Swimwear Sewing Tips: Part 2

In my last swimwear post, I mentioned that I was going to update with another post in a couple of days.
Apparently, in blogland, my "today, or tomorrow" is more like "one week".
Oops. Sorry about that!


Just so you know what's going on, I'm taking part in Dana and Deborah's Coast-to-Coast Swimsuit Sew Along

So far, I've plunged right in, cut my fabric and serged my seams.

Well, it came to sewing on the elastics, things got a little complicated.

Tip #3 - Use chlorine resistant elastic, if at all possible.
I was going to use regular elastic, but I was lucky enough to find some chlorine resistant ones at my local fabric store.

$4.00 for 7.3 m of regular elastic (68% polypropylene 32% rubber)
$1.70 for 2.7 m of chlorine resistant braided elastic (78% cotton 22% rubber)
Pretty comparable, eh? So, I ended up using the suggested elastic.


Tip #4 - When applying elastic, place the elastic under the fabric when sewing on the elastic.
It is easier to sew on the elastic, if the elastic is in contact with the bed of the sewing machine. With the elastic under the fabric, I serged the elastic onto the leghole, neck, armholes and back.




With the first swimsuit I made, I used a 1-to-1 ratio for elastic to length of fabric.
It turns out that this was not the smartest thing to do. Instead of pulling the leg hole in, this caused the hole to enlarge. Oops, not what I wanted. I ended up having to rip out some of the seams and cut out some excess fabric.
I would suggest using an elastic about 1 inch shorter to sew onto the fabric.

Tip #5 - Twin needles make the hems look quite professional
I don't have a cover stitch machine, to finish off the hems, but I finally succumbed and learned how to use twin needles to make the hems look more professional.
After serging on the elastic, I turned it under and top stitch with twin needles.


This is nice, but not strictly necessary. I just looked at my old swimsuit (bought for way too much money 8 years ago), and I notice that they use a zigzag stitch.

Well, I think I will end this post here. Hopefully, after my vacation, I'll be able to post some photos of the finished product.

Car Seat Bags - They sure are useful!

Hi friends!

I have officially been on vacation since last Friday.
Internet access has been sporadic, to say the least. While traveling with two little kids is very fun, and keeps my husband and I on our toes, there is also quite a bit of down time. I find myself itching to sew, blog or read my favorite websites. "Unfortunately", I am forced to catch up on my reading instead.

We are in Toronto today, but we will be home tomorrow for a full glorious day before jet-setting it to Winnipeg. "Winnipeg???!?", my friends ask me dubiously. "Um, who goes to Winnipeg for vacation?", they always add. Well, us, apparently. If some of the best friends you've ever made come from the friendliest city, you've make the effort to visit too.

Anyway, I digress. I just wanted to share my car seat bags with you.
The red one is made out of a linen table cloth and with pink fabric is a gift from my friend. Anyway, they are just gigantic gift bags. I've checked in car seats at airports before, and if I'm lucky, the airline I'm with will have clear plastic bags that I can wrap with car seats with. Unfortunately, more often than not, these bags come out ripped and tattered. Imagine the kind of abuse the car seats go through.
So, this is my solution. Hopefully, the nice men and women who deal with the luggage will see that they are dealing with car seats, and will treat them with care.

Think they will be able to tell what's in the bag?

Hoping to catch up with everyone soon!

Su

Refashion T-shirt to Shrug

Sometimes, I'm so very grateful that I'm able to sew.
This must be one of the easiest t-shirt refashion, but it so very gratifying.

This is another t-shirt given to me by a friend. It is soft and lovely, but it is also white (impractical) and has a mock turtleneck (uncomfortable).


Basically, use a scissors to straight up the front, cut off the collar, make a casing up the front, around the neck and down front the other side. OK, ok, that is a bad explanation.

Go to Cut Out + Keep for the real tutorial. So simple and elegant!



Now go find a t-shirt to cut up!

Gathered Skirt aka Dirndl Skirt

One of the first item of clothing my mum ever taught me to draft and sew was a gathered skirt. However, I don't think I've made another gathered skirt since. I don't know what took me such a long time. After drooling over over Veronica Darling's and Megan Nielsen's (link to tutorial) skirts, I decided to make my own using a pillowcase.

Just playing with img manipulation. Texture by bittbox

The great thing about making your own gathered skirt is that you can have the waistband sit exactly where you like it to. I like my waist bands to sit just an inch or two below my natural waist. Of course, the length of the skirt is perfect too. More often than not, when I try on skirts at the store, if the waistband fits and sits correctly, the hem of the skirt hits on the thickest part of my claf. Very unflattering.

However, my favorite thing about this project is how little fabric goes to waste. Only the excess from the waistband is not used in the making of this skirt.

Coast-to-Coast: A Swimwear Sew Along

My swimsuit sewing adventures:

Swimwear Confessions: Swimwear Sew-Along
Swimwear Sewing Tips: Part 1
Swimwear Sewing Tips: Part 2
Swimwear Sewing Tips: Part 3


From Dana:
http://www.dana-made-it.com/2009/07/coast-to-coast-swimwear-sew-along.html

Swimwear Sewing Tips: Part 1

If you've been following along, I've decided to join the Swimwear Sew-Along.

What I've done so far is to create a pattern with some scrap fabric:
As you can tell, it is going to be a very simple, uncomplicated swimsuit for my girl.

Tip #1 - Cut out the pieces with the greatest stretch going around the body.
4-way stretch lycra has different stretchability cross-grain or straight grain.

Tip #2 - Serge the seams using a serger with a 3-thread overlock stitch.
After attempting this part, I think a zigzag stitch will produce great result too. Of course, the overlock produces a much nicer finish, but since lycra doesn't fray anyway, zigzag stitch will probably suffice.
Here's how the serged seam looked:
From the right side, with stretch:
As you can see, the white thread is showing through. This bothers me less than the fact that I would have to go to the fabric store to get matching serger thread, so I'm sticking with white. However, if this bothers you, use a matching thread for the thread that goes through the serger needle (the one that top stitches).

I decided to add some ruffles to the front - the edges are finished using a rolled hem on my serger.
Well, down the road (tomorrow or day after), I'll tell you what happened when I start inserting the elastics

Swimwear Confessions: Swimwear Sew-Along

I've got a confession to make. About a month ago, I convinced my kids to go fabric shopping with me. The plan was to get some lycra for swimsuits.
Well, after much bargaining with my kids ("No, sweetheart, fabric with the words "Babe" on it is not suitable for a 5 year old"), we brought home the fabric, some elastic and proper ball point needles. After washing and drying the fabric, I promptly filed them away neatly on my shelf. They have stayed there ever since. Summer is almost half-way through! What is wrong with me? This kind of hesitation is unusual for me... I usually happily jump into a project, and more often than not, bungle it up.

Well, it is not too late. Luckily for me, along comes the Coast-to-Coast: A Swimwear Sew-Along, brainchild of Dana of Made and Deborah of Whipstitch, to help get me started. You should go read their very funny posts! So yes, I will being sewing along with these two very talented seamstresses, and hopefully, many more of you will join us.

Oh! I nearly forgot, here's what my kids chose:
The blue one is for my 3-year-old, and the pink is for the 5-year-old.
Yeah, I know, they are the same print, because whatever the 5-year-old chooses, the 3-year-old follows suit. At least this time the colors are different.

I won't be using any sewing patterns for this attempt, only because it is not that easy for me to find a good swimwear pattern (Kwik Sew, anyway) in Ottawa, Canada.

Well, this ought to be fun!!

Just so I can wear my Brooch

I received this beautiful top from my friend. (She received it from another friend who could no longer fit into it because it was too big! *gulp* Her friend must be a tiny girl!) I'm always grateful whenever my friends think of me before they discard perfectly good clothing. So, thank you, Steph!!

This top is made of a softest jersey fabric, but unfortunately, the mock turtleneck + short sleeves combo made for a very bad combination. Hot? Cold? When am I supposed to wear this top? Probably in the winter under a cardigan, if I have to guess. Anyway, the turtleneck was simply too uncomfortable?

As you know I'm already mad about the long-sleeved refashion from Happy Together, so I took a pair of scissors to this branded top. There is less material for me to work with, but I still managed to make a pretty funky top based on the original idea.


And yes! I get to wear my favorite brooch again.

Swimsuit Cover-Up

I made this to enter into the Singer's Swimsuit Cover-Up contest, but I'm absolutely snowed over by all those other fabulous entries. Somehow, mine just does not measure up. I have about a week to work up the nerve to submit my entry.
However, I must say that I absolutely love the entries that I have been seeing. They are so creative and beautiful.

Anyway, here you go. I used my own girl's top tutorial to create the top to this dress. I made some allowances for my larger frame, of course. Then I attached the top to a gathered skirt with a thick band. Pretty straight-forward and nothing fancy. Do you like the texture of my background? It is from bittbox; lovely, isn't it?
And just so you know, I do not use Adobe Photoshop. Instead I use GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition.... etc. It works mostly (well, it is free) bug-free on my Windows Vista.

Thrift Find: Brooch

I'm not one for shopping. In fact, I don't know why I still get invited by my girlfriends on shopping outing. After all, I get blinded by the myriads of items on display, and bombarded by different the different choices available gives me a headache. Sometimes, I only buy stuff because I've been persuaded to by friends. Half the time, I'm thinking, "What a rip-off", or "I think I can make it". What a wet blanket, right? So, I just pay attention to my friends instead, and enjoy their company. Mostly, I ignore the shopping part.

When it comes to thrift shopping, I'm pretty much the same. I avoid erything else but the pattern basket, the fabric shelf and the linen aisle. Sometimes, I may admire the "valuable or unique items" display that goes on auction, only to walk away.
This morning, as I was admiring the display, my attention kept being drawn to the glass jewelery cabinet next to it. Right at the very corner, my gaze kept returning to this porcelain brooch. When I got to touch it, I think my heart actually skipped a beat.

So, I'm the proud owner of a beautiful brooch:


Well, I don't know much about jewelery. I'm not even sure if this is new or old, although it looks old. All I know is, that I really, really like it.

And it goes well with my latest refashion:

Long Sleeve Shirt Refashion from Happy Together

I have to do this quick because my laptop is about to meltdown!! Eeeeep!!

It isn't often that I forget to take a "before" picture, but this is one of them. When I saw the long sleeve shirt refashion tutorial from Jessica of Happy Together, I just about tripped over myself to pull out the long sleeve top that was in my refashion pile. So, no "before" picture, but imagine a ribbed long-sleeved top with a ratty collar, if you will.

Here's what mine looked like. It's brown, but still quite pretty. I can imagine a beautiful brooch attached to where the fabric is currently being gathered by a piece of fabric. I can even imagine adding some fancy trimmings and ribbons. However, knowing me, I'll wear it as is.



Here is the back view. The shirt was big on me to begin with, so unlike Jessica's I had to add shirring in the back.



Now, where is my other long sleeved shirt that I've been thinking of refashioning?

The Dress with no Pattern

For a very long time, I sewed clothing without the use of a pattern. This was mainly because I was afraid of sewing patterns. All those flimsy papers, markings and instructions.
However, once I got the hang of it, I found that I actually liked using a pattern. I really don't have to stress too much, or do running measurement tabulations in my head. Just cut, and follow instructions.
Lately though, my successes have been sewing without a pattern, like this dress.
I just love this dress, and cannot wait to wear it this summer. It is almost mid-July, and the heat wave has not set in yet. According to the weather man, the heat wave will be here by the end of the week. I can hardly wait!

Back to the dress. This dress is an accumulation of the the different sewing techniques that I've picked up since the start of the year.
Sewing with knit fabric,
cutting with a rotary blade,
gathering ruffles,
shirring, and
overlock blind hemming. (I tried to find you a good tutorial for this kind of hemming, but I did not find any. I'll try to link a tutorial, or post my own soon, since I think this is a fabulous way of blind hemming with a serger)

I'm keeping this post short, because I feel my laptop dying on me. It has died twice today already. I think it is the hard drive, among other things. My third hard drive for this 6 year old laptop. Sigh, I see a new laptop in the very near future. There goes my savings for a new patio set!

Saving a Flailing Project

In the beginning of this week, I attempted to make this sweet retro number, the one with the pencil skirt.

I had wanted to make the dress out of a knit fabric, and since I had some sitting in my fabric box for the longest time, I decided to just use it as a trial for this pattern.
I'm not too attached to this fabric. I think I had bought it very cheap just for trial projects such as this. Anyway, to make the long story short, I made quite a few mistakes cutting the pattern piece. In the end, I goofed up and did not have enough of this fabric to make the whole dress. Sigh!
So, the next evening, I rolled up my metaphoric sleeves and went to work salvaging what I could of the pattern pieces I had cut up the night before.
Not surprisingl,y since the pattern was for a dress, I ended up with a skirt that was too loose. You can't really tell from the photo, but the skirt is falling off me. Also, notice the horrible hem job. It was very discouraging.
The next evening, I fixed the hem, shirred it a little on the sides, and added a sash and belt loops. It is not perfect, but it's pretty enough for casual wear during the day:


Can anyone tell me why I spent so much time on a piece of fabric I was so lukewarm on to begin with?
Maybe it's the stubborn Taurus in me .... hahahaha...

Hemming Knits

I'm usually the last person to offer up advice on actual sewing techniques. No formal training, sloppy sewer and all that....

However, after a lot of trial and error (LOTs!), I thought I'd share with you how to hem knit fabric when you do not have access to the following:

1) Coverstitch machine
2) Taping or fusible interfacing for stabilizing (or if you are lazy like me, you don't feel like doing this)
3) Twin needles (if you have a very basic sewing machine)

First off, let me show you what can happen when you attempt to sew a regular hem on stretchy knit fabric:

Don't forget to use a ballpoint needle when sewing with knits. This needle has a blunt, rounded tip that slips between fibers rather than piercing them.

Here's what works for me, when hemming knits.

1) Overlock the edge.
Knits don't unravel, so you don't really need to serge the edges, but this is to stabilize the knit fabric so that there is less stretch as you sew.Before I had a serger, I used a wide zigzag stitch on my regular sewing machine, and trim the edge close to the zigzag. This creates the same effect as a serger, and also acts as a fabric stabilizer.

2) Pin.
Pin or baste the hem. The stretchier your fabric is, the more pins you will need.


3) Top Stitch
Sew using a straight stitch. The right side facing up when you are sewing. Take your time here. Go slow, and make sure you are not stretching the fabric as you sew.



And there you have it, an flat hem on stretch fabric.

Hope this helps someone out there.

Su

Shirring Tutorials Galore

When I posted pictures of the Canada Day shirred dresses , I received a few emails asking me to create a tutorial for the dresses. Also, Kate commented that she has no clue where to begin.
Well, I am usually more than happy to oblige. After all, I love creating tutorials. However, there are tons of tutorials out there, on how to make shirred dresses and tops. They are great tutorials, and I cannot possibly improve on them. So, why reinvent the wheel? Here are some of the tutorials that I found to be really useful.

• Erin from House On Hill Road has a wonderful tutorial on how to make shirred dresses and shirred tops. I love the photos in her tutorial. House on Hill Road Sunny Day Dress and Top Tutorial

• Vegbee from Blueprints also has a tutorial that is not as loaded with photos, but just a good. Blueprints: Shirred Top

• Another great tutorial is from Kuky of Kuky Ideas. I like to refer to this tutorial too. Kuky's Shirred Dress Tutorial

Finally, if you are a visual person like me, you would love this video tutorial from Threadbanger,
How To Make a Shirred Fabric Summer Dress.

Shirred Summer Top Cheat Sheet

If you've been reading along, you would have read that I've been busy with house guests.
Well, we have the home to ourselves now, and might I add, that it is a mess.
Still, I've given myself some time off to regain my sanity with some normalcy. This includes updating this website. However, I'm still too fuzzy-brained to create a whole tutorial. Hence, here is a cheat sheet for creating a wonderful summer top:
You've got to excuse the sleepy and bloated face. One week of visitors, means one week of over-indulgences. Not exactly healthy-eating, know what I mean?

Here's that cheat sheet. You'll have to click on it for a bigger and clearer scan.



This easy top is especially flattering if you are smaller in the bust area. Normally, I find that regular shirred tops tends to bind the chest area.
Thank you to Suzanne of Suzville for the shirred dress that helped inspire this top.
Also, thank you to Julie, who asked me how I made the top. This cheat sheet is for you.

Shirring, Smocking, whatever you want to call it....

you've got to try it if you haven't already!

It is really so unbelievably easy, and it makes you look like such a pro.
I made both of these Canada Day dresses in about a little over an hour. Granted, I could probably have adjusted the straps a little better, but my kids were not complaining.

Talking about Canada Day, the capital city was rocking hard.
It was supposed to rain all day, but it did not! So, there was some seriously hard partying going on all over the city. I mean, I heard that there were some 350,000 people downtown. We did not head downtown, but we enjoyed the party at a big festival in our neighborhood. There were free bouncy castles and slides, great concerts, demos from the local firemen, and lots of food. We also took the kids to the carnival; not my favorite because of the crowd, but the kids enjoyed it.
After all of that, we got to go home and hang out on our patio, enjoying good food and drinks with our lovely guests.

I haven't really been able to be online much because I have been (and still am) enjoying the company of my visitors from lovely Georgia. They are just so much fun!
So, I hope you understand if you do not hear from me for the rest of the week.
Have a great weekend, everyone.