Posts Tagged‘Tutorial’

Small Needle Book

I’ve found a good way to store and transport needles is in a needle book! I love making these because they require very little fabric so are great projects for those pretty scraps you have sitting around.

Materials:

  • A.  5 1⁄4” x 3 1⁄2” of cover fabric
  • B.  5 1⁄4” x 3 1⁄2” of inside fabric
  • C.  5 1⁄4” x 4 1⁄2” of inside fabric for pocket
  • D.  1 1⁄2” x 20″ of bias tape fabric
  • E.  4 3⁄4” x 2 3⁄4” of felt for needle pages
  • F.  2 1⁄2” x 3 1⁄2” of peltex, cut 2 (can be found in the interfacing section of JoAnns)
  • G.  2 1⁄2” piece of elastic
  • button (not pictured)

To start, fold the pocket piece (C) in half and iron flat.

Place the cover fabric (A) face down.

Lay the inside fabric (B) on top.

Lay the pocket piece (C) on top. Line up all the bottom edges and pin the pieces together.

Lay the felt piece (E) on top, centering it and pin in place.

Now you need to mark the 2 stitching lines that will make up the spine of the book. From one edge of the book, measure 2 1⁄2” and draw a line.

Do the same from the other edge of the book.

Stitch along the 2 lines. Remember that the bobbin thread will show on the cover of your needle book so you might want to pick a color that matches.

If you have pinking shears or scalloped scissors, you can trim the edges of the felt pages with a decorative edging. If you don’t (or have no idea what pinking shears are), no worries, you can just ignore this step!

Now take one of the Peltex pieces (F) and slide it in between the cover (A) and inner fabric (B).

Pin the Peltex in place.

Repeat with the other piece of Peltex on the other side of the thread book.

Baste around the outside of book with as small of a seam allowance as possible.

Make a loop with the elastic (G) and sew it on to the back of the book. (I forgot to take a photo of this step when I was making the first needle book, so I took a photo on the second needle book, which is why the fabrics are different here.)

I didn’t think any of the standard bias tape sizes you can purchase worked for the needle book so I opted to make my own. You don’t need a lot of bias tape so it goes very quickly!

Take your bias tape fabric (D) and fold it in half lengthwise and iron.

Open up the fabric and then fold each side in to the center fold and iron.

Fold the bias tape fabric back up, iron it one more time, and you’ve created bias tape!

Take your bias tape and bind the edges of the book. I’m not going into the details of how to apply bias tape here as there are a lot of tutorials online on how to do it.

Random tip: if you have some stitch witchery handy, use that to hold your bias tape in place until you sew it all down. I find that helps me keep the bias binding on my craft projects very neat.

Another thing that I found helpful is pinning the needle book pages together and out of the way so they don’t get caught as you are stitching down the bias tape.

After you’re done binding the edges, sew a button onto the front. You can use a regular button or a decorative button. In one of the samples at the top of this post, I used a decorative cat button which I thought was appropriate for this blog!

And you’re done!

Sofa Caddy

So you’re sitting at your couch and your cat takes up residence in your lap and starts making kitty bread on you and you realize his claws are SHARP! You need a nail clipper stat but there is a fuzzy anchor in your lap and no nail clipper within reach…

Does this only happen to me?

While a sofa caddy doesn’t solve this problem 100% of the time, I figured it might help some of the time. I also needed to make some other things accessible while sitting at the couch so this was a good one day project for me.

You’ll need 2 fabrics: the pretty fabric that shows and the backing fabric. Try to pick something that won’t slide on your couch for the backing. For example, satin is very slippery and a bad choice. Flannel is a good choice for a microfiber couch which is what I went with.

Materials:

  • 1/2 yard of fabric
  • 1/2 yard of backing fabric
  • 1/2 yard of lightweight fusible interfacing
  • one package of double fold 1/2″ wide bias tape

Cut one of each of these rectangles from the fabric, backing fabric and interfacing:

  • 11″ x 30″ – sofa caddy base piece
  • 11″ x 10″ – large pocket
  • 7″ x 13″ – small pockets

Fuse the all the interfacing pieces to the back of the corresponding fabric piece.

Lay the sofa caddy base fabric on top of the backing fabric, wrong sides together.

Baste the 2 pieces together using a 1/4″ seam. Do the same for the 2 pockets: lay the fabric on top of the backing fabric and baste.

Using the bias tape, bind the top edge of both pockets.

On the small pockets piece, mark a vertical line 6 1/2″ from the edge

On the large pocket piece, mark a vertical line 5 1/2″ from the edge.

Lay the small pockets piece on top of the big pocket piece, lining up the vertical lines so that they are on top of each other. Pin the fabrics in place.

Stitch down the marked line, make sure to sew a bit past the bias tape.

Stitch a 2nd line 1/4″ away from the vertical line you just stitched.

Now take the small pocket piece and line up the edges so they match the larger pocket underneath. You’ll have to put a fold in the bottom of each small pocket . Pin everything in place.

Place the pockets on the base piece, lining them up with the bottom of the base and baste the pockets in place.

The last step is to bias tape around the edges.

Find a handy sofa arm to put the caddy on and tuck the end without pockets between the seat cushion and the arm and you’re good to go!

Cat Towel Holder

Our towels were forever falling off the oven handle so I decided to make some towel holders and of course, I had to do a cat themed one!

I got the idea for the applique from this adorable cat quilt I found on Pinterest.

This towel holder has a rod inside so that the towel can be swapped out. I didn’t want to make a towel holder that was permanently attached to the towel because I really did not want to have to make a towel holder for every single one of my kitchen towels. This seemed like a more efficient solution to my towel woes.

Materials:

  • 4 colors of felt – orange or brown for main color of cat, pink for ears, white for eyes, grey for the wall
  • 7″ plastic or wooden rod – I cut up a hanger to get my rods
  • 1 piece of 10″ x 7″ fabric for the front
  • 1 piece of fusible fleece about 11″ x 8″ (found in the interfacing section at Jo-Anns or you can use regular interfacing)
  • 1 piece of backing fabric about 11″ x 8″
  • 1 piece of 10″ x 2.5″ fabric to make loops for the rod – this won’t show so any fabric will do
  • 1 package of extra wide double fold bias tape
  • 2 large snaps
  • Black acrylic paint or black puffy paint
  • Fabric glue
  • Hotglue

You’ll need a 7″ rod to hang the towel on. I took a hacksaw to a plastic hanger to get my rods.

Now make a fabric sandwich with the backing fabric, the fusible fleece, and front fabric. Pin the layers together.

Quilt the fabric – that means stitch all the layers together. I chose to do a criss cross pattern for my towel holder.

I like the look of quilting but you can skip the quilting step and use interfacing instead. You just need to put something in the middle to give the towel holder a bit of stiffness.

Trim all the layers to match the top layer. You should end up with a 7″ x 10″ rectangle.

Cut out the cat applique shapes using the PDF pattern. You want to use the cat colored felt for all the pieces except for the inner ear pieces which are pink.

Cut a 1.5″ x 7″ strip of grey felt for the wall. Glue the wall down onto your quilted piece.

Glue the cat pieces down next.

You don’t have to do this step but I wanted to make sure the cat applique didn’t come off so I zigzagged around all the edges.

Now use the acrylic paint (or puffy paint pen) and draw a pair of eyes on the white felt.

Cut out eyes and glue them to the cat. Draw on the nose, mouth, and whiskers.

Finish the edges using the bias tape. I like to make my own bias tape but that’s usually because I’m too lazy to run to the store to buy bias tape that matches my project.

Now we need to make the loops to hold the towel rod. Take the 2.5″ x 10″ strip and fold it in half and iron.

Open the piece up and take each side and fold it to middle and iron.

Fold the entire piece back up along the center fold and iron one last time.

Stitch down both sides of the strip close to the edge.

Cut two 4″ pieces from the long strip you just created.

Sew the ends together to make a loop using a 1/4″ seam.

Flip loop inside out.

Stitch again with a 1/4″ seam allowance, going over the seam you just stitched. This traps the raw edges inside so they don’t fray.

Flip the towel holder over and on the side opposite of where the cat applique is, mark 2″ from the bottom edge.

Pin the loops at the mark and stitch them down.

Hotglue the rod to the loops.

You’re almost done! The last step is to sew on snaps. One side of the snaps should go above the towel rod loops, and the other side should be mirrored on the other side of the towel holder when you fold it in half.

Please ignore my mis-matching snaps. I was down to my last two and again with the “too lazy to go to the store”. I figured no one would see them anyways… well, no one except for anyone reading this tutorial…

And you’re done! You just need to put a towel on the rod…

And wrap towel holder around the oven handle and snap it in place.

You can use this technique to create towel holders from any fabric you have laying around. I also made a mouse one because my husband likes mice. (Oh the irony…)

And now you have cute towel holders for your kitchen!

Notes on the JP Ryan Robe a la Francaise pattern

I just made my first Robe a la Francaise using  JP Ryan’s Pet en l’Air pattern and if you’re not familiar with this style of historical dress (which I really am not), assembly can get very confusing. So in hopes of helping out the next person who is trying to make one of these gorgeous dresses, I assembled my notes and in-progress photos.

This page is going to be a work-in-progress with hopefully more updates as I get better at  this style of dress because I am planning to make a few more.

Disclaimers: I am just a hobbyist so I’m sure to be getting things wrong and using the wrong terminology. I totally welcome comments on what I’m doing wrong!

So here we go…

 

Lining

I don’t have any photos of this part because it’s pretty straight forward to follow the directions.

The only thing I would note is to remember that the liner will be flipped inside out before being attached to the dress so that the finished side will be against your skin. Don’t do what I did and sew everything inside out, like the adjustment tapes… those go on the wrong side of your liner so that when the dress is finished, they will be between your liner and your dress.

So there was my first mistake which you will be able to spot in later photos. =D

 

Dress Front

Putting in the pleat on the front was by far the most confusing part of the whole dress for me. After much staring at museum photos and photos that JP Ryan sent me, this was the way Judy and I decided to do it.

So here is my pattern piece with my new fold order numbers. The marked side of the pattern is the right side of my fabric.

  1. Sew the dart and press it flat.
  2. Press under the seam allowance at fold line #1.
  3. Fold everything to the left of fold line #2 under so that you now have a facing on the inside.
  4. Take the edge of your fabric (that was created by fold line #2) and fold it back over the front of your piece on fold line #3. Fold line #3 is inside the fabric now.

That was probably a bit confusing so here are some photos that will hopefully help. This is my finished front piece. Note the pleat in the front that covers the dart.

 Here is the front piece with the pleat flipped open so you can see fold line #3.

 Now I’m going to flip over the front piece so you can see the wrong side.

And here is the inside pleat flipped open so you can see the seam allowance which was fold line #1.

I decided to make my front pleats go all the way down my dress, like on this historical example. Judy, who was also making the same dress in a different color, opted to have her pleats stop and fall open at the waist. We knew we were going to be covering it all in trim anyways so it didn’t really matter. Let’s just ignore the part where we didn’t get finish the trim for our first wearing of these… =D

 

Dress Back

The back pleats are (as the instructions say), easier than it looks. The only thing to remember is that you want to copy the markings on the pattern piece to the right side of the fabric. I’m so used to copying marking lines to the wrong side of the fabric that I started doing my pleats on the wrong side of the fabric initially.

The step after the pleating is to stitch a line across all the pleats along the stitching line and then again 1/4″ below it because you’ll be trimming off the fabric at the stitching line. I also put in a line of basting stitches about 1 1/2″ down to hold the pleats in place.

For the yoke (or the back neck piece): press under the bottom seam allowance, and then lay it on top of the pleats and stitch it down at the base. The top of the yoke is folded over encasing the pleats at the top after you trim off the seam allowance.

View of the back piece with the yoke attached.

 

View of the back pleats under the yoke.

 

The back piece flipped over. It’s a little hard to see but if you look closely, you can see where the back pleats were trimmed at the 5/8″ stitching line. The yoke extends past that and is eventually folded over to encase the raw edge of the pleats.

 

The rest of the back assembly is fairly straightforward.

 

Sleeves

I didn’t realize this until someone asked me about it, but in the larger size patterns, there is a dart in the sleeve. I’m not sure at what size the dart starts showing up, but I have a size 10-12 pattern and there is no dart in the sleeve. There’s no mention of the dart in the instructions but I asked Judy about it, and she said she puts in the dart before attaching the flounces. The flounces will eventually cover the dart.

Also, you might want to consider putting in the under sleeve flounce first for convenience. You can see my notes on attaching the sleeve flounces.

 

Skirt Pleats

The side pleat instructions are kind of confusing but all that’s really going on is that they side panels are being folded accordian-style into 2 sets of pleats that meet at the side opening.

You don’t need to press the pleats; they should actually be “loose” so they can shift around with the dress. Yup, guess who pressed their pleats down? =D

Also having the 2 sets of pleats meet very closely at the side opening, or even overlap a little, is good because when that opening falls open, everything underneath it shows.

 

Attaching Lining to Dress

This is the part where it is very good to have a friend to help with the fitting.

Try on the liner and adjust the ties in the back to fit and and make any other adjustments necessary. In my case, I needed to take some fabric out of the front pieces so I put in a dart.

Pin the liner to the dress along the neckline and down the front. As I mentioned before, I put my adjustment tapes on the wrong side of the liner which is why you can see them now. You can also check out amazing grommeting job. It looks like I did them while drunk… ^^;

Try on the dress and lace up the front and here’s where you use the greatest costuming accessory ever (i.e. your friend). Have her help you pin the sides down so that the side pleats are anchored to the liner. I had Judy help me do the fitting and then I put my dress on my dummy to snap photos.

Here’s the side view.

You can also chose to tack down the back. According to the site, marquise.de, early robes were not fitted to the waist so these steps are optional but the JP Ryan pattern has a fitting line along the back. I didn’t see it mentioned in the instructions but it’s on the back pattern piece.

Here’s the back of my dress pinned down to the liner.

 I hand-stitched everything in place and here is the final result on my dummy.

 

Sleeve Flounces

The under sleeve flounce is usually cut from lace and goes inside the sleeve. On hindsight, I would add the lace before I set the sleeve into the dress because it’s a total pain in the butt to wrestle the lace into the sleeve while it’s attached to a huge dress. The under sleeve flounce (the lace layer) goes inside the sleeve and the other 2 flounces go on the outside of the sleeve.

We had to double layer our sleeve flounces because the inside shows and the wrong side of our fabric was very obvious. Most other francaises I’ve seen have been made from materials like silk taffeta that don’t have a wrong side so there’s no need to double layer.

    
 

Stomacher

The stomacher needs 4 channels for polyboning.

If you’re really on top of it, try to have your stomacher done before your friend comes over to help you with the fitting. Then she can help you pin in the stomacher to see how it looks. Judy also showed me a trick where you take a piece of tracing paper and have your friend trace your stomacher so that you know exactly how much will be showing once everything is pinned in. That way you know how wide to make the bows that decorate the stomacher.


Petticoat 

It took Judy re-iterating to me a couple times before I finally managed to make it stick but the petticoat on a francaise is the actual skirt. I found it really confusing because in modern day terms, a petticoat goes under a skirt and isn’t seen.

The pattern has a bunch of math to calculate how much fabric you need for the petticoat. That part went ok for me. The confusion started when I was trying to follow the directions to assemble it all. I’m going to go step by step  following the numbers on the pattern in the “Layout and Cutting” section for the petticoat, and add my little footnotes.

1. Lay out material – ok that part is pretty straightforward

2. This step is how to cut the fabric if you are using 54″ or wider.

3. This step is for how to cut if you are using 45″ wide fabric. The waistband cutting instructions threw me off a little so I just went with cutting 2 3″ wide strips for my waisband and then used the rest for the skirt.

4. This step is how to calculate how much to take out of the waist seam so that the skirt falls evenly once it’s over the pocket hoops.

5-7. These steps only apply if you are using 54″+ fabric. If you are using 45″, you already did all your panel cutting and assembly of the skirt. Basically if you have 54″+ fabric, cut it in half. If your fabric has nap or a a pattern, make sure it is all facing the same direction before you sew the panels together. The step to sew the panels together is actually later but you can do it now, just remember to leave 10″ on each side open.

8-11. These steps walk you through how to use your droop calculation from step 4 to cut out a section of the skirt panel.

12. If you have 54″+ fabric, mark 10″ from the top and this is where you will stop stiching. If you have 45″ fabric, slash the fabric down 10″ and finish off the edge. You need this opening in your skirt so you can get to your hoops. After all, what’s the point of having pocket hoops and actually having somewhere to store your cell phone and wallet if you can’t get to it?! =D

After this, it’s just pleating and gathering the skirt on to the waistband. Here is a shot of the front of my skirt.

And here is a shot of the back of my skirt, with the inverted box pleat in the middle. I’m not sure what the purpose of the inverted box pleat in the back is. Maybe it’s there so you can tell which panel of your skirt goes in front, and which one in back?

A side note: if your fabric is expensive, it is actually historically accurate to use a cheaper fabric on the back panel that no one will see. Here’s an example from the Met.

 

And after this, it’s just trim! Which I have yet to do so I need to get working on that! =)

Hope you found this somewhat useful and feedback is always welcome!

Flat Lining Tutorial

Flat lining is when you layer 2 fabrics together and treat them as one piece.

Why do this? Usually you do it to stiffen or give more structure to a flimsier fabric. For example, say you have a gauzy material on your outfit. We would call this the “fashion fabric” – the pretty fabric the world will see. Gauzy material is very fragile though and might not hold up well to a lot of strain, so you would flatline the gauzy materialy with something sturdier to help strengthen it and give it more structure.

Some flat lining materials that I’ve used in the past: denim, twill, canvas, and bridal satin.

So here’s a fast example of how to do flat lining…

I am making a 1910s era corset and I’ve picked out my fashion fabric. It’s a cotton though and certainly won’t hold up to the strain when I start lacing up the corset, so I’m going to need to flat line it.

Here’s my pattern piece and my fashion fabric.

I grab some denim for my flat lining material and use my pattern to cut out the pieces I need. (Miscellaenous fact: most historical costumers will use coutil for their corset flat lining material but coutil is expensive, so I just use denim.)

Pin your fashion fabric to the flat lining pieces you just cut…

And stitch the 2 pieces together.

Now you just treat the entire thing as one piece when you assemble your garment.

And that was flat lining!