I’ve mostly set my patchwork jeans aside for now. We ended last year by deciding it was necessary to swap our sons’ and daughter’s bedrooms, because the boys need a different space arrangement and, even though the two rooms are about the same size, the old girl room (which used to be my sewing room until our middle child came along) has a better layout for building in a bunk bed. So there’s been lots of painting and rearranging, and I have sewing projects to do for both rooms. My daughter has never had a bedspread that fully covers her mattress ever since moving to her “big girl bed.” My mom had made quilts for the boys, but has developed some serious health challenges over the past few years and isn’t sewing anymore while she manages that, so I’m making her quilt. I’d cut this out early last year, but let it slide while I worked on other projects. The rows with the bigger squares are done, except for pressing. There’s going to be rows of smaller squares and rectangles in between, but we laid it out on Saturday, and my daughter helped me lay out the small squares’ placement. I’m working with about 3 scrap fabrics, so I wanted to make sure they were well distributed. (And then I didn’t find the pile that had all but 2 squares of the third fabric until the end. Oh well. Maybe I can work those into the backing or something, because I have no idea what I’m doing for that yet.)
I spent the day priming things for paint and then I remembered to shoot a quick video. #SewingStudioBuild
I started cutting all the edges while Janet was away yesterday morning. When she got back after lunch, she pulled out a roller and started filling in. I'll put a pic below in the comments. #SewingStudioBuild
We broke for lunch and then came back with a portal ac unit plugged in to an extention cord from the house. Can't wait until they finished hooking up all the electrical and we have the mini split cooling the room for us - it was stupid humid today! #SewingStudioBuild
Today, I had a flash of brilliance that I wish I had thought of before now!
I needed to cut two layers of tulle fabric (two kinds that were both different widths) in straight panels, but I could barely see them as one was white and the other was just a shade darker than the canvas tabletop.
After considering & rejecting all kinds of solutions, it dawned on me that I could use painter's tape and mark out a rectangle the width of the narrow fabric and the length I wanted the panels to be. Then I could roll out both fabrics over the taped out area and have lines to follow with my scissors! It was so easy to see and keep my cut edges straight!
I got as far as cutting the pattern for the spencer then had to stop because I got sick (still recovering; it’s not half as bad as the pneumonia my son just got over, but at over three times his age I’m not handling it half as well!😆). I’m not disappointed, though; the forecast is now for a sunny 83 degrees.
So, plan B: Make up the faux sleeves I planned a year ago. Pic 1 is the dress. Pic 2 is last year’s mock-up with a long sleeve cut on bias (see stripes); I found it fit much more comfortably than when cut on grain. Pic 3 is the long sleeve cut out of white batiste, with strips of the dress fabric to make stripes. (It looks like the photos are out of order, oh well!)
All I have left of the original dress fabric is scraps, but I think I have enough to make stripes, if I space them. In Pic 3, they are spaced about 3” apart. I was starting to fret about sewing bias strips to a bias sleeve when I realized: I can cut the strips on straight grain! Right? Because where I...
I've spent the majority of this week altering strapless bodice foundations based on pinning from fittings and then adjusting the paper patterns so I can cut outer fabric (with necessary ease added).
One thing I like to do is keep the center back seams as straight as possible to prevent issues with zippers and to keep the princess lines from getting tilted or shifted too close to center (it can look a little imbalanced when everything is too close together).
So here's a quick guide to moving a fitting alteration to another seam:
You can see all my stitch-lines marked on the fabric and my cleaned up pin line from fitting.
I moved the same curved line over to the side panel on the princess seam.
Then I popped all the stitches to separate the pieces and repinned new curved line to original center back panel stitchline.
I pinned at top and bottom and worked in to the center, weaving the pins a few times each. Basically, basting with pins to make sure everything was perfectly lined up before nailing ...
