be hard to capture with applique or embroidery, so some modification for the new medium is required.  There's also the question of exactly what items would be best executed with embroidery vs. applique.

I started with a JPG map of Wake Island.

I was able to bring this image into my Floriani Total Control embroidery design software as a background and then digitize the outline of the island.  (Actually, there are 3 islands here.)  I was able to do the same with the shark, picking out the eyes, mouth and gills as essential details to retain.

Here's the final design.  There's some big areas to be covered in both black and grey, so I decided to do these as applique and leave the shark details and lettering as embroidery.  The island and shark have to be worked as one piece, so the maximum size of the design is set by what will fit in my Bernina Jumbo Hoop.  The shark is superimposed on the island, so the island must be appliqued first, with the shark on top.  To maximize the size of the design, the lettering is done separately from the applique, after rehooping the fabric.

The first task was to create the flag itself.   The flag and all the applique are made from heavy weight flag nylon.  Some of this was obtained locally and some of it was sourced from Sailrite, an internet retailer of anything and everything related to both boats and fabric.  Sailrite also had the special flag tape and nice grommets for finishing the flag.

There's no standard dimension for dive flags.  After some research, I found that common aspect ratios for flags include 3:2 and 5:3.   I chose to use 5:3 although on further consideration 3:2 might have been better.  With the size of the applique design set by the jumbo hoop, I elected for a 30"x18" finished size for the flag.

I used paper to create patterns for the flag.  I wanted the white stripe to be nice and visible, so it's 6" wide.  The cutting mat marked in 1" squares sure made the job of creating the pattern a lot easier.

Here's the finished flag.  The seams for the white stripe are all flat-felled seams and the three edges are hemmed.  The left edge is bound with flag tape and set with brass washer grommets.  This finish isn't strictly necessary since this is going to be a wall decoration rather than flown as a flag, but it's a good finishing touch.

With the flag complete, it's time to move on to the ornamentation.

The applique design is printed at 100% scale and then cut out.  The paper pieces are applied to the black nylon with temporary fabric adhesive.  Then the pieces are cut from the fabric.

The machine is busy appliqueing the outline of the island.  It's a very complex shape, much more suited to machine applique than hand guided applique.  Once the island is down, the shark is appliqued on top, and then the eyes, mouth and gills of the shark are embroidered.

I used just a simple tear away stabilizer for this project.  The fabric is dimensionally stable, so a sticky stabilizer is not required.  There needs to be no stabilizer remaining on the back of the flag, so the simple design a tear-away met that requirement nicely.  The top and bottom lettering was done with two different hoopings of the fabric.

This project has already been sent off to Wake Island.  My projects are certainly getting world wide exposure!

Come back next Saturday for an all new project that's also related to water.

Embroidered Napkins

Some friends of mine are holding a baptism for their infant daughter and throwing a party afterwards.  This is a major event and they were wanting to have party favors that their friends could take home to remember the event.  They settled on embroidered napkins for the party favors.

The first consideration was how many napkins and what size and type.  Based on the guest list for the party, they estimated that 40 napkins would be about right.  They wanted very traditional linen napkins, however these proved to be unobtainable for any reasonable price.  In the end, my fabric stash yielded up enough linen to make 8 napkins for special guests, such as the priest and Godparents, and we settled on polyester/cotton napkins already made for everyone else.  Those napkins came in packages of 1 dozen, so I made 36 cotton napkins.

Next was the discussions about what sort of design to use.  The sheer number of napkins involved meant that a relativelty quick stitching design with few color changes would be highly desirable.  A large, dense design doesn't work well on napkins anyway.

A long search turned up this lovely vintage wreath of daisies.  As an added bonus, the daisy is the girl's birth month flower.  To personalize the design, her initials were added to the center of the wreath.  Using the Floriani Total Control embroidery design software allowed me to add the initials and then change the order of the sewing so that the pink initials are sewn right after the pink flowers, rather than after the whole wreath is finished, avoiding one color change.

 The resulting design fits nicely on the folded napkin.  Because the design is sewn to a napkin, there's a desire to have no stabilizer left on the back side.   A tear away would be a mess, with all the small areas in the flower pedals, so a water soluble stabilizer is needed.  The design has to be so close to the edge that the napkin itself isn't firmly help by the hoop.  Instead, the stabilizer is firmly held by the hoop and the napkin is firmly pinned to the stabilizer.  It's necessary to pin the two outside the area of the design.

After a serious workout of my embroidery machine, then washing the napkins to remove the remaining stabilizer, then ironing the napkins, here's the whole set, gathered all together.  The linen napkins are the stack on the right.

Epilogue: The party was a marvelous success and the guests departed with their souvenir napkins.

Come back next week for another embroidery project from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

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.

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.

Mastering the Continuous Lap

The continuous lap is the most common way of finishing a vent on a long sleeve shirt with traditional cuffs.  There are a few tricks to getting it right and that's what this blog post is all about.

To begin, cut the continuous lap just a little longer than the pattern calls for.

The exact length required depends on the length of the vent.  If you cut the vent just a little longer than the pattern calls for, the continuous lap will be too short, which is a mess.  With a longer lap, you can just cut off any excess at the end.  Since this is a small pattern piece, finding a little extra room to make it 1" longer is usually no big deal.

Step 1 is to cut the vent, using the traced pattern markings.  For best results, the cut needs to be straight and correctly oriented, no big deal if the traced markings are right.

Step 2 is to pin the lap to the vent.  It's important to put the RIGHT side of the vent fabric next to the WRONG side of the sleeve.  Yes, this is very different from the usual right sides together.  The seam will be 1/4" on the lap and 1/4" on the sleeve at the ends of the vent, tapering to almost nothing (1/16" or so) at the center.

Here's what the seem should look like when sewn:

Be careful that the seam is still on the fabric at the top of the vent and that there are no tucks or creases.

Turn the lap to the right side of the sleeve and press.  Also press in a 1/4 hem in the continuous lap on the side where it isn't yet sewn.

Pin the lap on the right side of the sleeve, tucking the hem and the first seam into the lap.  Be sure that the edge of the lap is 1/16" to 1/8" beyond the original seam.  The idea is that the first and second seams should be on top of each other.

Sew the second seam of the lap right on top of the first.  Be very careful to catch the top of the vent in the lap and to not have tucks or creases in the top.  Yes, it's possible to make this happen.

As the last step, pin the side of the lap away from the sleeve seam under the sleeve.  You are now ready to sew up the sleeve and attach the cuff.

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