I had a sudden urge to make a tutorial, so here's a quick guide for a comfy summer dress

A couple weeks ago, someone on Reddit's sewing sub asked about making this dress, which is available from Threadsence:

Photo doesn't belong to me - it's from the Threadsence site

(Here's the original discussion for the curious)

This dress seems crazy simple to make, and (full disclosure) I haven't made it but drew up this guide for how I would go about sewing something similar. It's also some insight into how I figure out how to make something in my head/on paper before actually doing it.

This chiffon fabric sat in a pile on my floor for months.

I knew I wanted to make a ruffly skirt out of it as soon as I got it, but it's a pretty intimidating project because of all the hemming and gathering.

I took a while to figure out the easiest way to hem the chiffon. Eventually I settled on a serged rolled hem with wooly nylon thread. Wooly nylon thread is not twisted, so it spreads out and fills in some of the space between stitches. I hadn't done this before, but thought it would make a nice little border (and it's fast!) Once I decided on this, the skirt seemed less intimidating.

I didn't have a pattern (this type of skirt really doesn't need one since it's all rectangles) though I based the measurements on another skirt I own. They ended up as follows:

waistband 38" (with elastic 28")
first ruffle 54" (one width of the fabric)
second ruffle 108" (2 widths)
third ruffle 216" (4 widths)

each ruffle is 7" long and the overlap between them is  about 2".

I used a white base fabric for the ruffles. Since the chiffon is sheer, it creates light and dark stripes, which I really like.

The waistband is a simple elastic waistband.

Guest post at So-Sew-Easy

If you go back a couple months, you'll remember I won the So Sew Easy Make It Yours Contest with my fox bag. One of the prizes was to write a guest post for the So Sew Easy blog. That post is now up!

It's a tutorial for a simple knit dress, like so:

Hope you like it!

I've decided to start doing tutorials. First up: wtf are culottes anyways?

I mean, this is a tutorial for culottes? a skort? A split-skirt. That's probably most accurate.

According to internet sources (aka Wikipedia) culottes are any women's garment that looks like a skirt but is pants. They used to be a men's garment kind of like knickerbockers. (I just wanted to use the word knickerbockers.) It seems much more accurate to call the women's version a split skirt.

Someone linked me to a pattern for some culottes made to look like a circle skirt a while ago, but I can't justify buying a pattern for something I can easily do, even if I rarely have the motivation to draft these things. I convinced myself this time around by deciding to do a tutorial as I went along, and here it is!

Bias binding is serious stuff.

I'm sure I've read instructions for bias binding at some point, but between then and now I started doing it the other way around. Let me explain. A lot of instructions tell you to sew the binding to the right side of the item you're binding, flip it to the inside and pin, then top-stitch from the front hoping to catch the edge in the back. This tutorial explains it in a lot of detail. I did binding like this for a while because that's what binding and patterns I had told me to do.

This method seems illogical. I can't see the back that I'm trying to catch a tiny bit of, and the front is already sewn on... why top-stitch from the side that's perfectly attached? I haven't seen a good explanation for why the first method is better. I'm curious about why the second method isn't standard.

In all fairness, my search for "bias binding sewing tutorial" did turn up some that sew it on the way I do. This tutorial was the top hit. The idea is to sew it to the inside first, flip to the front, and top-stitch without worrying about catching the edge you can't see.

If you just want a quick explanation, here you go:

Sew your binding in the fold, with the right side to the wrong side of the fabric you're sewing it to. I stretch the binding slightly as I sew it to things like necklines and armholes so it doesn't gape.

Fold the binding over to the front so it just covers the previous stitching line. Top stitch.

That's it, way fewer steps than the other method. The ends are finished as with any binding - with one folded under so the raw edge is hidden and sewn overlapping the starting end. As you can see, with this method the outside is neatly stitched and the inside doesn't have any missed spots where the binding isn't attached. This is also a peek at a dress I recently finished. The fabric has kittens making muffins! What? More about that in the next post.

As-I-Sew, now with more pink fluff monsters!

A long, long time ago, when I was super into looking at lolita clothes, I bought several yards of pink organza to sew my own petticoat. I sewed some easier petticoats and bought others, thus the pink organza sat around in a box.

The last time I went to put on one of my shorter petticoats I noticed it wasn't giving me much poof at all. Upon closer inspection I found the tulle was a lot less stiff and crunchy than I remembered it. It's probably spent too much time crushed in the closet (how in the world am I supposed to store the half dozen or more petticoats I have? They need their own room).

This old petticoat would not do (side note: it was the first I ever made), so I pulled out that pile of pink organza. Organza petticoats are a lot harder to kill than tulle, though more work due to all the layers and fabric needed to get them fluffy. I hoped this wouldn't be too difficult since I have a ruffler foot, but man was I wrong on that one.

On ruffler feet and organza:
Organza shreds like it's its job.
Rufflers grip the edges of fabric, tearing into it with their little robot teeth.
Rufflers look like little smiling robots.

The experience quickly became a nightmare of getting organza caught in the ruffler and ripping out thread nests.

Alright then.
I didn't really know what I was doing, so the order in which I sewed everything could have been better. After sewing the two layers I made together I thought the petticoat still wasn't fluffy enough and added an extra ruffle close to the top of the bottom layer. This was kind of a hassle to add at that point because all the fluff gets in the way. Do not recommend.

The finished petticoat is two layers: A bottom layer that is three tiers and one extra ruffle sewn flat onto it, and a top layer that is two tiers (also fuller than the bottom one). All the ruffles are sewn together once with a straight stitch, zig-zagged on the edge, then sewn down flat in a "mock flat felled" finish. The vertical seams are french finished.

The petticoat  has a spandex drawstring waistband to avoid scratchy chiffon pressing into my waist, and to make size adjustment easier. The spandex on it's own was not strong enough to hold this up.

This is what the petticoat looks like worn normally on it's own and under one of my heavier skirts (the first cupcake skirt).

Because the bottom layer is smaller, it kind of squishes down some of the fluff when the petticoat is inside out and gives a slightly different shape.

Just for comparison, here's the skirt on it's own.

If you'd like to make your own petticoat, here's a sort of mini tutorial. This petti is 18" long and all the measurements include a half inch seam allowance. I have a 28" waist, for reference.

When I started, I wanted to do three tiers of gathering per layer of petticoat. My tiers weren't wide enough, so I'm giving you measurements for ones that would be. I switched to two tiers on the second layer because the three seemed unnecessary. This goes together like any "tiered skirt," which there is lots of tutorials for out there. The info here is mostly for figuring out the measurements.

Three tiered petticoat

• top tier 9" by 2*fabric width
• middle tier 7" by 3*fabric width
• bottom tier 5" by 4*fabric width

Two tiered petticoat

• top tier  8" by 2*fabric width
• bottom tier 12" by 4* fabric width

I suggest doing either two or three layers of organza.

Yay! 100 posts! Now with foxy updates. Ohh ~

I don't actually have anything special for this... so let me update you on some things that are going on around here.

Specifically, you might recall, a couple months ago I entered a fox bag into a sewing contest over at the So Sew Easy blog. Well, I won! I don't know why I didn't post about this earlier, I've known for over a week now. Thank you to Deby for holding the contest, the sponsors for all the wonderful prizes, and of course all of you who voted!

One of the prizes I want to talk about is writing a guest post for the So Sew Easy blog. I've considered this a lot because I think our audiences probably don't overlap much. My clothes are pretty out there compared to Deby's if you just glance at them. Some of the basic shapes are similar though, and techniques don't vary too widely no matter what you're sewing. After some input from Deby I've decided on a tutorial for a knit fabric dress, like the rainbow dress or Alice in Wonderland one. Even though these two dresses look pretty different, they are mostly the same pattern/construction. It's a pretty simple design that can be adapted for many different dresses.

The other prize of interest to more than just myself is a collaboration with Deby on a bag pattern. I'm pretty excited about this because I don't typically make purses (well, I make travel bags for work, but that's more like factory production than personal sewing). We've started brainstorming ideas. There's so many possibilities! I hope I'm not too much trouble.

Finally, I am planning on making some fox purses for sale. If you're interested, let me know! I've been overwhelmingly busy somehow the past couple weeks and will be the next few weeks too, but someday soon I'll get some time together from the aether to make a couple and list them in the shop. Are there other animals you'd be interested in? I'll probably do a cat for obvious reasons, but there's so many cute animals out there!

If you've read this far, thanks! Remember to keep an eye out for  all these things coming up!

Big bunny pants? Bugs Bunny pants.

A couple months ago some folks asked me why I don't have any phat pants in my Etsy shop. I finally got around to finishing some. Personally I enjoy cartoon characters on my pants, so when I saw this Bugs Bunny fabric in an awesome bright blue I thought it would be great for the project.

I altered a plain men's pants pattern for these. Quick step-by-step: Trace the pattern, add width to the bottom smoothly from the top, add lines for color blocking, cut out the paper pattern and add seam allowance when cutting out of fabric. 

The original pattern called for a zipper fly but since these pants are quite light, I went with velcro. The side pockets also have velcro closures. I added the drawstring at the waist (and leg openings) so they could be more adjustable.

If you look super close you'll notice a short line of stitching  next to the side seam on this leg. This is to hold the drawstring in place so it doesn't pull out, for example if you step on it. The stitches are quite large if you'd like to pull them out and remove the string (twill tape).

 I created this back pocket shape for a different pair of pants long ago (I thought I had posted about them, but apparently not), and reused it here because I think it's quite nice. Most of the seams are top stitched for reinforcement. I think these count as "mock flat-felled" seams.

That's all folks!

"It is what a futuristic lego girl would wear"

I wanted to make an easy circle skirt out of this neon green vinyl, but when I tried it, it looked a bit too ridiculous even for my tastes. The vinyl was too stiff for the shape. I didn't want to just let it go to waste (there's not much you can do with a doughnut of vinyl) so I started thinking about how to use at least some of it.

The best idea I came up with was this - a stripe of the neon green attached to a softer fabric. By "softer fabric" I mean some thin pvc, which I of course have in my stash. I couldn't decide if I wanted to use black or white so I asked a friend and he chose white. (He's also responsible for the title... why am I so bad at titles?)

The skirt has a spandex waistband since that's more comfortable and much easier to work with than the pvc. I used a contrasting zig-zag to attach the waistband and stripe, and also for the hem. This was absolutely horrible to sew because of how sticky all the vinyl is. I don't have a rolling or teflon foot, and using tissue wasn't going to work because of the zig-zag, so I had the bright idea to use baby powder. Can you see where this is going?

There was baby powder EVERYWHERE. It worked very well though, so, success?

When in doubt, make a skirt.

I've picked up a couple contract jobs recently that are cutting into my sewing time. Knowing I only have a couple hours to sew makes it harder to start on a complicated project.

The other day, I wanted to work on a cool little dress with an open back (similar to Simplicity 2180), but while looking for mock-up/lining fabric I stumbled upon a pair of men's PJ's I bought a couple years ago. They didn't fit me, but I really liked the fabric, which is an Asian newspaper print (as you can see below). I would like to make a fancier newspaper or comic book print dress, but I haven't seen a fabric that is good enough for the effort. This newsprint was very limited and sat around in a box because I was too nervous to cut into it. I finally decided to do it, for something simple enough that I couldn't mess it up, though still useful... this is of course a skirt, because that's my default "yea, I can knock this out in an hour."

This was a pretty straight forward reconstruction. I cut the pants right above the crotch (and had to do some fiddling because the fly on them went down very far), then used the legs to cut strips for the ruffle. The pants had a drawstring, which I find kind of annoying so I supplemented that with elastic.

I like to top-stitch the ruffle seam because I think it helps them lay in the correct direction. You can kind of make this out in the above image.

The pants had some pretty large pockets, which is pretty great for a casual skirt. Overall, a nice quick project and I finally used these for something. Yay.

The PVC skirt from hell

Lately I hit a patch of poor sewing. Nothing was coming out quite as I wanted, but I'm trying to not let it deter me.

This skirt proved to be most difficult, with every problem more frustrating than the last.

Problem 1. sticky PVC and no tissue paper to layer it with while sewing (I was at my boyfriend's house). It took me a few minutes to figure out but the solution was pretty simple - cheap toilet paper! It keeps the PVC from sticking just as tissue paper would. Though it's a bit harder to peel away, you can rub the seams with a wet paper towel or regular towel and it dissolves away.

2. Ruffling PVC is not fun. Like problem 1, it sticks together when you try to slide it on the gathering threads... plus you can't pin haphazardly since the pins leave permanent holes.

3. Putting elastic into a PVC waistband is finger torture. I thought this would be fine, just toss an elastic waistband on there and I don't have to worry about zippers or buttons or anything like that (which sounds terrible to do in PVC). Nope. Wrong. I spent an hour or two trying to put in different types of elastic. I thought my fingers would break. Eventually I settled on a drawstring, which makes the waist look bulky, but I admit defeat on this one.

It sits a bit better with something over the waist. It's not terrible otherwise, just not quite what I wanted.

The one good thing? The pockets. This skirt has two velcro side pockets that are pretty close to invisible. At least those didn't cause any trouble.

Time for a quick and easy project

A couple days ago I got stuck on the projects I have in progress. The Victorian costume gets tedious pretty quickly, and I need some trim for the polka dot mermaid dress before I can continue working on it.
Over the past week or so, my mind kept going back to a skirt I remembered my sister-in-law wearing. It's tiered with an embroidered border print and good proportions. I called up my sister-in-law and asked to borrow her skirt, which took a bit of explaining because I couldn't remember what color it was - for some reason I thought black/gray gingham, woops. Anyways, I'm not sure where she got it but here's that pretty skirt:

I already had the perfect fabric in my stash waiting for just the right project, a pin-dot cotton with border embroidery. Border designs on fabric are awesome by the way. I wish there was more of them available.
Here I've already cut up my fabric:

What to do with a mock-up that works?

There are a couple ways I handle mock-ups (sometimes I refer to these as "trial runs" so I'm not constantly saying "mock-up"):
- if the pattern had a lot of fitting issues and I made it work, I save the mock up to use as a future pattern
- if it didn't work at all, it goes back in the fabric pile to be cut again as something else
- this one might be a little different than what other people do: if I think the pattern will work with only minor adjustments, I cut it in my lining fabric so I can just use it to line whatever I'm making once it's fitted. I baste the lining together, fit it, rip it apart to use as a pattern for the outside fabric, and put it back together.
- or, if the piece doesn't need a lining, I turn the mock-up into a garment on it's own. This can work since I mostly use plain sheets for my mock-ups. They take dye well if they have some cotton content so once that's done, no one knows the garment was just a trial run or is made from a sheet.

In this case, I went with the last option. When I made the Sims jeans for Eddy, I did a trial run to work out any kinks in my pattern alterations and sizing for his tiny self.

 

 

Of course they have some seams that don't quite make sense when they're not made in two colors, but that's not something most people notice right away.