Pre-washing

Spent last night pre-washing/pre-shrinking all of my pretties. It is definitely the most mundane part of the process, but definitely a necessary part. By pre-washing, I am removing all the chemicals from processing, the dirt and grime from fabric warehouse floors, testing colorfastness, and ensuring the fabric shrinks before it is sewn together. If it shrinks after it is sewn together, you have got yourself one sloppy, waste of a dress. Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Lucky day!

If you ever want to know what heaven is for me, it is buried up to my eyeballs in new fabric! I love gazing over it, just waiting for it to tell me what it wants to be. Running my fingers over the textures of different materials...a soft knit, a crisp cotton, a silky charmeuse... that is my heaven. And today is my lucky day, because I just got a sweet little box in!

Hemming knits #donotbeafraid

Such a busy week here! Lots of exciting changes to my schedule going on. This week I have been making a dress for a client.

While I am almost finished with the dress, I thought I would take a moment to show you how to finish a knit hem, without a coverstitch machine (the ideal) or a twin needle.

 Coverstitch machines absolutely make me drool. They provide the finishes you find on the bottom of your T-shirts. They are also VERY expensive. Some people prefer to use a twin needle instead, but I have never had any luck with the strength of the stitch. So, we are going to go through the process without either.

First thing, you will NEED is a zig-zag stitch on your machine. Pretty basic stuff. Test on a scrap piece of your fabric, maybe a leftover armhole cut-out. You want to use the shortest and narrowest ZIG-ZAG stitch you can find.

 As you can see , the stitch will hide itself in the knit, almost so much so that it takes on the look of a straight stitch, but with added stretch flexibility. Fold over the hem at desired length. This picture is shown finished. It slipped my mind to get a picture of how it should be folded to be hemmed, but you can see that the right side of the sleeve is on the inside.

 Place the sleeve/ cuff/ pant leg under the presser foot. You will sew from the right side, as in topstitching, but the right side will be the inside. (Clear as mud??) A walking foot is HIGHLY recommended for KNITS. No, wait, it is a MUST!! Also, start near to the what will be the inside seam, but not quite on the seam itself. Any bulk from the stitches will be hidden when worn, that way. Starting directly on the seam will make your machine do very funny things that will make you spend hours with your LEAST favorite tool, the seam ripper. ---Insert menacing horror music here---

Speed is not your friend here! You MUST keep an even distance all the way around the hem, as it will be your reference for the next row of stitches.

Proceed slowly, making sure you maintain an even distance. I prefer to start on what will be the lowest row, far away from raw edge. Those raw edges like to get eaten by my machine, if I don't. When that row is finished, move up to the next row in the hem. Take three deep breaths...it's almost over! Place your presser foot down, with the seam you just completed to the right of your needle, and near the raw edge of the fabric. Like before, the right side (of the sleeve shown) is on the inside, but we will still sew as in topstitching, and go SSSLLLLOOOOWWWW.

Maintain equal distance from the first seam!!!

When it is finished, it will look like this!

Sleeve right side out

Sleeve view of inside and outside

P.S. Do not forget to press your seams!!! If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below, and please subscribe if you like what you have learned. Thanks!

Busy Week

  Busy, busy, busy! My daughter has started preschool this week, and my son started swim team. I was SO excited to get Devin to try out a new sport. Heck, I was just excited he wanted to do something besides bury his face in a video game! We have a local YMCA, and they said he could come in and try it out. We went in, and Devin ran off into the locker room, just beaming with excitement.

    I really love this age. I am just starting to see the man he will become, but he still gets the sparkle of a child in his eyes. I spend the next two hours watching that kid pour his heart out, physically. He had not previously been in a sport, so you could tell his body was used to laying around. BUT MAN! He just kept on going.     When it was finished, the coach came out to tell me how well Devin did. The coach brought out the sign-up sheet, with scheduled practice times and the fee amounts. Devin stands before me, face flushed from joy and exertion, then I look down and read the paper. OMG. I keep re-reading the blue sheet of doom. Six days a week?!! How much money?!! This isn't the Olympics, right? When will I go to the grocery? When will I make appointments? How much MONEY?!! Then, I look back down at my son's face.

We are officially a swim team family.

Seam Allowance Sewing Machine Tip

I saw a question asked on a sewing group about finding seam allowances on your machine. Some machines don't have the markings to show the common pattern allowances. This is my tip for you. I frequently use 5/8 inch, so I just taped paper to the plate as a guide. The contrast of the paper keeps me from getting the lines confused, as the fabric goes through. A lot of PDF patterns use 3/8inch , so if you use those, measure from your needle with a seam guide to find the true placement, and tape away!!

9/11 364 redux- mild version

I have to admit I am a little bit of a chicken. I wrote a very strongly opinionated post on what September 11th means to me. I am confident in my opinion, but then I second guessed myself and I deleted it. I would like to blame the articles I read on finding your focus audience and blogging only about specifics to that. The truth is that I don't really know who I want my target audience to be. When someone searches under the Ruffles and Cuddles business, how do I want to be seen? Am I going to be the kind of person that really cares that much how the world views me? So, I have been pondering my disappointment with not standing true to myself. I love to keep things light-hearted and humorous, but 9/11 is a pretty serious subject. I can't remember all of what I wrote before, but I can say my point was that remembering what happened is important today BUT it is also important to remember on the other 364 days of the year. The people that lost someone, the people directly affected, and those involved in subsequent wars, feel it EVERY DAY.

Getting started

After an hour of unsuccessful attempts to even log in to this blog, I finally hit the jackpot and cleared some cookies. I am not even sure what a cookie is, but I know Google said I don't want them. I had planned for a super philosophical post on the in and outs of sewing light-weight fabrics and the joys (sarcasm included) of raising a three year old and teenager while by myself while Daddy is deployed, but alas, the new-fangled technologies have beat me again. Pinnochio

Holey Moley!! Finally started a blog. I can't believe it. Now what? Hahahaha