Category: Sewing

Fabric Panels

Since I started sewing, I have seen “fabric panels” which are basically a large picture printed on fabric. Never ‘got’ it … for what purpose does one get a picture on a piece of fabric? After Christmas, I was shopping clearance sales and found a quilt kit that used the fabric panel. Oooooh! That is how you use a fabric panel.

I’ve now got two new blanket projects for Anya (tied quilts) — one with construction trucks that I know she is going to love with a minky yellow fabric for the back. And gravel print fabric for the binding

The second is a Northcott print with woodland animals looking up at a star. I’ve got a minky ice blue backing for this one.

I made Anya’s sleeping bag with two layers of Quilter’s Dream Puff batting – that’s almost too warm (but good for sleeping outdoors). I’m thinking a single layer of the Dream Puff batting should give us a couple of cozy blankets.

Easter Dress – Fabric Acquisition

I purchased a pattern for Anya’s Easter dress almost a year ago. I wanted the bodice and outer skirt to be blue with a sparkly white fabric as the inner skirt. I am going to make a booster cushion for Anya, and I needed to add about ten dollars to my order to get free shipping. Fabric keeps 🙂

We have a bright-ish dark blue for the main fabric, and one of the Michael Miller Fairy Frost glittery fabrics for the inner circle skirt (which will also be used for the sash and bow).

Magic Pillowcase

I got a “magic pillowcase” kit during a pre-Christmas sale. I finally got around to making it — it’s literally a two hour project with a tiny person disrupting the process the entire time.

You lay three pieces of fabric together, roll the main body up and fold the cuff over. Pin together & stitch. Then turn it right side out and have a long piece of three fabrics – a main body, an accent strip, and a cuff. Fold it in half, and voila it looks just like a pillowcase. Fold it in half inside out (right sides together) – instead of using a French seam, I just used the serger to stitch along the bottom and side of the pillow. Knotted off the tails and it was done. Tiny person loves her pillow and blanket.

This is a pretty cool way of making pillowcases – might make some custom pillowcases for our bedroom and the guest bedroom.

Circle Skirts

I’ve been making a lot of quick circle skirts and matching headbands for Anya. The first step to making a circle skirt for a tiny person is to select a fabric that looks the same from any direction (i.e. you can turn it upside down, at 45 degrees, etc). Solid colors are an easy pick, or a marbled pattern. A “tossed” pattern (the components are at all different orientations) works too. If you have a pattern that doesn’t look the same from all directions, you cannot use a single circle to make the skirt. Well, you CAN … but you’ll also have part of your skirt where the pattern is sideways and another part where it is upside down. Being able to cut a single circle is what makes circle skirts so quick and easy 🙂

I have a reusable pattern that I made myself. I’ve seen a lot of people bemoaning the maths required to figure out the pattern dimensions. I guess a theoretical physicist’s view of “a lot of complex math” is a little different 🙂 But, really, you need to measure the waist size and how long you want the skirt to be. The maths to forming the circles — the circle radius = waistSize / (2 * π) . A skirt for a growing child does not demand precision here. You could use 3 instead of pi – which makes your circle radius close to the waist size divided by 6 — the exact “close to” is not a linear function. In the waist size I’m dealing with, it is about an inch. If I want a 22″ waist for her skirt, I could divide 21/6 for the radius and come up with a 21.99″ waist.

Since I want a stretchy waistband that allows her to pull the skirt on herself, I want something larger than her actual waist size. Depending on how much fullness / gathering I want, 22-25″ is a good circumference for the waist – which is a radius between 3.5″ and 4″. The next thing you need to decide is the length of the skirt – you’ll have two inches at the top for the waistband, but you’ll also lose about an inch to seam allowances.

To draft a pattern, use a trammel set in conjunction with an 18″ aluminum ruler. Draw the inner circle (radius calculated for the waist), then draw the inner circle (waist radius + skirt length) – leaving the pin of the trammel set in the same location as the pencil part was adjusted. Cut the two circles and you’ve got a pattern.

To cut, you can fold the pattern in half or in quarters (along with the fabric) or lay the fabric out and pin the unfolded pattern to the fabric. I align the pattern along two perpendicular sides of the fabric. This leaves me with a very long strip of uncut fabric. Cut a 5″ wide rectangle the length of the calculated waist circumference. I also cut a 2″ or 3″ wide rectangle a few inches longer than Anya’s head size to make a coordinating headband. For the waistband, 2″ strip of non-roll elastic to her actual waist size (plus half an inch or so) and another one to a little less than her head size. The head-sized one I then cut in half lengthwise (so I have two 1″ strips of elastic the length of her head size).

Fold the outside edge of the circle over 1/4″ and press. Then fold it over another 1/4″ and press. Stitch – this will be the bottom hem.

With the serger, finish off all four edges of the waistband fabric. Finish the short ends of the headband. The headband, fold in half lengthwise with the rights sides together and serge the long sides together to make a tube – which then has to be turned the right way around. Attach a safety pin to the 1″ wide elastic band and feed it through the strip. Sew the two ends of the elastic together, fold the ends of the fabric under and insert one side of the tube into the other side and stitch the two sides together. Voila, headband.

Pin the 5″ wide strip to the outside of the skirt, wrong sides together. I use the serger to sew these together – it finishes the top edge of the circle.

Sew the two short ends of the rectangle together. Sew the short ends of the 2″ wide elastic band together. Pull the skirt band through the elastic and pull the skirt band around the elastic. Fold the waistband over to the circle top is sandwiched between the two long edges of the waistband and start sewing. As you get toward the end of the circle, you have to gather the already-sewn waistband casing along the elastic. Done!

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Project Stack

Quick Projects:
Owl skirt – a quick circle skirt using a tossed owl print that Anya liked – we cut the circle, need to hem it and make the waistband

Underwear – I found a pattern to make underwear for Anya. I also happened across a place with  fold over elastic on super sale for Black Friday. I’ve got a lifetime supply of FOE.

Christmas season circle skirt – same as the Halloween one … nice to have but not essential.

 

 

Long Projects:
Christmas dress – I’ve got a basic plan courtesy of the Oliver & S Block Dress pattern drafting book, I’ve got the fabric ready to go (although I may be using some lace trim).

Oliver & S Pinwheel dress – I have the pieces cut and the bias tape made, need to stitch everything together. This is a summery dress, so not a high priority.

Table runners – I got a couple of quilt table runner kits that I want to make. A modern one for every day use, a Christmas one that probably won’t get done in time for this Christmas. A birthday one that definately won’t get made in time for this coming year’s birthdays, and a Halloween one.

Quilts — Anya’s tulip quilt and star quilt are very long term projects. I’d also like to make a quilt for my bed and our guest room.

 

Wrap-Up:
Blanket – still working on tying it

Sleeping bag – I’ve got the zipper stitched in (double-stitched for strength) and the batting cut. Still need to get the batting stitched in place and the edge sewn.

 

Completed:
Owl packpack – Finished and in use

Halloween bag – Finished and used
Halloween costume – Finished and used
Halloween circle skirt – Finished and used
Art smock – Finished and awaiting a non-sleeping bean to test it out

Art Smock!!

Anya’s art smock is finally done!  One yard of the laminated fabric (54″ wide) was enough for the interior of her owl backpack  and this smock. I learnt to fold bias tape properly — unfortunately too late for this project. I had always seen it folded very carefully in half and then each raw edge folded in half toward the middle. You actually want one side to be a little longer than the other. The shorter side is stitched to the front of the fabric, folded over the raw edge, and then you top-stitch just off of the edge of the bias tape (and since the portion on the back is a little bit wider, these stitches catch the back of the fabric. The top-stitching is barely visible (depending on how well you can sew along a defined line). This should save a LOT of time applying bias tape in the future.

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Art Smock

I am about halfway through constructing Anya’s art smock using the pattern I found on thediymommy.com.  I had quite a bit of the laminated fabric from making her backpack, and searched for something that would use it. We happened across this smock and it looked like it would use almost all of the remaining fabric. (Wasn’t wrong – from the one yard of fabric, I have a 16″square).

Other than my inability to machine-stitch bias tape, this is a really quick project. Couple hours – even with a tiny helper. I find it easier to cut fabric to a pattern if the paper pattern isn’t cut right along the line, so I leave a half inch overhang around the pattern. It works just as well, though, to have overhang that continually varies from 1/8″ up to an inch. And Anya loves that she can do some of the cutting for our crafts.

Once we printed and cut the paper pattern, I cut the two pieces of laminated cotton. Sewed the two pieces together at the shoulder – since laminate does not seem fray, I used a simple straight stitch instead of the serger. I had cut quite a lot of bias strips to make piping for the bag. Double folded the strips to create bias tape for the edging and started pinning it in place.img_20161111_195246

The front of the bias tape is stitched on, and now I’m hand-stitching the back of the bias tape. Some day I’ll learn this “stitch in the ditch” technique 🙂

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Project Stack – Update

Halloween Circle Skirt – Completed! Circle skirts are *super* quick projects. I have a circle pattern that I re-use each time. Double-fold the bottom hem (pressing after each fold) and stitch the hem in place. Cut a 5″ wide strip of fabric a few inches longer than the inner circle circumference.  Serge it along both long sides. Placing wrong sides together, I sew the rectangular strip to the inner circle (this stitch ends up being right along the serger threads). Once the two ends meet, I serge them together. I then cut a 2″ wide strip of non-roll elastic to Anya’s waist size, overlap the ends by 1/2″ and stitch it together along the edges of the overlap and then sew an X inside the rectangle. Insert the elastic into the waistband fabric, fold the fabric over, and stitch the three layers (outer waistband fabric, circle skirt, inner waistband fabric) together. About 3/4 of the way through, I gather the already sewed part of the waistband on the elastic so the 1/4 that has not yet been sewed is straight and flat. Voila, one circle skirt.

Halloween bag – Almost done! I’m still stitching the letters onto the bag.

Halloween costume – I had to re-do the bodice (it was too wide), but should be able to finish off the back hook-and-loop closure this weekend. Need to make a hoop skirt and add some embellishment to the skirt.

 

Christmas Dress – Initial Planning

I purchased a really interesting book called the Building Block Dress. Ever notice a designer sells ten different patterns that are all tweaks of the same dress? Evidently that’s actually a thing in fashion design — you really do have a base pattern and all of your “looks” are modifications of this base. Makes sense from both a manufacturing and a design standpoint. Cars are designed the same way — there’s an underlying chassis upon which a lot of different variations are bolted. This book teaches you to make your own modifications. Which means you don’t need to buy the three different almost-the-same patterns, but rather you can purchase one and modify components as needed.

The book includes a “dress planning” template — for me, “planning” has generally been an e-mail to a few friends or a blog post about the pattern I’m using and the fabrics I am considering. Selecting different components and drawing the dress is new for me … but I’ve got my first dress planned! Now I just need to get Anya’s Halloween costume sorted so I can work on other projects 🙂

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