RECREATING - table cloth dress

I was at the thrift store a few weeks ago and they always have the fabric mixed in with the curtain, table clothes and sheets. 

I found a cute round table cloth. It was round and had nice birds around it in a wintery theme. 

I do not have a round table, I also don't really use table cloths. But I bought it... I had the dream of making it into a circle skirt. 

First I ironed it. Ironing is boring and dumb, but important, like soaking yucky dishes to make washing easier, ironing makes sewing easier and the results that much better. 

Fold the circle in half, then in half again. 

Measure where you want the skirt part of the dress to be (waist? hips?)

Now take that measurement and divide it by 4 THEN subtract an inch. Cut that much off the top of your quartered table cloth. The reason you cut it smaller is the bias of fabric gives it stretch and it will be bigger than you think. If it is too small, then you can cut the hole bigger, but it is hard to make it smaller if you cut too big. 

Now, what will the top be? A blouse? A tshirt? I used a tank top.

 

 Get a sharpie or pins or whatever you like to mark fabric with.

Mark the skirt part on the sides and in the middle of the front and middle of the back. Do the same with the top. 

You can pin them together or just make sure they match up as you go. Make sure that the too and bottom are both right sides facing right sides and the wrong side facing out.

Get your sewing machine ready! 

Because the top I used was knit and the skirt part was woven I wanted to make sure that the seam wouldn't break if it were stretched. You can use a zig zag stitch OR if you have it a straight stretch stitch! 

Sew around and around (if you want, I usually do two, I am always worried things will fall apart due to faulty sewing on my part...). Flip it right side out and...

That is it!

FIXING - jeans rear pocket

A friend tore the back of his pants. Right down the inner side of a back pocket. It was a long tear down the grain. No connective threads at all.

Because this will require visible stitches, I made sure to use matching thread. It is kind of shiney, but its a butt so it will get dirty in no time with sitting and all.

I made one wide zig zag down the length of the tear (mainly joining both sides together).

I picked some material to reinforce the back holding the sides together. I used a soft thinish wool fleece scrap, soft side facing in.  (it is really important to think about what kind of material you use to do mending on jeans. Does it stretch a little but not too much? is it scratchy? will it fray? etc...)

Make sure that the mending scrap is at least 1/2 to 1 inch wider than the area to be mended (in all directions).

Place the material under your area to be mended. Pin that s in place.

I went in zig zags up and down the tear and then two on each side.

Here is how the mending material looked inside. This is why it is nice to cut it extra large.

Trim the mending material and stray threads. I realize that my tension was off for some of the stitches, but it should be fine.

Here they are done.

 

I did not realize how drastically different flash and no flash would be for the color/white balance. Let me learn that lesson for you. If taking pictures inside, choose one or the other unless you are using bright natural light for the unflashed (and maybe even then too...). 

FIXING - zipper replacement

The ladies seem to love their jeans from urban outfitters, but the jeans on those have some severe QC issues. I can only imagine how many gals are pinning them up/closed, or have given up and thrown them in the back of the closet.

Look at this ridiculous zipper. How many teeth is it missing?!! I found my awesome stitch ripper. It was so much easier using a stitch ripper than an x-acto knife. I like this larger stitch ripper (thanks Grandma and Grandpa). It is so nice being able to hold it with the control of a pen.

There is an earlier post that that goes over taking apart the seams and putting a new zipper in. That is exactly what I did. I paid attention to where things were. Then I put the new zipper in very carefully.

I guess someday I will make a more detailed post, with what feet I use and the order I do it.

 

It looks like new. I even had a black and brass one. Here it is done. It looks like nothing happened. That is the goal. 

FIXING - hemming jeans

A friend wanted some pants hemmed. He wanted them to be about four inches shorter.

I pinned them at the length he picked.

I changed one leg of the pins so that original hem was pinned at the desired length.
(then I pinned the other to match. Keep the second pinned as a reference while you adjust the first leg!)

I put a zipper foot on to get the stitches as close as I could. A zipper foot is not necessary.

sew sew sew - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - take the pins out as you go!

Here it is, all sewn up. Where is the new seam? Right?

It's there.

I kind of regret cutting the material, but for how much it was shortened, it seemed kind of necessary to get rid of the extra bulk.

I then zig-zagged along the edge of the cut fabric.

(If you used a zipper foot DON'T FORGET to put a regular foot back on.)

Fold the original hem down and iron.

After ironing the fabric, I sewed the sig-zagged part of the pants surgery above the hem seam (inside). In simple straight stitch in a color that didn't really stand out.

MAKING - basic tote bag

My friends daughter's daycare is having a sock hop and silent auction. I am making a few items for the silent auction. This is one of them. It is a library bag or child size tote bag.

This pattern idea is a nice basic bag idea for whatever size bag you are making.

I will explain the suggested dimensions later.

First step, sew the strap! You can get a good idea of your tension and desired stitch while sewing the first seams. Also, they are hidden, so if you goof up, its not a big deal.

When you flip the strap right side out, fold it flat with the seam centered on one side. Iron if needed.

*tip* for things like this I don't set up my ironing board, I just iron on a folded up towel on the floor.

Sew the 'top' edges of the fabric down about a half inch. Iron if needed.

Fold your outside and inside of the bag, wrong side out, fold them in half lining up your newly hemmed edges.

Flip the liner material right side out and tuck the out side (wrong side out) into the liner. Push the corners into place. Line up the top edges so that the ends are flush. You can sew the liner pocket a little bit shorter if you want to, but just make sure that the base of the bag nests together properly.
Pin if needed, iron if needed.

*tip*  you know how your stapler has two options of how the staple staples? Flip the base plate so that it bends the ends of the staple outwards. That is a pin staple. You can use it instead of sewing pins. Just staple that shit in place! When you need to remove the "pin" just pull on one edge and it slides right out.

Take your strap and tuck and pin it in place. Make sure its not twisted all funky.

Here is the last real step! Sew around the perimeter of the bag opening. This attaches the straps (reinforce if you think it's needed) and seals all the raw edges inside your finished bag.

(I hate raw edges on items made of woven materials.)

I sewed two rings around the bag opening, one at about 1/4 inch down and another just a smidge down from there. I decided I also needed to sew as close as I could to the edges connecting the liner to the exterior of the bag.

Flip it right side out! Yay, it's done and looks great! Buuuut... it kind of flops open more than I want it to.

Here's a solution! A snap! I bought a tool to press snaps on at Value Village today. I sewed this bag tonight so that I could try the tool out without wasting a snap.

Here is the finished product. It is made of white baby wale corduroy with trucks, trains and airplanes on it. The liner is a yellow circle calico type pattern cotton material. The snap is solid red on one side and a silver "o" on the other side because it took me a few tries to figure out how to press the snaps on and I may have screwed up my other red snap bases.

 

extra tips and rambling...

When I would affix snaps like this in the past, I used a snap set if I had one (and could find it) OR a wooden thread spool. I have a piece of wood that I use to put under things that I hammer. I would hammer the snap into place over the wood, sometimes I would do this in the stairwell of my building because that isn't someones ceiling. If I hammer a snap in place in my apartment I do it onto the piece of wood over a folded towel on a rug. It is good to have a designated craft towel and 1" x 6" piece of wood at least 2 feet long. You can use that piece of wood for other things like snapping scored plexiglass (it's long enough to brace the board on a chair seat with your knee) or to attach smaller things you are sawing (while bracing on a chair with your knee).

MAKING - kindle cover - create

I won a kindle at my work party! I wanted to make it a nice pocket for it to live in. This is what I made today.

This picture is more true to the real colors.

The back view of the pocket.

open it up

and the ereader fits right in there.Right now I am reading War of the Worlds, for free!

 

The next time I make another one, I will step by step document the process. I just completely forgot to do that today. 

The materials for this project are great. The pink loopie trim is from a thrift store in Fargo, the outer fabric is from the Goodwill in Fergus Falls (love), and the gingham and pale green bias tape is from a fabric store in San Francisco. The velcro and sturdy canvas liner are from SR Harris. 

It was nice to make something with all these great materials and still have extras left over.

RECREATING - football patches

I work with some folks who like sports. On sale change day they like to wear jerseys. You can buy patches to dress up your regular old boring jersey to commemorate a big win, a field that was played on, captain status, etc...

It seems like a lot of folks who are into wearing jerseys aren't really into sewing... so what do you do when you buy all these patches and want them on your sports shirts...  you find someone crafty and have them do it.

I don't know anything about this sports stuff so I require drawings and/or pictures showing me where the patches go.

I used to pin the patches and mark the edges of where it would go on the fabric with masking tape. Now I use a semi-permanent adhesive to affix the patch to the fabric. This reduces fabrics chance of bunching up and puckering as you sew the patch on. It also lets you make sure its even and in the right place.

Usually the patch has white stitching around the edges and you can just zigzag over that, or straight stitch around the inner perimeter with white or clear thread. I have a problem with clear thread snapping every few inches so it's a huge pain in the butt.

This patch had green fabric around the edge, so I used some near matching green silk thread and zigzagged around it all.