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Thank you for making this thread :o I am a huge sewing dork, and in fashion school, so after finals are over I'll probably be posting here all the time I don't do a lot of internet shopping, but my favorite shops in Chicago are Vogue Fabrics (both the Evanston and the downtown locations, and they also have a website at myvoguefabrics.com) and Discount Textile Warehouse. I do like JoAnn's probably more than I should -- normally everything's pretty crappy and overpriced, but I went to their after-Christmas sale and with careful combining of coupons ended up getting about $400 worth of fabric and notions for my senior project for just a little over $150. Also, thirding the importance of the iron. And you don't want some crappy $5 lightweight thing -- if you're doing serious sewing you want the heaviest, hottest, most dangerous behemoth of an iron you can find. My iron is the one my grandmother bought in the 1960s. It uses so much power that it dims my lights on its hottest setting, and it can burn through its entire water supply in half an hour if you really need to steam the hell out of something. It's the next best thing, I think, to the industrial irons we have at school. Then again, I just like old sewing tools in general; my sewing machine is from 1925 and only has forward straight stitch, but it's really cute and built like a tank. 
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Dec 4, 2007 00:53
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Those shoes are awesome, I love the feathers! I'll have to try this with some of the truly hideous shoes in the back of my closet sometime. I wish I had good stuff to post, but I've been working on my senior project line for the past six months and I've come to hate everything about the designs and my target market. So here are some old things --  It's finals week and I'm not the only one who's stressed.  A sweater I designed and knit last spring for a class. I dyed the green yarn myself too, in kind of an emergency process where the yarn I ordered on the internet was totally the wrong color of green, so I boiled it in a pot of every color of kool-aid until it stopped hurting my eyes.  I knit a fox scarf. Its mouth opens and closes with a spring clip.  And just for fun, here's the skirt and corset I made for my halloween costume. I was Typhoid Mary.
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Dec 9, 2007 04:52
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papermastermind posted:shirts and darts I have seen darts on men's shirts, but mostly on the really trendy ones that are meant to be more fitted than usual. If the stitching line bothers you then only do it on fabrics that will hide it well, not on something like a stripe that will show off the dart intake. Definitely redo the side seam before you add darts, though -- darts will create volume in the front of the chest which is great for women's clothes, but I imagine not so much for you. You may need to make a small dart, but most of the fabric should still come out of the side seam. thoran posted:I'd love to make my own t's would it be possible to take a well fitting model such as AA tees and remove the stitching and make a pattern from that and make copies? For something like a t-shirt with very little shaping, you don't even need to remove the seams. Just lay it out completely flat and trace the outline on a piece of paper, drop the neckline a couple inches for the front, and then lay it out again so the sleeve piece is flat and trace that.
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Dec 9, 2007 08:51
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Molly Bloom posted:The second project is making some Irish crochet lace with a .6 mm hook and some sewing thread. As I'm another member of the 'really big tits, small waist' club,I have found most antique blouses do not work on large busts. So I'm making my own based on some samples of the technique at the V+A. I'm about to cry- each little rose is smaller than my thumbnail.  Do you have pictures of it? I'd love to see it; the smallest I've ever been able to crochet lace has been #30 thread, and I didn't manage to get more than a couple inches into the edging because i just couldn't see where to put the hook. For nerdy vintagey historical stuff, I like knitting lace a lot better...
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Dec 13, 2007 04:28
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Z Is Overrated posted:By the way, is anyone else here on Ravelry? It's kinda like a pattern/yarn manager, but you can also see what everyone else is doing with their yarn and projects. I didn't think it'd be that interesting when I first joined, but now it's taking up a pretty big chunk of my day. Ooh, I'm on Ravelry! Look me up, I'm knitterrobot on there. On sewing knits with home machines -- I do it all the time, and I don't even have zigzag or stretch stitch, just a 80 year old machine that only goes straight and forward. Nothing of mine looks homemade, at least not in a bad way. If you look at the hems, sure you can tell that it's turned and straight stitched rather than coverstitched, and the seams are raw and pressed open. But from the outside, it's fine -- and these are plain hoodies and long sleeved t-shirts, where any sort of puckered seam would absolutely stand out and ruin the look. I just used a relatively short stitch, and on an edge like a necklinethat had to stretch I stretched the fabric and then blocked it back into shape with the iron the same way I would a handknit. It's a little more effort, and I'd never sell a knit garment I made that way, but it turned out fine for wearing, held up to machine washing, etc. I mean, if you think about it, back in the day they didn't have sergers and coverstitchers and merrowers, and they still worked with knits all the time. Jersey is huge in garments from the 20s and 30s, for example, and the dresses from that time that I've seen were all sewn with straight stitch plain seams. It's definitely not something I'd use on a swimsuit, of course, but you definitely can produce good results on most knits without specialty machines. I also have a project to show off! Here's a scarf I made:  It's not knitted -- my school has a printer that will print your designs on fabric! I designed the repeat print, printed it out onto lightweight china silk, and just did a serged roll hem on the edge. Once classes start up again, I plan to have some more fabric printed up and maybe make a suit with some squids on it or something.
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Dec 21, 2007 05:52
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It's not limited by the type of fabric per se, but it has to be special fabric that you can only buy from the company that makes the printer. It's treated with chemicals so the dye takes, and backed with paper so it can feed through the printer. I'm not sure how the reverse side would look on heavier fabric, but on the china silk the dye did go all the way through. There's virtually no difference in color on the reverse side of the scarf. Nerobro, I'd love to see a picture! I'm really interested in this kind of technology, because before I took a class in print design I used to hate prints. But after designing a bunch of them, I've realized that I only hate prints because most commercially-availabe prints are stupid. So any way I can get printed yardage without having to pay a fortune or paint it all myself is pretty much awesome.
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Dec 21, 2007 12:26
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Beebubbles posted:Fantastic! I thought for sure that it was knitted. And is that a tiny lady in the lower left corner? Yes, the television has an old BBC test signal on the screen. I've been wearing this scarf every day so far this winter (draped over my head like an old russian grandma, style goes out the window when it's cold), and I never thought thin silk could insulate so well. I'll definitely have to get a lot more scarves to match pretty much everything I own.My project over winter break is this dress from Pattern Magic, which is an amazing book that anyone interested in patternmaking should have a look at:  I need to figure out what I'm doing for New Years, though, before I decide what fabric I'm making it in. I can't wait to get started~! Edit: I just looked through everything in that book's sequel. I don't think words can even express how awesome it is, and how much I wish it were my idea... Strelnikov fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Dec 24, 2007 |
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Dec 24, 2007 07:24
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Zantie posted:I've been teaching myself to knit the past month, and have been trying quite a few new patterns. This is just a two stitch cable, right? The way they describe it, it's not really a cable, it's a crossed stitch. The K2 tog causes the first stitch to 'lean', then you knit the first stitch of the two you just knit together to cross it behind the k2tog. It means you don't have to use a cable needle or deal with raw stitches, so it's a little faster. It doesn't really look different from a normal cable though, so if you prefer making a normal cable you can substitute that. 4R7 THi3F posted:how thorough are the illustrations? i want to get that book but i'm worried that i won't be able to make anything if i can't follow along with the directions The illustrations show the pattern piece with every measurement marked out in centimeters, so even if you don't know anything about drafting patterns you could still figure out how to make the designs they show just by measuring out the lines on your paper. And they have the slopers printed in the back of the book, so if you don't have any of your own or want to test things out in quarter-scale you can just use theirs. I can't read a word of the written instructions, but they illustrate every design and some of them have step-by-step photos, so it's pretty easy to follow along.
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Dec 27, 2007 20:58
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Google Embryo posted:I have a question for knitters. What do any of you know about knitting something that's supposed to be on dpns like socks on two circular needles instead? I got the SnB day calendar for Christmas and today's useful tip mentions something about it. I HATE dpns and would love to do away with them forever if possible! Has anyone tried this method? The two circular needle method is basically the same as dpns -- when you use dpns, you work with 1/4 of the stitches at a time on two needles while the rest sit on the other three needles, and with the two-circ method you work with half the stitches on both ends of one circ while the rest of the stitches sit on the cable of the other circular needle. I like the two-circ method for socks and mittens, just because it's impossible to lose a needle. I do think it's more difficult to tighten up the ladders that want to appear when you change needles, though, than it is with dpns. And for me, it seems like I can go a lot faster on dpns than I can with two circs, probably because I can just go around and around instead of moving stitches from the needle to the cable all the time. The method I prefer really depends on what I'm doing -- something like a flat toe for a sock is easier on two circs, but for a spiral decrease for the top of a hat I'd use dpns. I don't like Magic Loop at all. It's possible to get rid of the gaps if you change up where you pull out the loop every few rows, but I just think it's more trouble than it's worth.
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Jan 8, 2008 17:14
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What kind of a machine do you have? If it's a normal straight stitch type, the easiest way to gather is to set it to the longest stitch you can, loosen the needle tension, and sew two parallel rows of stitches about 1/4" apart without lockstitching either end. Then you pull the needle thread to gather the fabric as tightly as you want it, pin it in place, readjust your machine settings back to normal, sew the skirt on the same way you would a normal seam, and pull out the gathering threads. If it's a serger, I couldn't tell you; I've never had one that does anything other than just serge. My favorite way to gather is to use a ruffler foot. It looks like this --  and actually makes tiny pleats rather than gathers. A good one has lots of adjustments, so once you get the hang of it you can gather as tightly or loosely as you want. You line up your ruffle fabric in one notch to keep the stitching line the right distance from the edge of the ruffle, and your other fabric in one of the other notches depending on how you want it sewn down, and it basically does all the work for you in one operation. It's not as exact as the method I described above, and it's kind of an expensive attachment if you aren't doing a lot of ruffling. I use mine all the time, though. Edit: OMG I love the clam jacket!
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Feb 13, 2008 00:32
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