Saturday, March 15, 2014

Narrow Rolled Hem

I picked up a narrow rolled hem foot from Amazon a few weeks ago with the intent of hemming the silk organza square that I have been using as a pressing cloth. I gave it a whirl today in full impromptu style, and I was moderately pleased with the results. I knew that I wouldn't get consistent results with an impromptu style, but I wanted to just play with it and wasn't worried about the appearance of the narrow hem on my presser cloth.

I had a hard time keeping the appropriate amount of cloth feeding into the curl of the presser foot. I think next time, I would fold up and press the fabric to aid in guiding.
When the distance was correct, the hem looked great! Too much or too little fabric left things looking pretty messy!

Frivolous photo: Two frivolous photos in one day! My toddler loves tooling around the house on his tricycle.

Plum Cloak: Bound Seam Allowance

I sewed the next lining seam this weekend. I had picked up some seam binding at JoAnn's, and I think that worked much better.

The seams didn't line up very well between the two pieces. When I lined up the seam notches there was a ton of extra fabric towards the shoulder on one piece and extra fabric towards the hem on the other. I decided to skip matching notches and just lined up the two pieces as best I could. I compared the pattern pieces, to ensure that I didn't notch something incorrectly. I'm reasonably sure the cut pieces distorted, which probably contributed to the problem. I was a little dismayed to see that the pieces appeared distorted even where I had stay-stitched.
I used my 1/4" seam foot to sew on the seam binding, and I think it worked very well.
This seam looks way cleaner, and I think it hangs a bit better than the overstitched seam. I'm reluctant to press the seam again now that the binding is in place, because of fears of pressing ridges into the fabric. This method took forever though. Partly because of the confoundation of the mis-matching seams, partly because I had to sew the entire length five times and press ~8.

Frivolous photo: I took the boys for a hike last weekend at about 7,300 feet. There was around 6 inches of snow for most of the hike. We made it a short hike, but it was glorious!

Friday, March 7, 2014

Plum Cloak: More (Slow) Lining Progress

I've had pretty good luck working with the slippery lining fabric. This is my first time working with a slippery for more than a little, crafty project. I cut the fabric in a double layer, sandwiched between two layers of tissue paper. I took a ton of time trying to ensure the two layers of fabric were perfectly squared and flat. In the photos I took, I can see that there are a couple of spots that aren't completely flat. I eventually got a little fatigued on the whole thing and decided to just go for cutting it.
I sewed two pieces of the lining together over the weekend. I stay-stitched the neckline and shoulder area per the instructions. Then I stitched the seam with my walking foot. After careful pressing, I was so pleased with the results! I didn't bother trying to line up the dots, and I'm not at all bothered by that so far.
But then I took the seam back to the sewing machine and sewed an overcast stitch to protect the seam allowances. It really rippled the seam allowances and made the seam look a lot more messy. Bah!
The seam from the right side doesn't look too bad. There's some wobbliness that wasn't there before. There are some water spots visible here (did I already talk about water spots?). They're not at all noticable except when the fabric is laid completely flat in shiny light. I might try to pull them out at some point, or just live with them. I dunno.

Frivolous photo: A quick pic of my oldest being freaking adorable. Which is, of course, his natural state of being.