Something I always feel especially glad to have is those tweezers with the bent ends on them. I use them to thread the machine (especially pulling through from behind the needle), pull up bobbin thread, turn edges under close to the needle, grab stuff that fell behind the desk…. I can’t think of all their uses right now.
This year so far, the best thing was learning to confidently sew buttonholes with my machine. I’m finally at the point where I can just put the foot on, get the settings right, and go; without doing a test run every time.
I’m doing this today!
When I did the first gathered tier on my Coquelicot Skirt I had so much trouble! I broke threads twice and it was such slow going.
I called my relative who’s a pro and she said “it shouldn’t be that hard. Make sure you’re using good thread.”
And she was right. The thread I was using was fuzzy and some no-name brand stuff that was given to me. I switched to a polyester Gütermann thread which she suggested (anything smooth and strong and new-ish should be good). Today has been SO MUCH EASIER.
I also reduced the tension from 4 to 2 on my machine which I think helped.
So I was working on making this floor length but had a miscalculation and ran out of fabric for the final tier. Gotta make a trip to the fabric store in the morning to see if I can match it. Or maybe I can make the last tier white? But that makes me nervous if it’s floor length. What do you guys think?
Awesome!
Wait this means I have to add silnylon to my stash, doesn’t it?
Was browsing some petticoat related stuff and came across this cool blog entry. I love the details on the back of the hood. I've never seen that kind of pleating before and apparently it was on most cloaks during its time period.
Here is the link for the YouTube tutorial I used for the sizing and basic shape of the tunic.
I think my sleeves and armscyes were too small because I went with an ungathered sleeve.
Made a hand sewn tunic with no pattern using a YouTube tutorial (I’ll post the link below when I track it down).
Unfortunately the armscyes were too small. I decided to make a gusset that extended down the full length of the sleeve. I may actually do this purposefully for future projects, because I like the comfort and the finish of the double seam.
Another thing I did for this project, which was a bit masochistic, was after thread pulling I used the pulled threads to sew the whole thing together. That’s why the thread colour matching is downright perfect.
I used the smallest size of pattern from jumpsu.it to scale down to a toddler size based on my kid’s measurements. Learned a lot about pattern resizing in the process!
It was still a bit snug around his middle but he got to wear if for a couple weeks.
Red standard cotton twill.
I don’t know how long I was on Reddit… more than 8 years because it was before my first kid was born. Probably at least ten. Not signing in to check though.