>Makin’ pincushions…

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Morning spectacle bears! My long drought of blog fodder continues. Yesterday’s main project was assembling pincushions to put in the shop for consignment. This time around I snapped some photos for more super-fast-pic-torials. Here’s the new batch!

Filling up the cushions!

In this batch I made some regular old tufted tomatoes and a few apple and pear shaped cushions. They all start out the same way. Cut the fabric, interface and stitch. One tip for assembling the cushions: first sew together each half, then sew the halves together leaving a space to insert the filling. It’s the best way to match the points.

I like to use walnut shells for the main filling. This is a bedding material for lizards (or something) and available in the super-creepy part of PetSmart. It’s heavy enough to give the cushions some nice heft and cleaner than sand. I know a lot of people mention emery powder as the ideal filling for the cushion to help sharpen the needles and pins, but after researching it seems that the whole emery thing is a relic from the past. Today’s needles and pins do not need the constant sharpening as they are made from higher-grade materials that are fine with any old filling. Plus, emery powder is hard to find and pricey. Each of these cushions takes between two and three cups of walnut shells. I top off each cushion with some regular poly batting (and occasionally wool felt scraps). The batting allows me to get the cushions VERY full, and it acts as a sort of ‘plug’, keeping the free-flowing walnut shells from spilling back out of the cushion.

For the rest of the filling up process, here’s my mini tutorial.

Here are my cushions, all filled and stitched.

Trims and stems

Once all of my cushions are filled, they’re ready for trimming! This is my favorite part – I get to paw through my stash of buttons, yarn and felt. I love wool felt – it feels nice an beefy and the colors seem more vivid. I buy most of my wool felt (actually a wool/rayon mix) at Treadle Yard goods in St. Paul. They also carry some nice bamboo/rayon felt that is softer and more flimsy, but comes in great, bright colors. I also use a few flannels and wools for trimming.

Before I can start trimming and tufting the cushions I have one more thing to do – make stems for my fruits. Basically it’s sculpting with wool. Here’s how.

Tufting the fruit

The pears and apples are assembled in the same way. Fill, tuft, attach leaves and stems. Here, I’m working on one of the pears. My favorite pear. Oh, how I love those colors!

Before I start, my #1 tip for tufting and trimming pincushions is to stock up on specialty needles. A 5” doll needle (thin enough to get through the holes on buttons) and a curved needle (normally in the upholstery section) will make the whole process a LOT easier.

OK, now for the pic-torial.

Assembling the tomatoes

The tomato cushions are a bit more involved to assemble, but they’re my favorite to use. In my example I’m using contrasting yarn to tuft the cushion and I used a shank-style button on the top. It’s a bit easier to tighten and secure the yarn if you use the 4-hole style button on the top, but I like the shank-style buttons more, looks-wise.

When putting together a tomato first wrap the decorative yarn, then add the felt and buttons – that way the felt sits over the yarn. Using two buttons on the tomato is key to get a nice, secure tuft and solid cushion. The two buttons act as a sort control on the yarn, adding some tension and helping to secure the yarn before even tying knots!

Here they are…a nice little family of pincushions! It was hard to bring them in to sell –especially that pear! But I already have a pincushion at home that I love. Hopefully they will all find good homes!

Lucky for you bears, my SECONDARY project yesterday was making a sundress. I’m almost done, so lord willin’ and the crik don’t rise, in tomorrow’s post we’ll be getting back to our true love…dresses!! So clean off your specs for the reveal!

>Quick tip: Pencil skirts and those pesky top of the thigh folds (tilted waist adjustment)…

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Greetings muskrats! I almost skipped posting today – I’m deep into quilt-making and didn’t think all ya’ll would be interested in following down this dark alley… isn’t it weird when your favorite bloggers all of a sudden-like change their focus?? Ho-hum. Not to worry, I will BURY you with quilt pictures when the time is right. Today I thought it’d be nice to at least stick our heads into the garment-making room and say hi. To that point, I’m sharing some BAD photos illustrating a recently discovered trick for getting those pesky pencil skirts to fit better… a tilted waist adjustment (at least, that’s what I’m calling it).

Here’s the problem I’m addressing:

Egad! Those terrible folds under the tummy at the top of the thighs on some skirts. I often have this problem and have tried to compensate by adding more width at the hips, which hasn’t always worked great. I ended up with baggy hips and I STILL had folds highlighting my abdomen and the odd dip at the top of my thighs. Here’s a fix for muskrat shapes like mine.

If you’ve already sewn the skirt together, take it off and unpick the stitches holding the waistband to the skirt front. You can leave the back alone – and if you’re doing a faced waistband you can skip this part (obv).

Cut off a wedge from the skirt front, taking the most from the center front. I know from experience that 1.5” is a good place for me to start on this adjustment. If you’re not sure, you could try pinching out the folds while wearing the skirt to get a sense as to how much extra fabric is there.

Reattach the skirt! I was being lazy, so I just eased the skirt into the waistband. When I trimmed off my wedge that made my skirt front seam slightly longer, so the waistband was a bit too short. I should really have cut a new, slightly longer waistband (which I will work out for future versions of this pattern.) Since this skirt has a waistband that won’t be working with a tucked shirt too often** I figured I could live with a few wrinkles – plus the fabric is 100% wool, so very responsive to steam!!

**seriously, could there BE a worse look for me than the one I’m sporting in this photo? Waistband at the natural waistline with a shirt tucked in? Great Googly Moogly.

Before and after – very effective (for me)! I still have a few wrinkles going on – that’s partially because of how I’m standing, but I probably could have taken off even more in my wedge.

 

That’s it for now muskrat friends! Have a great day, I’ll be obsessively working on my quilt. Almost done – and there’s silk, cotton, wool, leather and embroidery involved. With SILK yarn, you semi-aquatic rodents!

>Babymaking. Burp cloths and ribbon blankets…

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Ha! You bumblebees, that title caught your eye, didn’t it, you nosy parkers! Before we get to today’s project I’d like you to pass on a message to your rose-eating bug friends. I have a bottle of bonide and I’m not afraid to use it. Stay. Away. From. My. Roses. That is all.

OK, down to business. I’ve finished project #1 in my outside-the-comfort-zone gift making bonanza that this June is shaping into. This is for the baby shower coming up in a week or two. Wow! The other day when I asked for suggestions you guys came THROUGH!! I have yet to go back and comment, but thanks for all the great ideas! You guys are all brilliant! After perusing your comments, my inclinations and the interwebs I decided to make a tabbed blanket as suggested by fellow Minneapolis blog-sisters, Two Birds. I liked the idea of playing with ribbon and we have some awesome cuddle fabric (like minki, different company, different name) at the shop. Since I like to overdo everything, once I got going I thought I’d make some coordinating burp cloths from cloth diapers as suggested by Angie – she even linked to a tutorial on her blog Quality Time! The tutorial is beautiful (with very cool packaging ideas!), but unfortunately for me was aimed a little too high for my small brain. There was a tiny assumption that one knew what a burp cloth was. Or what shape cloth diapers are (rectangles, btw.) Her beautiful photos didn’t really show any full length shots and since I’m baby-ignorant, I couldn’t quite figure out what to do. I found a similar tutorial on A Chelsea Morning aimed for the UBER-beginner that filled in the gaps and I was off!

I find taking photographs or large flat things (like quilts, blankets) exceedingly difficult, nevertheless, here’s some pictures!

Seriously, honeybees, looking at those colors makes me feel a bit high!

For those similarly baby-dumb (like me) a tabbed blanket (also found on the googles as ribbon blankets and sensory blankets) are not really blankets. They’re more like toys. They’re sold in sizes from 7” on up – 22” (the size I made) seemed on the large side, I suspect due to the prevailing width of fabric and the ability to make 2 blankets from 2/3 a yard of fabric. Anyway, they tend to be VERY soft on one side (minki) and pretty soft on the other (flannel) with ribbon loops (or some variation) around the edges. Supposedly, the texture of the ribbons is stimulating to babies and they’ll play and chew on them. I suspect the popularity of this blanket has less to do with the baby einstein-like effect on the teeny fingers groping the grosgrain and more to do with our own childlike love of ribbon. I know that’s why I chose the project – how often does one get to mix 11 different ribbons in one project??

And burp cloths? Apparently babies actually exude goo after they eat and for some reason must do it on your shoulder. This seems like some sort of arcane testing ritual hardwired into the baby by the higher powers to see if we REALLY like the little creatures. Nevertheless, burp cloths are slung over the shoulder as a landing spot for the goo. The ones I made utilize cloth diapers which are made out of a material that reminded me of cheesecloth, but much thicker. Very open weave. The middle 5 or 6 inches of the diapers (well, the size I got) is padded somehow. For those interested in doing a project like this, cloth diapers are in the baby section of Target (but not actually with the diapers – more with the tshirts and stuff.) In all honesty, I’m not convinced these are going to be super functional – they’re not that big. The ones I got are about 16.5” x 11” after a wash and dry. I’m not sure how far this post-feeding goo travels, but I figured that they’re absorbent and since babies are messy little things anything absorbent should be handy, right? OK. The Snug Bug’s current installment of babies for dummies is now over.

Alrighty, I snapped some photos along the way and while I won’t do a full-blown tutorial, I’ll do the abbreviated version for both projects! Grab a nice fat flower and settle down for a pollen snack while I share some more euphoria-inducing photos.

First off, I gathered my supplies. Wash and dry all your supplies prior to working on the project. I skipped that with the ribbon, but I use ribbon on a lot of wash-and-dry projects and haven’t noticed any excessive shrinking. You’ll see I have giant rick rack. I didn’t actually use the rick rack, but if I HAD used it, that should definitely be pre-treated for the burp cloths. It shrinks. I wasn’t as concerned about shrinkage on the tabbed blankie – who cares if the loops shrink?

Alright, let’s start out with the tabbed blanket, shall we?

The making of the tabbed blanket

Supplies

• Blanket dimensions: 21” square (finished), 22” square (unfinished)
• Two coordinating fabrics – big enough to make your blanket. I used a Michael Miller turquoise polka dot flannel that I got at Treadle Yard Goods (available online here) and a cuddle fabric in a print from Shannon fabrics from Sewtropolis (available online here)
• Ribbon – I looked at a lot of pictures and some of these blankets looked really, um, weird and wonky to me. Worthy of posting on Regretsy. The ones that I liked had more closely spaced ribbon and the ribbon was all in the same color family or otherwise harmonious (like, all red white and blue.) It also looked better when all the ribbons were around the same width – I didn’t follow that rule, though. To get a blanket with ribbon spaced like mine, plan on spacing the ribbon every 2” along each side. Each of my loops was 5” long. SO for my 22” blanket, I needed 11 different types of ribbon – 20” of each type (5” per side.) Most of my ribbon is the stuff they sell on the roll at Joanns (which I could have gotten MUCH cheaper at Walmart, had I been able to bring myself to shop there…) I also had some orange rick rack and cute ‘yardstick’ twill tape that I’ve been hoarding all winter.

The “pic-torial”

That was fun, wasn’t it?

My main tips for this sort of project are…

• Pin. Lots.
• Square up your fabric when you start. Square it again after the ribbons are basted on. Pin. Lots.
• Arrange ribbons from dark to light.
• Pin. Lots.

OK, let’s move on to the burp cloths.

The making of the burp cloths

Supplies

• Size: mine were a finished size of 16.5” x 11.5” From what I understand, cloth diapers vary greatly in size.
• I made five burp cloths because that’s how many diapers came in the package I got. As I said above, the diapers came from Target – I think it was around $6.99 for my package of five.
• Contrast fabric: you’ll need a strip that’s between five to seven inches wide by the length of the diaper + one inch for seam allowances. Mine were 7” wide by 17.5” long. For most diapers, you could probably get two strips from one fat quarter.
• Ribbon – you’ll need around one yard of ribbon for each cloth. Technically, the length of your diaper + 1” for the seam allowance/fold times two. My diapers were 16.5” long, so I needed 17.5” x 2, for 35” per diaper.
• Thread, of course! I had blue and orange and played with them to up the contrast.

The “Pic-torial”

Tips!

• Again, press and pin. That diaper cloth is sort of a bug-aboo.
• I wrapped the ends of the ribbon around the contrast fabric (but not around the diaper!). The ribbons are centered on the edges of the contrast fabric so that one edge is completely over the contrast fabric and the other edge is just on the diaper.
• Sew the edges of the ribbon covering the contrast fabric first, then the outer edges of the ribbons. Sew the ends last.

 

So there you are, my baby project! It was fun to do something different than my normal baby project of sweater and booties. Although, a customer at the shop told me about a washable cashmere yarn that has me excited for my NEXT baby project!!

If you have any questions on my sketchy how-to pictures, let me know. Otherwise, just enjoy the eyecandy honeybees! And thanks for all your help on this project!

>How to attach snaps. And make faux leather vambraces.

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Greetings medieval steeds! Tonight I bring you a step by step how-to on attaching snaps. I even have some diagrams attempting to show the anatomy of snaps because to tell the truth, I don’t have a very hard time attaching snaps… it’s attaching them with all the pieces in the right place that trips me up! This morning I woke up and put on a short white skirt and a cowgirl-esque button up shirt with mother of pearl buttons and I had a hankering for some leather jewelry so I raided my stash of 10 yards of leather strips, attached some snaps, slid an old belt buckle into the strappy hot mess and sallied forth.

What can I say? I love the look of cuffs. I’m practically magpie-esque on this issue!
Let’s get on with the snap setting, shall we?

 

Supply wagon

This little project didn’t require a lot in the way of supplies.
Leather strips, scissors to cut the strips down to size, snaps,
a snap setting tool and a hammer.

Anatomy of a snap

Here are the parts of a snap. There are four parts that attach to
create a snap – two for each piece of material that you are
connecting. I’m using a traditional snap that has a solid
round cap with a ring on the backside. In the
photo below, I’ve laid out the four pieces showing both sides of
each piece. The snaps towards the bottom are ‘right’ side up,
the ones towards the top are ‘wrong’ side up – that
distinction is a bit arbitrary, though.

The working parts of the snap – the parts that stick together –
are the ‘stud’ and the ‘socket’. For the type of snap I’m using,
the ‘cap’ holds the socket to the fabric and the ‘post’/ring’ holds
the stud to the fabric.

 

Here’s my awesome photoshop sketch! Pretend that the pink lines are
some nice fabric. Here I’m showing how the pieces fit together
from the side.

A closer look at the cap and socket.

 

A closer look at the stud and post/ring.

 

Let’s talk size

Snaps come in different sizes, similar to buttons. I believe
the sizes refer to the diameter in millimeters. Below
I’ve sat a size 16 and 24 snap cap side by side. With the
snap system I’m using, only the snap caps differ in size – the other
three pieces are size 16, but work with all the different
snap cap sizes. A size 16 snap is what you would commonly
find on a hipster-style button up shirt. OK, with any
button up shirt. You know.

 

The snap setting tool

We carry the Snap Source line of snaps and accessories at
the shop and I really like how they work. It’s fast, pretty
easy to keep everything in line and you get to whack’em with
a hammer, which feels satisfying but also makes sure those
pesky snaps get on TIGHT!

The snap setting tool is made up of three parts, held together
a jigsaw-like post and hole configuration.

 

Here I’ve removed the top piece. See the post?

Now I’ve separated all three pieces – the top, middle and base.
You can see that the post is attached to the base and there
is a circular snap guide on the opposite point of the base.

 

Remember the different sizes? Different sizes require different
base pieces. See below I’ve set out the size 16 and
24 bases. The middle and top pieces are interchangeable
and used for all sizes. There is also a mother of pearl
base that I’m eager to try out.

 

Attaching the cap and socket

First I’m going to attach the cap and socket to my
leather strip. As a reminder, I’ve circled
these pieces in green below. It’s helpful to have
something with snaps already attached as a reference
while you’re attaching your own snaps. It’s very easy
to attach the socket upside down or to attach the cap on
the inside of your project!

 

OK, Ima just going to pretend you’re doing this
with me, K? Here we have our cap and socket as
well as examples of properly attached snaps.
You can see that my leather has right and wrong
sides. The right side looks like what my skin will
probably look like in another 10 years and the
wrong side is more leather-fuzzy. I want my
cap to show on the ‘right’ side of my leather strip.

 

I noted the steps directly on the photos, so I’ll
only chime in if I forgot something! Note that I
am using the size 24 base for the cap!

Once you give the setter a couple of good whacks, slide
the setter pieces apart and inspect your work. Snaps
should be attached VERY tightly – barely enough
room to slide a fingernail between your snap and your material.
If you missed (hey, it happens) or prongs are sticking
out where they shouldn’t be, use your seam
ripper or a small, thin screwdriver
to work the snap parts apart and toss ‘em. Even
if they look fine, they won’t work!

 

Attaching the stud and post/ring

Now let’s move on to the stud and the post/ring, shall me?

Admire!!

 

My leather jools

Here’s what I rigged up – two shorter straps that wrap around my
wrists three or so times and a longer strap that wraps around
my neck a whole buncha times. I also found a little buckle
the perfect size and slid that on on as well to add to
the general bondage theme I have going on.

This was super fun and I’m thinking of doing something
similar with mother-of-pearl snaps and some wide
vintage crocheted trim I have! Even if the project’s
not to your taste, I hope the anatomy of
a snap drawing is helpful because I SLAVED over
that one! My first attempt looked like four
beached sea turtles. Tragic.

 

Here’s how I ended up wearing my new not-bling. Even though
I love the idea of chokers, I ended up wearing
one of the shorter strips as my necklace and I wore the longer
piece intended as a necklace around my wrist.

So there you have it, my knightly mounts! Jewelry helpful for lashing an Ikea haul to the roof of my Subaru or fending off knife attack with my clever wrists (OK, my understanding of vambraces and other armor is based on extensive reading of fantasy literature…)

>Weekly roundup and interweb treats.

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[EDIT…. before I post!! I put this together yesterday while blogger was still down and Mr. Bug and I were getting ready for a road trip. Blogger’s back and we’ve made it as far as Madison, Wisconsin… I got a lot of knitting done in the car, but my skills were rusty (you shoulda seen my M1’s…) and my count was off, so I ripped and restarted! Hopefully the weak wi-fi in our hotel will let me get this published!! Peace out, pygmy goats!]

As I write this, blogger is down and the twitter-verse is having a collective meltdown! I had one too when I thought I’d lost my post earlier today. That reminds me – for those of you who blog using blogger/blogspot, do you use any sort of blog-writing platform that’s external to blogger? I use Windows Live Writer and I like it a lot. It’s less clunky than putting together posts on the blogger site and has some extra formatting features that aren’t available in the blogger editor. It’s a free download (and works with WordPress blogs as well.) Is there anything else out there that’s similar?

Onto the weekly duds…

[Top Row: Saturday, Sunday,  Monday | Bottom row: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday]

I pretty much LOVED everything I wore over the last week, except I think the pony pants are going to go into the donate bag. They’re SO high waisted and stretch while I’m wearing them so that they’re pretty uncomfortable a few hours in. Oh well.

On to my top three pics from the googles this week….

Fitting the bodice – Threads

This article on Threads was unusually comprehensive. It gave me a bee in my bonnet to work on an actual bodice sloper. I need a snug bug clone so I can both wear and fit the sloper at the same time…

Fringey Feet!

I found this tutorial from Leeyong Soo, author of blog The Style Wilderness strangely fascinating. I’m not a huge fan of fringe, or of booties, but together I totally love them!

blog-love: Helga Von Trollop

Most of the blogs in my Google Reader are sewing related, but I follow a few more fashion-oriented blogs as well. One of my favorites is Helga Von Trollop. Totally digging her style and planning on copying some of her looks. Exactly. Stalker style. That is all.

And with that, I’m off for the weekend! Mr. Bug and I are leaving in a few hours for a road-trip to Rockford, Illinois, with a stay-on-the-way in Madison, Wisconsin, and a stay-on-the-way-back in Dubuque, Iowa. Mr. Bug is running a marathon in Rockford and I am planning on reading, listening to audiobooks and knitting! Yay roadtrip! We’re getting back on Monday, so posts may be light ‘till early next week.

>What’s that tool for?? Bias tape maker edition…

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Greetings chickadees! I finished a pretty pink Violet today. I love saying pretty pink Violet. Get it? Pink Violet? I started out working on it at work, so I used the serger for most of the major seams, but had more to do at home, so I needed some other seam finishing tricks. Not only do I dislike chaotic insides on my garments, but I was using a nice voile that was a bit persnickity. I did french seams for the arms, and decided on a simple bias tape finish for the armscye seams. Normally I make my bias tape by just folding in half, pressing, then folding the raw edges to the center fold and pressing again. Since the voile was so persnickity, that didn’t work so well so I pulled out the bias tape maker I bought months ago and gave that a whirl. I took pictures along the way, so here goes. If you’re a bias tape maker tool pro, sorry! I’ve got nothin’ for you today!

 

Well, first thing I needed some bias strips. Bias strips are awesome because they’re slightly stretchy and will go around curves really well since they’re cut on the bias of the fabric. Cutting on the bias means to cut on a 45 degree angle from the straight lengthwise and crosswise grain threads. Sometimes I cut strips on the grain instead of on the bias and those are OK for using on straight edges, but will be more bulky.

Nikol (my boss!) just posted an excellent tutorial on how to cut bias strips. It involves some super orignami-style folding if you need a bunch of strips. I suggest you go and read it! Right after you’re done reading this, of course! The thing is, Nikol’s awesome method requires a relatively square piece of fabric to start out with and I was cutting my strips from scraps. So I pulled out my trusty supply of quilting tools – specifically my clear ruler, my self healing mat and my rotary cutter.

Cutting bias strips

The clear rulers have diagonal markings on them. I’ve marked (in purple) the 45 degree line on the ruler. That’s the one you want to use.

OK, once you find your 45 degree marking, line it up along the grain of the fabric. The easiest way to find the grain is to line it up along the selvedge edge of the fabric (circled in green below.) The selvedge is the part of the fabric that is ‘finished’ when it comes off the bolt. You’ll be cutting along the angled edge of the ruler – marked in yellow below.

Here’s a closeup of the selvedge of the fabric that I’m working on. Lots of fabrics will have printing along this edge.

Here is what my fabric looks like after I make the first cut along the angled edge of the ruler along that 45 degree angle.

Now that the I’ve got a 45 degree edge cut, I can use the straight edge of the ruler to cut my strips. For the type of bias tape maker I’m using I need 1 and 3/4” strips to make 1” double fold bias tape. I’ve swung my fabric around so my just-cut edge faces the left (it’s still marked in yellow.) I’m right handed and assume that lefties would swing it the other direction. For reference, I’ve circled the selvedge in green to help orient you. Once everything is lined up, I cut my strips using the markings on the ruler and my rotary cutter.

Here, I’ve cut some strips!

 

Attaching the strips

Since I’m working with scraps, I ended up with a bunch of short strips that needed to be sewn together to make longer strips. Attaching the strips is pretty easy. The pictures below show the general steps – first lay two strips together as shown below, you’ll be stitching along the yellow line.

Once you’ve stitched, trim the excess fabric – I trimmed to just under a quarter inch.

See? This is what the joining seam looks like from the right side.

Last step – press. I press the seam allowances to one side, but the bias tape maker package said to press open.

 

Meet Mr. Bias Tape Maker

Here’s the bias tape maker I’m using – the regular old Dritz kind. If you have a hard time finding one, check out the quilting section. I got mine in the quilting section of Joann’s

Here’s one side – this is the side that faces down while making bias tape. That metal loop is on a hinge and is just a little pully-handle sort of thing.

Here’s the other side.

And here’s the insides!

How it works

To load up the bias strip, you slide the fabric through the U-shaped slot on the wide end of the tool (you can see the U-shaped slot clearly in the photo above.) I used a pin to catch the fabric and pull it through – this is what it looks like once you get the fabric pulled through.

Pin the ends to the ironing board…

Then start slowly dragging the tape  through the maker, following along with the iron. It’s definitely something that requires a bit of concentration! You have to make sure the tape is even – not wrapping too far towards one side or the other. It’s not hard, though!

Action shots!

Refining my technique…

Here’s a shot from one end of my bias tape – there were worst spots that were super uneven with one fold much wider than the other. I don’t really like how far apart the raw edge are from each other either. I think I can do better. Of course, I’m working with a very thin voile, so that was part of the problem…

After some experimentation I found that holding the maker at a 45 degree angle helped feed the fabric through the maker with a lot of control.

Here’s a birds-eye view of the improved positioning of the maker – see how nice the folds are?

Much better! Finished bias tape!

 

That’s it for today, chickadee-dee-dees! Let me know any questions or if you’re an old pro at this, chime in with a comment if I missed something!

Patty

>How I hem knits. Also a side trip to sergerland.

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Greetings quaggas. You know what I don’t get? If you’re half horse and half zebra, how could you have gone extinct? We could just make more of you – we have tons of your purebred bretheren still hanging about, chomping grass and messing up the plains. Or whatever. But today we’re going to talk about hemming knits. I snapped some pics while I was making the Tahitian T! Before we get to the hemming, I thought I’d do a quick introduction to Mr. Serger – just in case there’s anyone out there who hasn’t used one and is sort of scared of the dangerous knife. Or perhaps didn’t know there were cutting instruments involved. In any case, here it is in all its glory – the Mr. Serger.

 

Serger 101

I’m including the serger info because I like to use my serger to finish the raw edges of my knits before hemming. If I didn’t have a serger, I might do a simple folded over finish or even leave unfinished since knits don’t really ravel. But the serged edge is nice and quick!

The quick and dirty on sergers – for our purposes – is it’s a sewing machine with extra spools of thread that trims and finishes the seam allowance as it sews. It finishes by wrapping the seam allowance up with loops of thread while also stitching like a traditional sewing machine. In the photo above I’ve got the serger set up to use three spools of thread – it can use four as well. The pink X’s mark the spools that are doing the traditional stitching. That thread goes through the needles. The yellow X’s mark the ‘looper’ spools – that’s the thread that wraps around the seam allowance and gets threaded through the bottom of the machine – marked by yellow X’s. Sergers are awesome because they are fast, make a nice finished seam that’s super strong and they’re great for sewing knits. They also do a nice rolled hem (well, some of them.) I mention the rolled hem because I believe in information overload, but I did not  take pictures of a real, live rolled hem (is that a collective sigh of relief I hear?)

The most maddening aspect of working with a serger is probably the whole threading issue. They’re a pain to thread. This serger – a Viking and on the mid to nice end of the serger scale – is nice and open which makes it a bit easier to thread. The threading difficulty is all in the bottom of the machine where the looper thread goes – I’ve opened the trap door to give you an eyeful.

Scary, huh? Here’s a closeup of the insides – check out all that fuzz! One of the threads follows the pink dots and the other follows the yellow dots. Often you can rethread a serger by tying the new thread to the end of the old thread and pulling it through. Sometimes that doesn’t work, though and you have to start from the beginning. It took me a few tries (and fails) with the machine manual to figure out how to thread this machine, but now it only takes a few minutes to just thread it from scratch.

Threading horror show is over! Let’s head back up the the needle and knife area. Since I’ve got the machine set up for three threads I only need one needle. If I was using four threads, there’d be a second needle where I drew the pink line. The knife that trims the seam allowance is right there where the pink arrow is. You just sort of hold the raw edge up to the seam allowance guide over on the right where it says 3/8, 5/8, etc.

Here it is in action – the black stitching in the background, the strip of orange fabric on the right is getting trimmed off and heading to the rag bag.

Here’s a closeup. See the loops (circled in yellow)? They wrap around the edge and the tension’s a bit on the loose side – those threads are the ones that got threaded through the bottom of the machine. There’s a single line of stitching right along the bottom of those loops. That’s the spool that was threaded through the needle. If I’d used four threads there would be two lines of straight stitching instead of one.

Here you can see the stitching on the back (marked with the pink X.)

OK! Serger 101 is over. Let’s go on to hemming knits!

Hemming Knits

OK. My main problem with hemming knits is they roll, they get wavy and some knits are sort of hard to press a nice fold into and get warped if I pin. My favorite trick to get past a lot of those problems is to use Steam a Seam TWO. LITE. 1/2” – man! That’s a lot of words! This is a fusible double sided ‘tape’ that comes on a roll and is a bit sticky (JUST a bit) on both sides to help position it. Once you’ve got it in place you can steam it into place for a ‘permanent’ bond – sorta like stitchwitchery.

The steam-a-seam (‘kwee call it SAS from now on?) comes with paper on one side so you can get the first side into position before dealing with the other side. Here, I’m working on hemming the arm of my Tahitian T. I’ve cut a strip of SAS to length and stuck on the inside of the sleeve that’s been finished with the serger.

After I’ve got the SAS positioned, I peel off the paper backing (pink arrow.) You can see what the SAS looks like in this closeup shot (yellow arrow.)

Here the paper is all peeled off!

I applied the SAS to the other side of the sleeve as well and then turned up the edge of the sleeve right along the edge of the SAS. I love just using the tape as a guide for turning up the hem rather than eyeballing or measuring! The yellow line shows the turn up.

Once the entire hem is turned up with no ripples, I hit it with an iron to hold everything securely. Supposedly, I could just leave it as the fusible bond is listed as permanent on the box. I don’t really believe that any fusible is actually permanent, though, so I’m stitching it as well!

I’m securing the sleeve hem by topstitching with a feather stitch on my machine. Using a twin needle is also a great option and I’ll cover that below. I just lined up the right edge of my presser foot with the folded edge of the hem. oooo… check out that pattern matching!!

Here, I’m almost done stitching all the way around! again, pattern matching my dear zebra-horses!

Finished! The yellow X marks the right side of the shirt, the pink marks the wrong side. I could have boosted my stitching over a bit to try to catch that serged edge. Oh well…

A nicely hemmed knit! This fabric is a hefty cotton interlock, so it was fairly easy to work with – I probably could have just pressed the hem up without the SAS to secure it. On flimsy, slippery or hard to press knits the SAS is a godsend!

Using a Twin Needle

I was having fun with my funky stitches when I hemmed the Tahitian T. Mostly, though, I’ve been using a twin needle to hem knits. Here’s what a twin needle looks like.

If you’re using a twin needle, you need two spools of thread. Most modern machines that have a side spindle will also come with a little plastic attachment that you can stick into the top of the machine for a second spool of thread. In the photo below I’ve drawn a pink arrow pointing at the upright spindle. I put a bobbin on the upright spindle for this quickie sample sewing and photo op! Once you get the two spools of thread loaded up (or, in our case, the spoon and bobbin) grab both tails of thread and start threading normally – my two tails meet up by the yellow arrow.

Once you get the two pieces of thread down to the needles, separate them and thread each needle. Insert your bobbin as normal and bring up the thread – also as normal! Then sew your hem as above!

UPDATE!! I was reminded in the comments by the lovely Oonaballoona about zig zag stitching and knits. If you are using a twin needle, stitch with a very narrow zig zag – I usually set the width to 1mm. Not only will your line of stitching have a bit of give (since the zig zag stitch is naturally stretchy), but it will appear to be straighter than if you use the straight stitch. Knits are funny that way!

Twin needles come in varying ‘widths’ – the amount of space between the two separate needles. The needle in this photo is size 2.0/80. This means that the two needles are 2 millimeters apart and each needle is a size 80 (or a size 12, if you’re used to that kind of sizing.)

And here is a size 4.0/80 needle – you can see how the needles are farther apart (4 millimeters!) Schmetz (and other sewing needle companies!) make twin needles in a range of distances from 1 to 4 and sizes from 70 – 100; maybe more! We only stock these two sizes at the shop and that seems to be the case at the other shops around where I live. Generally speaking the needles with the shorter distances should be used on lighter fabrics. In practice, I like the look of the 2mm needle and tend to use that for most hemming.

Here’s a comparison of the two needle widths. The yellow X marks the 2mm needle, the pink X marks the 4mm needle!

Since you only use one bobbin thread, the back looks very different! I like to topstitch and hem with the wrong side up so that I can see that I’m catching the hem properly. On more than one occasion I’ve happily twin needled my hem only to realized once I’m done that I have a beautifully stitched INSIDE of my hem, and that not-so-beautiful railroad track on the side of the hem that faces the world. Sigh.

So there, my dear half-zebra-half-horsies, is the extent of my knowledge when it comes to hemming knits! This was one of those sewing tasks that I lacked confidence in for a lot longer than I should have. As with many things, finding the right tool and notion really helped out!

Jump in with any of your own advice! Run free and wild zebrahorses! Don’t let the lions get you! Or sing too many show tunes.

>Tutorial: How I added a midriff band to my T-shirt.

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Greetings Crab-eating Macaque with those super long tails, I can totally see why you prefer skirts instead of trousers. I always wished I had a tail. They seem so expressive.

Down to business. As a followup to my recent Tahitian treat and Summer of 1980 shirts, I thought I’d provide a quick how to on how I made my midriff bands. It’s pretty easy stuff, but I know I love see detail pictures of just about anything sewing related, and I’m guessing you do to! So here goes.

For the base of this tshirt, I used Butterick 4685. Here’s a picture of the drawing from the envelope.

I’ll admit it was a stretch to see how this pattern – shown in wovens and with a not-my-style odd hemline – would work in a knit. But it was blousy and I liked the neckline, so I went with it. To start with, I cut about five or six inches from the bottom of the front and back bodice pieces. I sewed everything together. Here’s how the T looks after having the major seams sewn and the neckline elastic inserted. It’s a bit long – I’d like the midriff band to come up to somewhere around the green line.

The shirt’s much larger than I normally like my knits! As a comparison, here’s my favorite knit pattern laying on top of the pink and white shirt.

 

Step one: cut out midriff pieces

First, figure out how big your midriff pieces should be. I cut mine to be about as wide as the bottom hem as the shirt (the pink arrow). My pieces are about 14 inches high (marked by the green arrow). The midriff band will be folded in half, so the finished ‘height’ of the midriff band will be seven inches. This ended up a little too tall for me, so I trimmed down. I used about 1 inch of finished height per piece of elastic. My midriff pieces were cut as two and sewn together at the sides – I was piecing from what was left over after cutting out the rest of the shirt pieces. After you cut your pieces, sew together at the side seams (if necessary – you’ll have at least ONE side seam!)

 

Step two: fold midriff pieces

Fold the midriff band, wrong sides together and matching the raw edges. In the photo below the two raw edges are up by the pink ‘x’ – these edges will be sewn to the bottom of the shirt. The fold (marked by the green X) will be the bottom hem.

 

Step three: Sew your first channel!

Now it’s time to sew the channels! On the pink and white shirt, I sewed mine so that they gradually got bigger as I got closer to the raw edges. On the blue and white shirt I sewed all the channel lines 1/2” apart, and that’s certainly easier. Just line up the folded edge of the fabric with the 1/2” seam allowance guide and sew your first seam all the way around, then for the next seam slide the fabric 1/2 inch over towards the right (I used my seam allowance ruler to figure out how far to slide.) Note how far away the right edge of the presser foot is from the previous line of stitching and then use that as your guide for all the rest of the seamlines.

You’ll want to use a stretch stitch for this – a regular old zig zag is fine – I usually lower my width to about 1 to 1.5 mm when I’m sewing knits. On this shirt I’m using the feather stitch – a little more classy stretch stitch!

The picture blow is a little goofy, as I took it when I was almost done sewing the channels and had actually gone back to make that wide channel more narrow – so I’d flipped the fabric around. See the pink X over to the left? That’s the folded edge of the fabric and the first seamline up from the X is the first line I stitched. When you thread elastic through the channels, you’ll only thread through every other channel. The pink dots show the channels with no elastic, the green dots show the channels with elastic.

 

Step four: sew the next channel, leaving a space to thread elastic.

For the next channel you’ll sew almost  all the way around, leaving a bit of open space so you
can thread the elastic through. I left my spaces at the side seams  – shown below.

 

Step five: thread elastic through and secure

I threaded and secured my elastic as I was sewing so I could access the elastic and finish my seamlines. If you do the steps in this order it’s easier to finish the band nicely, but you have to be certain of your elastic length because a lot of ripping will be involved if you decide to go back and adjust after you try on the shirt – and who likes to rip knits, right?

I used 1/4” elastic – I think it was the knit kind. I allowed 1 yard per channel – which is more than I needed, but I wanted to be safe and elastic’s cheap! Wrap around you until snug and the ends are overlapping 1 or 2 inches. A word of advice – if you’re doing this for the first time, you probably want the elastic more snug than you initially think! Also, I ‘tightened’ the elastic as I moved away from my hips.

Cut your elastic to the length you determined and grab your first piece. Thread a safety pin through one end and use that to draw the elastic through the casing.

Use a zig zag or another stretch stitch to secure the elastic. Those narrow pieces of elastic are sort of hard to corral! Yank both ends of the elastic towards you and make sure they are still lying flat. Overlap the ends an inch or two – however you overlapped when ‘fitting’ the elastic!  If you’re having a hard time holding the pieces of elastic together, try a quick dab of glue or wash away double sided adhesive. Another trick is to lower your needle first, then your presser foot. I held the elastic together and slid it under the presser foot holding the elastic parallele to the sewing machine. Once I got into position under the presser foot, I lowered the needle, pivoted the elastic into sewing position (shown below) and THEN lowered the presser foot.

Finished! This one got a little wonky and I went off track. It’s still strong, though! Test your elastic by stretching vigorously to make sure it’s a keeper. Also – if you get big loops on the bottom of the elastic it’s probably not the end of the world – I had big loops and it’s still strong.

Once the elastic is secured, slide it back into the channel by stretching the midriff band between your hands. Smooth everything out and stitch the seamline closed (shown below).

Repeat. The next row of stitching will go ALL the way around (because the next channel is an elastic-free channel, so you don’t need easy access), then the next seamline will be another partial line of stitching. Thread and secure elastic, finish that gap in the seamline and keep going until you’ve gotten in all the elastic you wanted to. Here’s my finished band! These pieces were cut with no ease at all, so there’s not a lot of gathering. The midriff pieces for my 1980 shirt were much larger and looked much more gathered at this stage.

hint: If you aren’t 100% sure on how this will fit, you can sew all the channels, then all the elastic, then finish. Start out like above – cutting and folding the midriff band. Then sew channels every half inch – leave one inch of unstitched space on every channel instead of every other one. Unpick the side seam on one side (this will be the inside of the midriff band.) Thread and secure all the pieces of elastic. Try on and adjust if needed. Then slipstitch (nice looking) or stitch in the ditch (messy but quick) to close up the side seam and topstitch the last inch of each of your channels, being careful to not catch the elastic. 

Step six: Fitting!

Now it’s time to put it all together! I really like the flexibility of this step because you can decide how much poofiness and how much midriff band you’d like!

Here, I slid on the midriff band and put the T shirt on as well

Then I tucked the shirt it to see what I had to work with. The midriff band is higher
than Id like – I want it to end more where the pink lined is in the photo below.

I folded the midriff band under to where I wanted it and then tucked and prodded the shirt
to see how I liked that. I stuck a pin in the shirt where I wanted it to meet up with the midriff band.

Hint: I’ve you’re full busted, do a sneaky FBA at this point and trim MORE from the back than the front to
balance the poofiness!

Another pin shows where I’d like the midriff band to end

Step seven: Assemble and finish shirt.

Trim the shirt and midriff band where you marked in the previous step (don’t forget to include seam allowances!) Or, if you’re lazy like me, skip that step. Since my fabric was striped, I used the closest stripe as a guide on T shirt as to where to sew. On the midriff band, I was shortening to just above one of the stitched lines, so that was my other guide. It worked, but it was sort of sloppy. I pinned together along those guides and stitched just to the side of the feather stitching.

The picture on the left shows the T half of the shirt after stitching it to the midriff band – the arrow shows that stitchline. The photo on the right shows the stitching from the midriff side. I basted together with a long machine stitch so I could try on one last time before super-charged sewing!
 

Trim seam allowances once you’re sure you like the fit.

I stitched over the basting with my machine overcast stitch. The width settings always throw me with this stitch. I would have preferred the little points to be slightly wrapping around the edge of the seam allowance. Oh well.

Finished! At least, the midriff band is finished… I’ve still got some sleeve hemming to do….

And that’s it for today, you clever tail-wielding monkeys!

>blogging tips… those pesky photos…

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Greetings bloggerbears!! That’s what we call Lucy the hound – puppy bear. Also, Mr. Bug calls me mamabear and I call him papabear… and we tend to add ‘bear’ to the end of all our friends names. Some deal with it better than others – heidibear and cylebear are fine with it, but Dan’s friend Pat seems to ignore us if we start talking about patbear…

In any case bearcubs, I DID get some sewing done today and snapped some photos along the way, but I didn’t really get to the end of the project so I decided to come up with some more blog fluff in lieu of sewing progress.  And what better subject is there than photography for bloglovin’ bears?

Unlike some of my favorite blogs, I don’t really have a very first blog post to pull a sewing picture from – the first posts on the Snug Bug weren’t really about sewing at all. What I DO have, is a photo from my first review on Pattern Review – this picture was taken just over a year ago. Here it is side by side with a photo from yesterday’s post and while I’m certainly no photographer I’ve learned a few things along the way and thought I’d share! I hope that all you of you who are taking the awesome photos out there will chime in with your own advice!

    

On becoming an amateur model…

Sewing is an awesome hobby, isn’t it? Not only do we get new clothes but we have all these online friends and are generally considered fairly interesting at parties – am I right? And for those of us who like to post pictures of our work online, we get to become nice and comfy seeing our smiling faces gazing out at us from the computer screen. Prior to blogging about my sewing adventures, I could barely stand seeing my profile picture on Facebook. These days I have a whole external hard drive just for filing full length photos of myself. And I’m much more sympathetic to the contestants on America’s Next Top Model – it’s hard arranging my teeth, hair and limbs into a configuration that shows off the details of my new duds, minimizes my least favorite physical attributes and stays as close to real life as possible. Here’s some things that have helped with my blog-model approach…

Find a Pose

I know we all have parts of us that we don’t like, and that for the most part the sewing blog world is a super supportive place. That said, I have found a few poses that feel natural and don’t usually make me look like a penguin! Here are my standbys…

The a-little-from-the-side-a-little-from-the back shot…

I usually catch this one on accident due to the timer on my camera and the tripod, but this is my favorite angle for from-the-side poses. A full-on side shot generally accentuates my tummy AND booty, while somehow making me look like I don’t have a bust! A bit of rotation so my back’s just a teeny bit towards the camera helps out a bit and usually shows off skirts and nipped in waists.

 

A three-fer!! Here I’m showing off three moves I tend to use a lot…

The head to the side – I think this pose just started showing up because I’m tired of seeing my face in all the pictures and an angled bob lends itself to this pose!

The superhero – clearly, my signature pose, I ALWAYS stand with my arms akimbo, fists on my waist. I have been trying to branch out a bit, because it feels contrived, but in the end, this is the best way, ‘fists’ down, to accentuate my waist!

The crossing of the ankles – is a new pose and has gotten heavy rotation due to me-made-March and my snugbug365 project (a daily posts of what I’m wearing) because I HATE the way I look in trousers, and find this the most flattering when I have them on! It’s also great in dresses and seems to show off my calves and ankles in a flattering light!

I grabbed this picture because of the hip action and the foot placement – I’m using the superhero paired with the hip over to the side, one leg straight, one knee bent. This is particularly useful with dresses!

 

 

 

 

 

A final variation of the super hero, hip tilt… I’ve been using this one a lot too. One arm on the hip, a lot of hip tilt and the ankle swung out a bit. Especially nice to show off cute shoes!

 

The pose I’m trying to EXCISE from the pose library. About half of my shots have me with my chin flung up in the air and my head cocked to one side. Observe how ridiculous I look. Egad.

 

If you’re having a hard time getting poses you like and are using a tripod and the self timer on your camera, set up a full length mirror behind the camera so you can see what you’re doing. Posing takes practice, like anything else. Eventually you get the ‘feel’ of certain positions and expressions. I usually only drag my mirror out if I’m wearing a garment in a new cut that I’m not sure how it will photograph or if I’m in a super hurry – seeing what I’m doing helps me get shots I like with few tries.

Of course, these are the poses that I’ve found work (and don’t work!) for me. I see lots of shots on blogs where you guys are rocking the straight – on forward pose, seated poses, laying on the ground, draped over a sofa – all KINDS of stuff! Keep that in mine when taking your pictures – a pose that you might think is totally wackadoodle or unflattering may actually be working its little socks off. Try to imagine if you saw someone else posing like that – you might like it! I’ll try to take that advice too. Perhaps tomorrow’s reveal will be all shots of me lounging about in the living room…

And we’ve discussed this before, but for the most part significant others do NOT make good photographers. Unless they actually are photographers. If you’re feeling clumsy and weird and like you have an extra arm and dry lips and twice as many teeth as normal, you do not want to be striking a pose in front of your partner. Or maybe that’s just me? My rule is he can’t watch me put on tights or deodorant. Watching a photo shoot isn’t quite as bad, but it’s close. Less so now than six months ago, though!

 

Find a place to shoot

Other modeling advice – well, posing advice, I guess. Find a good spot for your full length and close up shots as well as a good place to take shots of clothes on the hanger and a surface for shots of loot from fabric shopping safaris as well as companion shots for tutorials. Make sure those places have a lot of light. My full length shots are taken in my bedroom against a blank wall. There’s natural light and not a lot of distractions! For closeups I either just march up closer to the tripod, or use my giant full length mirror if I need to get a specific angle. I have a china cabinet for hanger shots and luckily my ironing board is right by a window, so that’s perfect for shots that need a flat surface…

   

[the full length wall, a close up in the mirror and the hanger on the china cabinet]

The how of good blog pictures – equipment, light and editing

First off, I don’t have a great camera. It’s a Cannon point and shoot and it has 10 or 12 megapixels. It’s not terrible, but it’s not the digital SLR camera I wish I had! I’ve been VERY unhappy with the quality of my photos and yesterday was reading a bit about how to fix my problem, which was too much digital noise – or the grainy stuff. Although neither photo below is the best quality, the one on the left has a lot more noise going on than the one on the right.

 

Point and shoot tips

Again, I’m by no means a master, but here’s a few things I’ve learned.

• Use a tripod or something else to stabilize the camera. My tripod was $35 and from Target.
• Research and understand the settings on your camera. It’s really best if you use the manual settings rather than the auto. My problem with the super-grainy photos? It was because I’d gotten lazy and left it on auto, which brings us to the next point.
• Shoot with the lowest ISO setting that you can. The ISO setting on my camera ranges from 100 to 1600. This setting has to do with how the camera deals with light as well as picking up details. The lower the ISO setting, the more clear the photo will be. The higher the number, the more noise/grain will show up. So why don’t we use the lowest ISO setting all the time? Because you need a lot more light to get a good shot at a low ISO setting – here’s a side-by side from my photo shoot for the Crescent shoot from yesterday. I’d forgotten I’d set the ISO to 100 while I was shooting in the afternoon and ended up taking  a few detail shots at night (under artificial lighting) before upping the ISO a bit. the picture on the left is with the ISO set to 100, on the right it’s set to 500. While the clarity of the photos is similar, the quality and color of the photo on the right is much nicer. Conversely, in the photos above (which were taken in the afternoon with a  lot of natural light)  the ISO in the grainy photo on the left was around 500 and the one on the right was about 200.

              

• Master the focus and the self timer. First of all, most digital point and shoot cameras have a focus function that’s generally activated by holding the button down halfway. You’ll hear the lens move around and sometimes a box will show on the screen at the point of the greatest focus. Focusing (obviously) helps get a better photo! When my current camera was new I had a terrible time getting my timed photos at all in focus and I sent out a general plea to the online world – Taran from Tanit-Isis Sews suggested that I might be setting the focus and the timer with my hand in front of the lens, which was causing the camera to go into the macro mode and not focus correctly (OK, she didn’t say it exactly that way, but you get my drift!) She was totally right and I’m careful to set the focus with nothing in front of the lens while setting the timer. My camera lets me take 10 pictures every two seconds – enough to get a few good poses in  before having to hit the button again.
• If you’re doing the tripod and self timer with the auto function, make a ‘pretend you’ for the camera to focus on. Just drape a coat or something over a broom and lean it against the wall where you’ll be standing. It’ll help get the auto settings correct.

There’s a reason the saying goes “LIGHTS, camera, action…”

• The best light is natural light, hands down. But it should be muted natural light! Heading out to take a photo at noon on a sunny day is nearly as bad as using the flash at night – everything will look all weird and harsh. I learned from attempting to photograph my roses that the best time for outdoor photography is at dawn and dusk – still lots of light, but mellow. Cloudy days are good too.
• If you have to do your photos under artificial light, turn on as many lights as you can in as many different locations. The more ambient light (versus single source) the less harsh shadows and loss of detail in the photos.
• No flash, my pretties! If you have to shoot in low light conditions, try upping the ISO setting to see if you can get something usable. If you can’t then shelve the camera for the night and move on to something else until the sun comes up again. Flash photography is tricky and is best left to the professionals!

Here are some photos under different light conditions. The photo all the way to the left was taken with the most natural light and the next two were taken as the sun went down – the window opposite me has western exposure. Photo #2 (second from the left) is dark but the darkness is fairly uniform, so it shouldn’t be a problem brightening up when it’s time to edit. Photo #3 is probably unusable – the upper right hand corner so is much darker than the lower left hand corner that it’ll be hard to adjust evenly without blowing out the bright part or losing detail in the dark part. Also, see that shaft of light? If you’ve got a shaft of light going on, try to block it. Digital cameras don’t deal well with super fluctuating light sources! This is ESPECIALLY true if you’re using the auto setting! I usually block those lightbeams by just closing my curtains a bit more – they’re semi-opaque white so they make good filters.

The photo on the right was taken at night under artificial lights. It’s alright, but note the serious shadow action and the general dullness of the image.

   

Take lots of pictures!

I will happily admit that I’m obsessive compulsive and a perfectionist, dear bloggerbears. I’m here to tell you I take a LOT of pictures for the six or so that I include on each post. My memory card is 1 gig and about a third of that is taken up by photos that I never remove from the card (wedding photos – it’s my little portable photo album!) but I routinely have to stop and download before finishing up taking the pictures for one post. A lot of it is actual garbage – frames with only my back or an arm – because of using the self timer. And a lot is of me cocking my head at impossibly weird angles. Or having three chins. Or the posture of sloth from the Goonies. Or standing in what is apparently my natural pose – elbows bent, hands hanging lifelessly from my wrists (see first row, third picture in…)

Let’s move on to photo editing, shall we? Before we entirely leave the mechanics of taking photos one more piece of advice to ease us along our way. If you are taking pictures and plan to do any sort of digital editing, take the BIGGEST picture your camera will take – the one with the highest pixel ratio. No matter what, starting out with more pixels is better. You can always adjust the resolution down, but you can’t nicely adjust it back up! Now, editing our photos…

The magic of editing: removing the weirdness

We are now edging into territory where I am a bit more knowledgeable than the previous topics… modeling and photography are new to me, but graphic design is something that I’ve done in the past and made a reasonable wage at! I’m pretty much self taught on the design side, but I know my way around the Adobe Creative Suite (including Photoshop) well enough.

My photoediting process is three steps: getting rid of the weird stuff, cropping and making it pretty. The first step isn’t always necessary, but occasionally there’s weird stuff in the photo; Lucy’s tail, or perhaps I’m standing too close to the china cabinet and its in the shot. I’ll just edit those out. I try to keep my photos as real-life as possible, but I occasionally edit out other stuff as well to avoid having to take any more photos and/or to make things look the way they do in real life. Three most common edits are replacing my eyeballs from one picture to the other: if everything in the pose is fine but I’m shifty eyed or squinting, I’ll grab eyeballs from a better photo and put those in the shot. I also get rid of weird blemishes – like I just had a giant bruise on my arm from losing a battle with the basset hound. Finally, if the shot’s fine except for one weird thing – like my hair hanging over my face or the line of the garment poking out where it doesn’t in the rest of the photos I might use the picture and get rid of the weirdness. I don’t make the garments look ‘better’ than real life (aka, glossing over my poor technique or construction), I just make it look ‘like’ it does in real life. For those of you who want to do this and have Photoshop, I most frequently use the clone stamp (to erase blemishes) and the rectangular marquee tool (to remove stuff from the background.)

Here’s an example of removing the weird stuff – on the left is the before photo with the stuff to be removed circled in pink – furniture in the shot, my bra strap (although, one could argue the bra strap is a sign on bad construction of the shirt! I just don’t like my undies showing online!) and another bruise on my leg!

         

Cropping basics

Once I’ve cleaned up the photo, I crop it. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the cropping, but I do like to have the subject of the photo off center a bit. I also will crop in tight to accentuate different details. I’ve been experimenting more with cropping whole swaths of the outfit (or my head!) out of the photo and I love the results, but since I primarily blog to show what I’ve been sewing I don’t do a whole lot of that type of cropping! Here’s some before and afters of some of my recent crops that I liked –

     

 

 

A note on not showing your face. A lot of bloggers don’t want to show their face – either to preserve anonymity or due to a particularly snaggle-toothed photo session. There are TONS of ways to crop out your face without looking like you just missed when you were taking the photo! The easiest? If you’re leaving off the head, leave off the feet as well and include just the teeniest bit of chin. I love the photography on the blog Crochetie and she often leaves out her face in the photos… also, reflect a bit on how often you focus on the faces of your fellow bloggers when you’re scrutinizing their newest creations!

   

[images crochetie]

Digital editing. It’s not hard, really!

After the cropping is done, it’s time to do the color editing! In my cropped photos above, this has already been done since these pictures are from previous blog posts. Most digital photography can benefit from a bit of brightening, adjusting the contrast or running a sharpen filter.

Before we go on – I’m a Photoshop user and haven’t experimented with the free options out there, although I’ve heard good things about Gimp as a Photoshop substitute and just today heard about Snag-it from a fellow blogger for annotating images in tutorials.

I generally use Photoshop actions to edit my photos. Actions are teeny little programs that run inside of Photoshop and apply a series of edits to the image to achieve a certain look. You just load the actions into Photoshop (you only need to load them once), then press ‘play’ to run the action on the image. I like using actions because they are already programmed and I can just see if I like an action rather than going through the edit process myself. My favorite actions are from Florabella and are available for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements (the less expensive consumer version.) They’re a bit pricey – an action set runs between $50 and $100. If you’re interested in buying, be sure to buy for the version of Photoshop that you have. I have both Florabella Luxe I and II – either one would be plenty to play around with, although if money’s not an object, I’d go for the Luxe II set – it’s larger and works a bit better.

If you would like to try some actions and not spend any money, Ree Drummond, author of the blog/website The Pioneer Woman has a great set of free actions as well.

Here’s what actions can do, first the original photo that’s been cropped, but not edited any further.

Now, here’s the same image with an action run on it – the first three are Florabella actions and the last two are Pioneer Woman actions.

       

Inspiration

Before heading off to the bear den, I thought I’d close with some of my favorite blogs in terms of the photography –  these will be familiar to most of you!

Film in the Fridge

Posie Gets Cozy

Oonaballoona from Kalkatroona

Quirky Pretty Cute

Tanit-Isis Sews (great posing!)

Crochetie

The Cupcake Goddess (and don’t miss her photography tutorial!)

and of course, this list wouldn’t be complete without Casey’s Elegant Musings!

There are many, many more great blogs out there, but I’m too impatient to comb through my reader!

Got any hot tips to share? What are some of your favorite photos from the sewing blogs??

>Grading up my Crescent Skirt!

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Greetings owls! Creatures of the night, silent fliers. Possessors of giant eyeballs… I think I need to stock up on an animal encyclopedia – I’m running out of wildlife. Perhaps I’ll do a dinosaur week…

OK, so I almost didn’t post this as I believe Tasia will be going over the very same concepts in the next few days for her Crescent sewalong. Unfortunately for me, I’m rushing to finish up a Crescent skirt as we are adding the patterns to our line at the shop, and I want to have a sample in the store asap! Take that, plus my goal to keep up with blogging and my avoidance of any other sewing task today, and here we are – about to look at pictures of how I graded up my Crescent skirt!

Also – I came across a few special issues in my cutting layout – particularly if you are close to my size and are using a 45” wide fabric for your skirt. So stick with me gals! Oops! I mean owls!

Before we get to the relatively boring pictures of wax paper strips – I realized my at-work-shopping showed up in my shots from the cutting table… I cropped it and zoomed it a bit for you guys – sorry the quality’s so wonky.

I became obsessed this morning with an overwhelming and immediate need to amass fabric to make a whole pile of summer skirts, preferably circle skirts, and coordinating knit shirts along the lines of my recent 1980 ruffle shirt. I was inspired by this picture from Casey’s 30×30 project. I’m sure I will eventually copy that look EXACTLY. Until then, I pulled all the knits at the shop that I like (the taller bolts in the back) and then pulled coordinating cottons for skirts. Aren’t they all so fun? I took home three cottons and two knits (I already have one of the knits at home.) I’ll leave you silent hunters of the night to guess what I chose. Now… let’s talk grading.

As a reference, here’s the back of the pattern envelope– I’m making View B – the shorter hem and more gathered skirt. A note for any of you who are hesitant about all the gathers right around the hips… I’ve gotten the real life skirt done to the try-on-without-a-zipper stage and as with all things, I think that you can make the gathers work for you with a mix of proper waist placement and gather taming. I used the Kay Whitt/Sew Serendipity method of pressing the gathers so they act more like pleats (since I’m using a cotton with a lot of body) and the skirt is totally cute if I slide it up to let the yoke accentuate my midriff where I’m more narrow. More pictures coming!

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What we’re working with

In the meantime, here are the pattern pieces, cut and laid out (fabric shopping in the background!) From top to bottom I’ve laid out the facing pieces – they’re all one piece (no curved seam), then the next row down are the waistband pieces. I’ve circled piece #7 in pink as this is the side waist piece and is the same on the front and back – so you have to cut FOUR of these, not two! Then there are the skirt pieces. The pocket piece is laying on the front skirt piece where it will be sewn on and is circled in yellow. This piece is pretty clever – it’s folded in half, forming the pocket bags and side of the skirt all in one piece!

          

Calculating how much to grade up

So! While the size 16 Pendrell turned out to be a pretty good fit on me, pattern measurements notwithstanding, I suspected that the close fitting yoke of the Crescent skirt would not allow me to skate through a lack of grading once again. Tasia mentioned in one of her posts that the waist measurement is the most important one, as the gathered skirt allows a lot of hip action. I decided to add seven inches to the waist by adding strips of wax paper to the center front, center back and side seams. Tasia also mentioned in one of her sewalong posts to avoid grading at those curved seams on the waistband.

For those of you who are potentially new to grading, don’t forget that the amount you add to each seam on the paper piece is doubled in the garment since you cut two pieces of fabric from each paper pattern piece. For the type of grading I’m doing, I have four seams I’m adding to on paper (center front, center back and side seams), times two (two pieces of fabric per seam), for a total of eight spots in the garment that will get a little extra wiggle room. I think you all know how much I like to adjust my patterns and I’ll say right now that I forget all the time that what I add to the pattern pieces will be doubled, yielding muslins that would fit around me and at least one other person!! At least a basset hound…

I took the number of inches I wanted to add (seven) and divided by the number of spots the seven inches would be distributed over (eight). That equals .875 on a calculator, which is 7/8 inch in the real world. Side note: I CLEARLY remember being told in elementary school that by the time I grew up we’d all be using the metric system and speaking Spanish. I want my money back. A quick tip for this type of grading and those of you using imperial measurements; if you’re grading up over a bunch of seams like this, you can take the number of inches that you want to add – in my case seven – write that on a piece of paper, then under that draw a line and under the line jot down the number of spots you are grading up – in my case 8. What you’ve just jotted down is the fraction of the inches you need to add to each seam. See? magic! Need to add five inches over eight seams? Here’s an example showing how to figure out how much to add to each seam first the long way, then the magic way…

Add 5” to a garment at four seamlines (center front, center back, both sides)

The Long Way….

Divide number of inches to add by number of spots you are adding to: 5/8=.625

Convert the decimal to a fraction…

Put the fraction over 1 – .625/1

Multiply top and bottom by 1000 to get to a whole number – 6250/1000

Simplify – 6250/1000 divided by 5 = 25/40

Simplify again – 25/40 divided by 5 = 5/8

Whew! Add 5/8 to each seamline

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The Magic Way

Put the number of inches you need to add over the number of spots you are adding to:

5 (inches) / 8 (spots) = 5/8

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Very helpful when you are adding an odd amount of inches!

Adjusting the pattern

Since I was adding seven inches to eight spots, I needed to add 7/8 of an inch to the center front, center back and side seams. I started out by tearing off a piece of wax paper as long as the side seams of the skirt (the longest edge to be graded up) and then I used a straight edge and rotary cutter to cut the wax paper into strips that were about an inch and a half wide – enough to overlap the pattern piece a bit and then trim straight.

To add to the seams, I taped the strip of wax paper to the edge I was grading and then used a clear ruler and a rotary cutter to trim the strip to exactly 7/8 of an inch.

Grading up the back was pretty easy – I just added a 7/8” strip to the center and side seams of all the pattern pieces. The waistband pieces are a bit tricky, as they have such cool shaping. I just followed the edge of the pattern piece when trimming the wax paper, then laid the waistband pieces over the facing piece to make sure everything still lined up nicely.

Normally, when just adding a straight amount of width from the top of the skirt to the bottom, I would slash the pattern piece and add to the MIDDLE of the pattern piece to preserve that shaping on the edges of the pieces. I was concerned that if I did a slash and spread, I would get the angled seamlines between the skirt and the waistband out of kilter and the points and curves wouldn’t line up or would end up asymmetrical and wonky, so adding to the edges this time around seemed safer.

Here are the back pieces, all graded up and ready to go.

Grading up the front was a bit trickier since I wanted to grade up pocket as well. I suppose I could have left it as it was, but then I was concerned that if I didn’t bump out the pocket, the inner fold would be too close to the pocket edge and pull on the skirt in an unflattering way.

Here’s the pocket piece unfolded and laying on top of the front skirt piece – the upper edge of the pocket piece will line up with the upper edge of the skirt, and the two outer edges will also line up, so that the upper right corner of the pocket piece will form the upper corner of the skirt. The skirt piece is angled in the upper right as that’s the pocket opening.

Here’ I’ve placed the pocket piece where it will be sewn on and folded it. Of course, the pocket piece goes UNDER the skirt piece, not on top, but that would have made a silly photo! The folded part of the pocket piece that’s on the very top forms the pocket bag in the finished skirt.

I decided to add to the sides of the pocket piece. I could have just as easily slashed the piece and added 1.75 inches to the center of the piece, rather than adding 7/8 inches to each side. I thought if I did it this way I’d be sure to get the side seams to line up and would have to do less work to make sure the pocket openings on the skirt and pocket piece were the same shape.

[Update! I’ve had word from Tasia, owner and designer of Sewaholic patterns, regarding the grading up of the pocketses, my preciouses. Here it is, verbatim “The only thing I would have done differently is not graded the pocket – and moved the whole ‘pocket opening line’ on the skirt front over, along with the side seam. Although, you may want a larger pocket opening, in which case what you’ve done is just fine!” What she said TOTALLY makes sense, although the larger pocket is secure and not floppy, so the way I did it works too!!]

First I added to the side of the pocket that forms the side seam. I used my cutter to ensure a nice smooth line between the skirt and the pocket.

Next I added to the folded over side of the pocket piece. After the tissue was added to the pocket piece, I placed it over the skirt piece and ran the cutter along both pieces (skirt and pocket) to ensure the curve of the pocket openings matched.

Here I’ve refolded the pocket piece, placed it over the skirt piece again and drew a line along where I did a bit of shaping.

Cutting layout for a size 16 graded up – 45” fabric!

My adjustments made, I was eager to get to cutting. I clipped and tore strips from each end of my piece of fabric (to help line up the fabric perfectly straight), pressed and folded, selvedge edges together, per the cutting instructions. I laid out my first skirt piece and oops! The piece was too big for the width of the fabric!

I’m using cotton for the skirt that comes in the 44” width – it’s this lovely Tina Given’s design…

[Tina Givens Climber in violet]

The swatch doesn’t really do it justice… the purple scrolls are beautifully printed and look like they are handpainted on the fabric.

Back to my cutting troubles. An easy way to deal with them would have been to just remove the grading I had done on the skirt pieces. Since they are gathered, I had a lot of wiggle room. Now that the skirt is assembled, I can see that I could EASILY have done this! But I wanted to make the pattern as it was meant to be! I refolded the fabric the other way – instead of folding the fabric to match up the sevedges, I folded down the fabric keeping the selvedges of each side together. I folded down the length needed to cut the back pieces which are cut separately, not on the fold.

I’ve marked the selvedges in yellow in the photo below. I’ve already cut out the back piece (in the upper right hand corner) and laid out most of the waistband pieces on the other half of the folded fabric. There was enough room for everything but the two pieces that needed to be cut on the fold (the front facing and front skirt, they’re sitting on the fabric in the lower half of the photo) and the second cutting of the side waistband piece (circled in pink), which needs to be cut out twice for four pieces.

The green line shows the center of the fabric, where I will fold to get those other two pieces cut out.

Here I’m showing how I laid out the front skirt, the front facing and the second cutting of the side waistband. The green line shows the fold and the yellow the selvedge.

The skirt front piece is slightly smaller than the skirt back, as it’s cut on the fold and as such doesn’t need the center front seam allowances. I didn’t check, but I suspect that the skirt back piece is just a bit larger, even if you discount the seam allowances. In any case, the skirt front fit better on the folded fabric, but still didn’t fit entirely. The blue outlines the pattern piece below, and the yellow shows the edge of the fabric.

Again, since there’s so much gathering in the skirt, I figured I could fudge a bit. I just used a straight edge to even out the side seam on the fabric – it’s not quite straight in the photo – I cleaned it up a bit after I took the photo, but didn’t snap another shot!

This isn’t the first time I’ve come up against the cutting layout not working well for me with 45” fabric. For some skirts with a lot of volume, or even some wide legged trousers (although I’ve mostly had trouble with muslin and trousers, and muslin is more like 38 or 40” wide) A lot of time, it’s totally fine to fudge – if the pattern piece won’t fit on the 45” fabric, it’s a very full garment you’re working on and trimming some off the edge will not even be noticeable. I trimmed a circle skirt in the manner once and it gave the skirt a sort of cool almost tulip shape! If for some reason you feel you MUST cut the entire pattern piece, well then it’s time to piece the fabric! I’m too lazy to do anything of the sort, but if it’s just a few inches (the crotch extensions on trousers come to mind) you can buy a lot less yardage and just hide your extra seams in an inconspicuous spot!

And that’s my sewing work for the day (OK, yesterday – I had a few glasses of wine with a girlfriend last night and was too sleepy after to do a blog post!!) I’ll probably post another nonsensical post before the advent of the weekend, so have a swell day, little owlets. I’ll check in on ya’ll later!