Turn and Press

How to Sew More Frugally (from Just Tutes)

There's a nice post on Just Tutes with ideas for sewing more frugally, something I desperately need. It figures that I'd take up the world's most expensive hobby (except maybe boatbuilding) just as I decided that I need to rein in my spending. On the one hand, sewing gives me a reason to stay home instead of going out to eat - my biggest vice, as a single gal in NYC. On the other hand, I probably spend at least as much on fabric and notions as I used to spend going out. I guess as long as I don't try to do both at the same time...

If you have any frugal sewing tips, feel free to post them in the comments!

How to Choose Interfacing - Helpful Links

Now that I've started making handbags, I need to learn more about interfacing/interlining/stabilizer - a lot more. Here are two helpful links I've found that have helpful explanations of the different types of interfacing.

First off, we have a guide to interfacing from U-Handbag, one of my favorite blogs. It's from a handbag maker in the UK who also sells bag-making supplies, and offers handbag projects that I want to try, when I get a little more sewing experience under my belt! She also offers a guide to other ways to strengthen your handbags.

The other interfacing guide I found was written by one of my favorite designers, Amy Butler, for one of my favorite sewing resources, Sew, Mama, Sew - so you know it's got to be good!

One of the most recommended bag-making items is Timtex, which is a very heavy, thick interfacing that you can use for making strong bag bottoms, fabric boxes, etc. Of course, anything that heavy is bound to be difficult to sew with, so here's a tutorial that makes it a lot easier to use - no trying to sew it into your seams. Unfortunately, it seems that Timtex is no longer being manufactured - sewers are freaking out all over the blogosphere! Hopefully someone will come out with a similar product soon - if you know of one, please let us know about it in a comment.

I've been on the lookout for a good US source to buy all of these products - again, if you know of one, please post it in the comments! (Especially if it's in New York :) I do like this store because it has clear, helpful explanations of all the products (and she has a cool blog as well).

Hope this is helpful! I have so many ideas for bags in my head, I can't wait till I learn how to make them all. If you've made any that you're proud of, send them to my flickr group, I'd love to see them.

How to: Binding and Quilting Links from Sew, Mama, Sew

The good people at Sew, Mama, Sew have posted a list of binding and quilting how-to links. Just in time for me to finish my potholder! Not to mention, I'll have them before I start on the quilt that I'm starting to plan in my head...

For more binding help, there's also a binding tutorial from our friend Wendi Gratz, who provided the ladder stitch tutorial that has been so invaluable in all my projects. She sent some advice on adding a loop for hanging (ie, for potholder) in the comment section of my potholder post, so check that out too. Thanks, Wendi!

My "One-Hour" Handbag - with Link to Tutorial

Last week I found a tutorial for a 1-Hour Bag on Ric-Rac, and I thought to myself, "But how long would it take for me to make it?" After all, the only bags I've made so far are the Artsy Clutch and the Zipper Pouch from Bend-the-Rules Sewing. So I decided to try it out over the weekend. The verdict? About 3 hours. But I ended up with this:

Regarding the time frame, I might point out that I am notoriously slow at everything I do - I think it's because I'm on the contemplative side (some people might call it "spacey"). I alos think that as I gain confidence with my cutting, I'll be able to cut my fabrics all at once - outside, lining, and interfacing - and that will save a lot of time.

For interfacing, I used some of my flannel (I bought massive amounts of it on sale a while back, because Amy Karol uses it in all the Bend-the-Rules Sewing projects), but I added a layer of sew-in interfacing that I found in a local Manhattan store, which said it was for medium weight fabrics. I'm glad I did, because as you can see, the bag is still pretty soft and saggy - though I think that is its nature in any case. In the pix above it has all the stuff I normally lug around - makeup, giant wallet, glasses case, phone, ipod, etc - and you can see that it bulges out all over the place.

The handle, on the other hand, just uses some stuff they had on a roll next to the interfacing, that looks like the cotton gauze they use for bandages, except it's stiff. To be honest, I don't think this is what it's for, and I wasn't even going to use it, except it turned out to be the exact width I needed and I was too lazy to cut out a strip of flannel. It seems plenty strong but they handle feels thin and it's already crinkled where it goes over my shoulder (though I can iron it out easily enough). On the bright side, I used my walking foot (cuz like I said, I'm never taking it off) and there was NO shifting whatsoever as I sewed down the entire 29" sides of the handle. It was like a miracle!

My other minor complaints with my sewing are that I sewed the handle ends all the way down, so they don't flip out in the cute way they do in the tutorial. And my lining is a bit too big so it doesn't lay flat; I probably wasn't careful enough when sewing my seams. I should have sewed a slightly larger seam allowance for my lining, as someone suggested in the comments on my zipper pouches, to make it fit better inside the bag.

On the whole, though, I am so proud to be carrying a bag that I made myself! This was a great first bag to make. And it would be really easy to make variations in the size and shape, just by redrawing the pattern.

Looking ahead, I want to try making some more structured bags, which will mean more exploration in the wonderful (and confusing) world of interfacing. I'll be posting a couple of helpful interfacing links soon, so stay tuned.

PS Covered buttons are SO fun to make! Very satisfying little "pop" when they snap together.

New Simul-Sew: Stuffed Turtles

We're starting a new Simul-Sew project on my flickr group this weekend: Stuffed Turtles from Bend-the-Rules Sewing. Anyone who wants to is welcome to join in! We'll be posting about our progress and comparing notes here.

My (Not-Quite-Finished) Appliqued and Quilted Potholder

I was so pleased with my new walking foot that I couldn't wait to quilt something. So I got out a piece of applique that I made last summer to practice the hand-applique technique from Denyse Schmidt Quilts. It's made from one of the bundles of scrap fabric that you can buy at Purl Soho.

I used pink cotton for the back, a layer of flannel, a thick layer of cotton, more flannel, and then the appliqued top. The cotton is also from Purl Soho, it comes in a bag so you can either use handfuls for stuffing, or peel off flat layers for quilting small objects. Hopefully it will be thick enough - I haven't tried it yet on something hot, but it feels at least as thick as most potholders I've seen. In fact, it was so thick I could hardly fit it under my walking foot, but even so, my machine didn't seem to have any trouble with it:

Hmm, seems to be missing something... I tried making a binding with my new bias tape maker, but it was way too narrow to go around something this thick. Not to mention, it didn't come out anywhere near as nice and even as my sewing books had led me to believe. I also burned my fingers with steam from my iron, trying to hold the edges down while I pressed. Clearly that's going to take some more practice!

I also neglected to plan for the loop that would enable me to hang my potholder in the kitchen for all to admire. In case you haven't noticed, I am so the "Artistic Sewer" type, according to Bend-the-Rules Sewing. I am all about winging it!

My Scalloped Baby Blanket from Bend-the-Rules Sewing

I did it! I successfully completed my scalloped baby blanket for my flickr group Simul-Sew last weekend, thanks to my new favorite thing: my walking foot! I had to order it from the Singer website, but thankfully it only took a few days to arrive.

One of the hardest parts about this project was cutting the large pieces of fabric. For one thing, my cutting area is not large enough. For another thing, I soon realized that my fabric was warped - not soon enough though, because I'd already cut it into a trapezoid, instead of a rectangle. I pulled on it diagonally to straighten it out, dampened and repressed it. Then I had to unravel the threads from one of the edges so I could see the grain, recut that edge so I'd have one correctly cut side to measure from, did the same on the opposite side, folded the fabric so those edges met, and then trimmed off the two sides. I ended up with a rectangle that's somewhat smaller than planned, but oh well.

I thought it would take forever to sew the scallops, but it went really quickly, even though I stopped every few inches to reposition the blanket so its weight wouldn't fight me as I went around the curves. As per the advice on the Bend-the-Rules Sewing flickr group, I used a TON of safety pins to keep my layers from shifting:

What did take forever was trimming the extra fabric around the stitches. Unfortunately, all that scissor work soon reawakened my old repetitive stress injury. (A word of advice about repetitive stress injuries: Don't get one. They never really go away.) But I persevered, with many breaks and much hand-stretching. A lot of people on the flickr group said that the points of their scallops didn't turn out well, and the response was that you need to trim really close in the points. So I trimmed as close as I could (note also the notches for the curves):

Even so, once I turned the blanket, there were puckers and tucks around a lot of the points. I tried to go back in and trim some of them even closer, but it didn't seem to make any difference - not only that, one of them started to fray, and I had to go back in and reinforce it with hand stitching. Luckily, most of the worst puckering got much better when I pressed it. But unluckily, the two worst puckers were at the ends of my quilting lines, so when I quilted down towards them, they got even worse:

Wish I'd thought of that and quilted between a different scallop.

The other tricky part of this project is handsewing to close the two scallops that you have to leave open for turning. Someone suggested leaving a slit in the quilt back instead, but I wasn't crazy about the idea of having a huge scar in the back of my blanket, and my Simul-Sew buddy said that she did it that way and wished she hadn't. So I turned once again to Wendi Gratz's handsewing tutorial, using my fingers to press the edges together as I went around the curve. I kind of eyeballed it, cutting notches whenever the fabric started to bunch and then sewing through both edge of the V with my next stitch. The handsewing is ok, it just looks like I have two really wonky scallops - I probably should have drawn the curve onto the fabric so I'd have a guide, instead of just winging it:

The actual quilting went much better than I expected, no doubt because of my beautiful walking foot, which I'm never taking off again. A lot of people on the flickr group who didn't use one were disappointed with the amount of puckering along their quilting lines, but mine are pretty flat, as you can see (I did also put all those safety pins back in before I quilted - at least every 3 inches, if not closer). Here's the finished product:

Not too bad, all things considered! I don't know as I'd make this project again because of the trouble with the scallops - the wrist pain as well as the puckering frustration. But it did allow me to practice sewing curves, and also get my feet wet with quilting without the intimidating piecing aspect. I really enjoyed it, now I want to make more quilts! In fact, I quilted a potholder that same day, which I will post shortly.

Get the answers to your questions on Sew, Mama, Sew!

Hey, new sewers - Sew, Mama, Sew is starting an open thread where you can send in all your burning sewing questions. This is a great opportunity to take advantage of the expertise of all the sewers on this awesome blog. So get to it! I'll keep an eye on the thread too, so if I see anything especially helpful, I can link back to it.

Etsy find: Hand-dyed and Quilted Beauties

I'm feeling fabric design and quilting this week in particular... so who better to feature from etsy than stitchindye? Her quilts are composed of gorgeous colors, often from fabrics she dyed and/or batiked herself:

She also has a variety of smaller quilted items, like pillows and - oh joy! - bags:

Love the combinations of fabrics and colors, that's something I want to get braver with as I gain sewing experience. It's funny, because in my graphic design work I think I'm pretty good with color, but I have color fear when it comes to choosing fabric. Maybe because I can't just undo my decisions with a click - once the scissors start cutting, there's no turning back!

If you're feeling particularly inspired by her work, you're in luck, because you can also buy her fabrics and sew something up yourself. I especially like the Drops:

To see more or to purchase, click on the images or just click here.

Interview with Textile Designer Lara Cameron on Dress a Day

Riverstones in Raspberry, originally uploaded by birds & trees.

Dress a Day just published a great interview with Australian textile designer Lara Cameron. I love her work so much.

I referred to this a bit the other day in my post about designing fabric with Photoshop, but one of my secret dreams is to become a textile designer. To read an interview with someone who started as a graphic designer (like me) and is now designing these beautiful fabrics... well, it makes it seem like this particular secret dream might not be so very far out of reach.

You can buy fabric from Lara here and cards featuring her designs here.