KNITorious Sew A Long FINAL DAY

Congratulations! YOU MADE IT!!
Today is all about you!
Post your final piece! Have a mannequin or model? Then take pics with them in it! Is it a gift? Give it and show they're happiness! Share away!
My daughter Loved hers! She's a big Jack and Sally fan and she still really enjoys when I make her things! I hope that lasts a long time :-)

Post yout modeled or final pics in the facebook comments to be entered to win the final Prize! Thanks for joining me on this first sew a long and hopefully you'll come back for the next one too!

KNITorious Sew A Long Day 4

Day 4! Last day before big finished product reveal! Congrats on making it this far!

I realize I could have shortened this to probably one less day, but with learning some new things, I thought that a day longer couldn't hurt.

And so on this our final sewing day, I bring you the bottom hem. The pattern calls for a rolled hem. So if you're keen on that, then definitely go ahead and do that. I see the appeal but I wanted to show my favorite way to hem my knits, in case you haven't seen it before. My favorite: The Blind Hem!
I promise, if you don't already use this, you will! It's fab!

I'm going to talk through this, but there is also a good video for it HERE

Okay, so first we're going to take our hem and fold it back. I usually do maybe an inch to 1 1/2 inches. You're working with your fabric right side up and folding the hem so right sides are together

 Then take that piece that you folded and fold it back towards the edge. So now you're folding wrong sides together and the folded piece will be half what it was originally.

 You can now pic or clip it or be like me and just wing it the whole way around.

 I use my serger with the knife on and just serge the whole edge like this

 This is what the back of the hem looks like. You'll see that it tends to fold up towards the right side of the garment now. You can iron it to get it to lay flatter.

 Or instead of ironing you can sew it down! I hate ironing so I would rather do one extra step than iron anything. I suck at ironing. Not one of my skills.
So I get out my trusty twin stretch needle!

 and I move to my sewing machine.Twin needles need two threads so I hook one to where the bobbin winder is on my Brother.

 I also make sure my machine is set for two needles and I like to use a little bit longer stitch. The twin needle is a bit stretchy by nature, not SUPER stretchy, but until I can get a coverstitch machine, this will do!

 I hold the hem down, pushing the serged seam up in the back and I sew my twin stitch right on top of it

You will end up with a very professional looking hem! There are TONS of different ways to hem, so I look forward to seeing what you guys choose in your pics! Just post your hem pics today and tomorrow we'll post finished products! I'd love to see modeled pics tomorrow, I'll be trying to get my 3 year old to cooperate!

Thanks guys!

KNITorious Sew A Long Day 3

Welcome back!
Did you all enjoy the rolled hem? Was I the only one that had NO idea what I was doing? Well, it was a learning moment for sure!

Today should be a relatively straight forward day. We're going to attach the sleeves and sides as well as add the neck. Tomorrow we will be hemming the bottom. I'm making that a separate day because I'm going to be a rebel and not do the rolled hem it calls for. I'm going to show you another way to do a hem, it's my fave way. I'm sure many of you will know it :-)

But first things first......

SLEEVES

One thing to remember is that there is a front and a back! To the pattern and to the sleeves. I actually used my handy dandy chalk pen to mark a little X on the front park so I didn't sew them on backwards. If they're laying flat, the front is the slightly higher side. It's a bit narrower and shorter. I doubt it would be much of a big deal if you sewed them on backwards though, it's a forgiving pattern!

 

I use Wonder clips to pin my fabrics, I don't like to put holes in things with pin unless I have to. I'm not the most precise cutter, so I did have to stretch a bit to get my pieces to match.

Place the sleeve and the main body piece right side together and serge them together. Then you'll do the other sleeve. You'll have one main body piece with two sleeves attached.

 Get your other main body piece and sew the opposite side of the sleeves to that piece. You'll end up with this:

 The picture in the pattern on this part confused the hell out of me. For some reason I couldn't see what the picture wanted me to see! But that above is what it should look like!
Now flip it inside out and seam the sides. Don't serge the armholes shut! Start at the bottom of the arm holes and seam all the way down the dress.

 For the neck band, fold it in half and sew the edge so you have a loop. Then you can fold it in half long ways, so it's a skinnier loop

Pin it to the neck. This part is trickier because of the stretching to fit. I just use a lot of pins or clips and sew slowly.

The top stitching part I took pics but they don't show it super well so I'll try to explain how I did it too. Once it's serge on and it's all right side out, I take the collar piece and fold it on itself, so a little of it goes in on the front and a little goes on the back.

  I'm taking the height of the collar fabric and splitting it between the front and the back. Then I use my double needle and top stitch it down.

 To be honest, the fabric I used for the collar was too thick, I accidently used some like yoga pant type material but rather than waste it, I just pushed forward.

I like how this type of collar looks. It's covering all raw edges so none of the serged edge is poking out and just looks very neat and clean.

Thats all for today! Tomorrow will be hemming the bottom, either with a rolled hem or my alternative hem! Also, clean up trimming and such. Friday will be a congratulations post your finished piece day so I look forward to seeing all your creations! I can't wait to give this to my daughter! :-)

KNITorious Sew A Long Day 2

Well Congratulations! You made it past Day One!! Success! I hope you all posted in the comments section of the facebook post so show me your progess!

Day Two is going to be Sleeve day!
I'm only doing sleeves today because this was tough for me! There are a couple options here. I did  the short sleeve version so that's what I'm going to show here.  The recommend doing a rolled hem to create a wavy little fluttery sleeve. I'm going to be honest and tell you that I had Never done a rolled hem before! So I did some trial and error on scrap pieces before I was comfortable on my real sleeve piece. I definitely recommend doing this, because all machines are finicky and sometimes even something you've done before gets wonky.

Everyones machines are different but this is what I used on my Brother 1034D. I ended up actually using the left needle instead of the right. Honestly I had to play around with it quite a bit to get it to a point I was okay with.

Once you're happy with your scraps, get out your sleeve pieces! We're going to be doing the rolled hem along the bottom large rounded piece. You need to stretch as you sew, stretching it is what gives it the wavy "lettuce" edge. This was hard to do evenly for me so some advice I have: don't start and stop, try to go smoothly. There were gaps when I started and stopped. Also I went a little slower that normal so I could stretch it at the same time. My stretching is un even, but the nature of the sleeve is to be wavy, it's very forgiving.

 I watched a couple videos on rolling hems, some good ones are THIS ONE and THIS ONE.
You'll need to do both sleeves, just remember to do the bottom large rounded part and not the tops.

That is all for today! Tomorrow we will be attaching the sleeves and seaming up the sides. I hope your sleeves look fluttery and amazing!