I've moved!

I've moved to a new blog: futurewardrobe.blogspot.com . It's still a bit under construction but I'll be posting there from now on, so please update your Readers and Bloglines, etc. if you'd like to keep receiving my posts. (The RSS button is at the bottom of the screen on the new site, if you wish to use it.)

I'm sorry for the inconvenience but it was time for a change. I like the look of my new blog so much better; and the new title does not make me feel guilty when I don't sew every day (as I seem to have given up that habit long ago).

I'll keep this "old" blog available for a while, but I'll eventually take it offline. I may re-post some of the more popular posts or pictures on the new blog.

Beginner sewing books: my favorite picks

I'm a completely self-taught sewist. I've never taken hands-on classes or lessons; everything I know, I've learned from reading books and sewing web sites, or watching the sewing shows on TV (thank you Sandra Betzina!)

Perhaps because of this, I've always been interested in what's available for beginners who are trying to teach themselves how to sew.

For the last several years, there hasn't been much. I myself learned from old library books, most of which were good, but not very inspiring--and some were downright intimidating. Occasionally, I'd come across a new book geared toward beginners, but the fashions were either shapeless or strange, or too "crafty" for my taste.

If you're wanting to learn to make your own clothes, what you really need (in my opinion) are books that show you how to make real-life garments that you can use to build a wearable wardrobe, while building your skills.

The books I'm recommending today are my favorites for beginners because:

• They don't require a lot of extra start-up supplies. They focus on the essentials which most people can find locally.
• The patterns used are simple and they are arranged in order of difficulty, so you can follow each book like a sewing course.
• They encourage you to use your imagination and not be completely dependent on patterns for sewing.
• The clothing styles are current and attractive, and they're all wardrobe basics which you can make over and over again (for lots of practice!) but without getting bored.

If you're an absolute beginner, probably the best books to start with are the Sew U books by Wendy Mullin.


The first book, Sew U, shows you how to get started with the absolute minimum supplies. The books even include three patterns specifically geared toward wardrobe-building: a skirt, a shirt, and a jeans-style pant. These can be made in a variety of fabrics, and the author also offers suggestions for changing up the pattern designs to expand your wardrobe.

Sew U Home Stretch is designed to be used after you've mastered the basic skills taught in Sew U. As the name implies, it is a course in sewing knit fabrics. This book continues the "basic wardrobe" theme by offering patterns and design variations for a knit t-shirt, a hoodie, and a dress. If you have a serger, it provides a short but helpful explanation of serger functions and instructions for using the serger on the included projects. If you don't have a serger, all the projects can be completed on a sewing machine and she provides instructions for that as well.

A downside of these books is that the patterns are not suited for larger sizes. I think the largest bust measurement used is 38.5", which is comparable to a size 12 in ready-to-wear. However, please don't let this deter you from taking a look at these books. The instructions could easily be adapted to any basic shirt/skirt/pant pattern available at your local fabric store. In fact, they are designed to help you learn to construct a garment, without being "tied" to specific pattern instructions.

Another new and different book which I really like is Sew What! Skirts by Francesca DenHartog.

This book goes beyond encouraging you to alter a pattern design--in fact, it shows you how easy it is to skip the commercial pattern altogether, and make your own! And it does it in a very unintimidating manner:

Y ou take a few simple measurements,


And you draw your pattern on paper:

(Photo is purposely blurred to prevent copying)

What you see here are instructions for three different skirt styles. (See? Pattern drafting is really not rocket science. :) )

The great thing about the book is that it is filled with beautiful pictures, so you can see that "beginner" skirts don't have to look "home-made". Granted, some of those cool Japanese prints are hard to find-- but it's not that difficult to find equally suitable fabrics and trims locally or online. The author recommends cottons for the first projects, for easy sewing.

Another book in the same series is called Sew What! Fleece by Carol Jessop. This book uses the same principal of drafting your own simple patterns to make easy fleece garments. I'm not a huge fan of fleece, but I think this would be a fun book to experiment with.

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None of the above books are complete guides to sewing; and in general they do tend to downplay the benefit of taking the time to learn other techniques which would yield nicer, more professional results. But I still recommend them because they offer so much to the individual who is just wanting to get started.

Once you're ready to move beyond basics and cotton and refine your skills, there are a couple more books I'd recommend:

I can't sew without this book. Seriously. This book tells you which supplies (needle, thread, interfacing, machine feet) work best for a variety of fabrics. You can avoid a lot of problems by using the right supplies. And it also tells you how to prepare the fabrics and how best to press them, etc. There are other fabric guide books out there, but I always find myself turning back to this one. It's got a very friendly and readable format--just enough information for any project.

And finally, I think every sewist needs a good sewing "encylopedia". This type of book covers virtually all the different sewing techniques you'll ever need to know. The best one, I think, is The Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing by Robert Dolezal. I don't actually own this one, but I plan to buy it ASAP. (I've always used the Vogue Sewing book but I think the Reader's Digest book is better.)

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I purposely didn't include fitting books in this post. Fitting is a huge topic in itself.

But I will say this: You can manage a lot of fitting issues simply by using the multi-size lines on patterns, and then by learning a few simple alterations which are illustrated in most sewing encyclopedias.

(My guess is that, once you've drafted a few of your own garments from the Sew What! series, you won't think fitting is such a big deal anyway.)

Yes, you can sew knits on a sewing machine

... and it won't look awful!

The question of "do I need a serger" comes up frequently on sewing discussion boards. And sometimes, when I tell sewing friends that I've sewn the t-shirt I'm wearing, they ask, "Do you have a serger?"

I do have a serger now, and it's fun to use for finishing seams, and yes, they do look nice when done on a serger. But for a long time, I didn't have a serger; yet, I sewed mostly knits and I sewed them all on my sewing machine using basic stitches.

If anyone tells you that sewing machine seams won't last on knits, or that the insides of your garments will look sloppy, don't believe them. While there are definite advantages to using a serger for knits (such as speed and differential feed), you can make nicely finished knit garments using a sewing machine.

Here are some pictures of a knit garment I constructed and finished entirely on a sewing machine:

Side seam, sewn with narrow zig-zag. Seam allowances were finished together using a second line of narrow zig-zagging stitch, then trimmed close to the second line of stitching.

Here you can see the inside of the hem allowance. The hem was stitched using a stretch twin needle, with woolly nylon thread in the bobbin. You can see a little bit of curling on the cut edge, but it's barely visible. Nowadays I usually position the twin needle stitching so that it encloses the cut edge.
Another picture showing the outside and inside of the hem. There is a bit of tunneling with the twin-needle stitching line, but it's not obvious.


Here you can see the shoulder and sleeve seams. The shoulder seam was sewn with a narrow zig zag, then pressed to one side and topstitched a scant 1/4" from the seamline, so it lies flat and finishes the cut edge. The second line of stitching also helps to stabilize the shoulder seam.
Another view of the side seam and sleeve seam. This one is not as neat as the others because I had to take in the shirt after sewing it. But it's still nicely finished.



And finally, a view of the inside of the neckline. I sewed on the neckband using a narrow zig-ziag, and finished the edge using a wide zig zag with overcasting foot for a nice flat finish.

Knits don't ravel, so you don't have to finish the edges. But if you do, it's very easy to make them look as neat as (albeit different from) a serged finish.

Waistbands have dropped since the 1960's

I decided to make a muslin for my vintage pajamas. This pattern is a vintage size 14 which corresponds to a modern size 12 pattern. Although the shoulders and the length should be fine for me, I knew I would need to have more width in the torso area. I also wanted to see if I could get away with not changing the bust dart.



And then there are the bottoms .....

As you can see, these pajamas are quite high-waisted. It also looks like there's not much "sitting" room in the back crotch curve. As you can see in the picture below (on the yellow tissue), the back curve is nearly straight up-and-down.

I decided to re-draft the top part of the shorts before I even tried to make a fitting muslin of them. I just knew there was going to be a big difference between me and this pattern. This is a picture of the traced original (yellow tissue) of the back pattern, placed on top of my personal sloper. The red lines on the sloper are the back as it is drafted to fit me. There's like a 3-inch difference in the waist height alone.

I'll be morphing the top of the sloper to the legs of the original pattern. I'll keep the original pattern details such as the front pleats and the buttoned waistband.

By the way, if you've never drafted your own pants pattern, it's really not that hard if you have good instructions. I really like the instructions at leenas.com. There are not a ton of measurements to take for this draft, and it turns out a very well-fitting sloper (at least it does for me.)

The front pattern is drafted first; then the back pattern is drafted on top of it, using reference points from the front draft. I've done it enough times that I can draft only the top part, which for me is the hard-to-fit part of pants. I use 1/4" graph paper which makes the process quicker--less measuring and lots of straight lines already drawn for you. :)


Instead of trying to be exact with the measurements, I rounded the numbers to the nearest 1/4" (except for the really small lines) and I'll do the rest of the fitting using the muslin. I always have to test a new sloper with a muslin anyway, so I figured it's not worth fussing too much with the paper draft.

Package in the mail

I got a box in the mail the other day ....

It's a fairly big box--

12 inches long. Could it be shoes? A CD collection? Some books?

Oh wait--it must be something fragile, requiring plenty of packing material ....

Well, maybe not, but apparently it needs a big plastic bag ...

And I do mean a really big long bag ....

For 2 spools of thread.

In case you're wondering, the culprit behind this excessive packaging was JoAnn.com and I got free shipping. (I'd hate to think what the shipping charges would have been otherwise--this had to be expensive!)

Vintage pajamas: the supplies

Last night I pressed the fabric for my Butterick 2197 vintage pajamas.

It's a very nice rayon challis, much better quality than what I can usually find in the chain stores. It's got a nice weight and drape. I've washed it twice and dried it in the dryer, and it looks as new as it did when I bought it over 10 years ago. This fabric was my final purchase at our last local independent fabric store which closed around 1995 or 1996. I really miss that store.Anyway, when I saw this pattern, I immediately thought of this fabric.

The buttons are vintage buttons from the thrift shop. That light blue package above the buttons is vintage silk bias tape which I also found at the thrift. Yes, back in the day, you could buy a package of pre-cut, pre-folded silk bias!

(I wish I still had the wrapper so I could also tell you the original price of that bias tape. Unfortunately, it was dirty so I had to discard it as soon as I got home. I also had to wash and re-press the tape so I lost the original folds. It's slighlty frayed now, but I think I can make it work for a hong-kong finished hem.)

This is turning out to be a very vintage-y and thrifty project. :)

I still need to order thread; and although the pattern doesn't call for it, I plan to use some sort of interfacing for the buttonhole area. I'll probably use a sew-in rather than a fusible, to keep it from getting too stiff.

I showed all this to the Sewing Critic. She is not impressed.

Learning from my own show-and-tell

This week my sister came over to visit. She lives out of state and we hadn't seen each other for a while. She asked me what I've been sewing lately.

As I started to show her my creations, I realized that I was most excited about showing her the items made from nicer fabrics. And making excuses for the items made from cheap fabrics. ("It looked a lot nicer right after I made it" etc.)

There was a simple t-shirt made from really good quality cotton-lycra which was probably 3-4 years old but still looked pretty good. I thought about how I wear it at least once a week during the winter.

And there were a lot of things I couldn't even show her, because I'd gotten rid of them already. They were things that hadn't lasted more than a few months because--you guessed it--they were made from poor quality fabric.

I also noticed that my favorite garments are made from Burda, Kwik Sew, and Sandra Betzina's Today's Fit line of patterns. I knew I liked Burda and SB but I was a little surprised at how the Kwik Sews had become such staples in my wardrobe.

It was a bit of an eye-opening experience to go through and describe all my sewing projects. It confirmed my belief that fabric quality really does make a big difference (even bigger than I had suspected). And I'll be taking a closer look at my Kwik Sew patterns in the future when I need some new basics.