See You in September

Here it is the start of another school year and nearing the end of the calendar year, and I'm sure many of us are wondering where the time went!  For some of us it passed happily in our sewing spaces, and we had proof of it at our September meeting with all the show-and-tell items.  Check out all the pictures below!

In other news, we spent the meeting preparing for Make A Difference Day.  Having decided to benefit the local VA hospital, we discussed what items they needed the most.  Wheelchair bags were high on the list, followed by lap robes and walker totes.  From the patterns we had, we figured out what we needed to cut and began pulling fabric out of the stash, determining what its best use would be based on size and weight.  We cut out quite a few wheelchair bag pieces along with a few walker totes.  October's meeting will be more of the same, along with a little sewing of the items to have some ready for the middle of the "assembly line" on the actual day.

Nataly's gorgeous prom dress!

Pat made a cool summer blouse.

And she did her Christmas sewing over the summer.

A nifty door-hanger basket to hold keys or cell phone.

Lovely clutch purse / wallet

Wallet open to show inside.

Veronica's mother-of-the-bride dress

A skirt with godets for a floaty look

Elaborate quilt back!

Connie's quilt - love the colors!

Maura's shawl-collar sweater - sewn, not knitted

Now you see it...now you don't: Invisible Zippers

Last night the Sewphisticuts were treated to a demo of installing an invisible zipper.  Judy L, despite suffering a bout of back pain, came through for the group and shared with us her knowledge of invisible zippers.  She discussed the zipper construction, considerations for placement, and how the invisible zipper foot works.  Then she installed one in a sample piece of fabric.  An interesting side note covered how to make sure the fabric on each side of the zipper matches, something you need to do if your fabric is plaid, striped, or if the zipper crosses a waistband or other seam perpendicular to the zipper.

In other business, the group decided that for Make a Difference Day in October, the project will be walker and wheelchair bags for Castle Point VA hospital.  Several members volunteered to organize the day.  More information will be on the way later.

Maura's baby quilt for a friend's grandbaby

There were quite a few show and tell items.

Peggy's summer top

Cindy's bracelet

Judy's swimsuit

Peg's bag to carry her cutting board, ruler, and machine table

Linda's ipad bag

Linda made a graduation gift for her grandson

Connie's placemats

More placemats

Summer colors in a quilt

Wall hanging

Sewing Studio Tour

This past Wednesday, the Sewphisticuts continued the July tradition of touring a member's sewing room.  Many of us refer to our sewing spaces rather grandly as "studios", when the reality is closer to "closet", but Sue K's sewing space is truly a studio!  Recently she had her downstairs room redone to make a beautifully spacious sewing and design space, with stations for sewing, quilting, ironing and cutting.  The L-shaped room  has lots of shelf space for storage of books, fabric and notions, and a padded wall to pin up pieces as part of the design and assembly process.

Design wall with long-arm quilting machine in foreground

Of course all the rest of us were awed and envious of this well-appointed space, truly a dream come true for sewists! 

After the tour, we enjoyed a pot-luck dinner which showed that our creative skills are not limited to the fabric arts.   A few people had brought show-and-tell, from tote bags to t-shirts.  Most intriguing were some fabric flowers that Peg S. brought, formed by embroidering organza over a special texturizing layer that then shrinks when sprayed with water.  You can see one show-and-tell piece in the top photo;  Peggy N. made a summer romper by combining a favorite shorts pattern with a sleeveless blouse pattern, sewing the two pieces together at the waist to create a casing for the elastic and adding a zipper at the back of the blouse.

To a Tee

The May meeting of the Sewphisticuts took a look at T-shirt patterns.  Several members brought along a variety of patterns to share and compare.  They ranged from a decades-old McCall's pattern to a brand-new CNT design.  Both Maura and Peggy have used self-drafted Lutterloh patterns for t-shirts, while Judy has used a variety of commercial patterns from Vogue and Simplicity over the years.  Peg said she was dating herself by admitting that her first t-shirts were made from Stretch and Sew patterns.  But she was wearing one she had made from a CNT pattern, a fairly new company which she had learned about at a recent trade show.  So we saw t-shirts plain and fancy, long and short, v-neck, mock-neck and crew-neck.  We also looked at and discussed various ways of sewing and finishing these knits;  some were serged, while others were sewn with a conventional machine.  And Judy has a machine that will do a cover stitch, yielding a very professional-looking hem finish inside and out.  We discussed the merits of hems made with the blind-hem stitch vs. twin-needle top-stitching.  The blind-hem method gives a hand-picked look to the hem if the stitches show at all, while the twin-needle top-stitched method makes a more textural hem line since the bobbin thread tends to pull the lines of stitching together a bit.  We all agreed that fabric thickness and stretch make a huge difference in the fit of a t-shirt, so that fitting adjustments may be required even when you've made up the pattern before.  Some other helpful tips that we learned were:  when using a narrow zig-zag to seam knits on a conventional machine, sew a slightly wider zig-zag in the seam allowance to flatten and finish the seam allowance fabric; for unrippled hems, use a light fusible interfacing strip along the inside edge of the t-shirt, press the hem up to fuse the hem in place, then stitch the hem.  The interfaced area will prevent the knit from stretching as you sew.