Scrapbuster: Fabric Notecards
- At April 28, 2014
- By Kelly
- In Fabrics, Tutorials and Sew Alongs
0
Spring is finally here! In this part of the country, spring bulbs have started popping up, soccer practices are canceled due to fields that are more mud than grass, and the older elementary schoolers are taking standardized tests.
My daughter’s teacher sent home two 3″x5″ cards for parents to write something encouraging to their students. I never know what to write on these things. I suppose comments like “Try your best!” or “You’ll do great!” are expected.
I had some scraps left from the mini quilt I made, so I used them to cover one side of each card.
These are super easy to make. Just grab a glue stick, glue on the scraps and then zig zag around each scrap. That is all there is to it! Just remember to mark your needle so you don’t use it for sewing fabrics. Sewing fabric to paper dulls needles pretty quickly!
What’s your favorite scrap project?
Kelly
Keeping the Original Hem on Jeans
- At January 17, 2014
- By Kelly
- In Tutorials and Sew Alongs
5
This video was shared with me the other day and I wanted to pass it along.
I’ve seen several tutorials on how to hem jeans and keep the original hem on them, but many don’t open the side seem to adjust the width and this one does. Plus, I really want one of the ginormous scissors used in the video!
Hope this helps someone!
Kelly
Quick Sewing Project: Infinity Scarf Tutorial
Need to make a last minute gift? You can make an infinity scarf in less than half an hour!
Infinity scarves vary in length and width. Browsing through etsy, most give length measurements between 60″ and 72″, and widths vary from 8″ to 20″. This one is going to have a 72″ loop and be about 15″ wide on each side.
Materials:
- 2yds lightweight knit fabric
- lots of pins or lots of wondertape
- something to cut with – a scissors or rotary cutter will work well
Step 1.
Lay the fabric out, right side up, on your cutting mat.
Step 2.
Fold up the long side to the 15″ line. Right sides are together, which is good because we are going to sew this seam in a minute.
Step 3.
Pin, pin, pin!
These lovely little pins are fine dress pins that my sweet friend Michelle gave me. I usually use flat head pins for everything, but the flat head pins I have are a bit thicker and tend to slide out of this thin knit fabric. The finer pins are perfect! (Thanks, Michelle!)
Step 4.
Cut along the edge you’ve just lined up, cutting through both layers so you have two nice layers to sew together. The piece should be about 72″ long and 15″ folded, so if you were to unfold it it would be 30″ wide. Resist the urge to unfold it!
Step 5.
Serge (or sew on the sewing machine) the long side. I’m using 75/11 ballpoint needles in my serger for this thin knit.
Keep going…
Finally!
Look, all those pins paid off – the stripes are lined up!
Step 6.
This next part is a little confusing. Take one end of the fabric and pull it inside the tube you’ve just created.
When you do this, the right sides will be together inside the tube. See – my arm is in the tube here and the bottom layer is the one that’s been pulled through.
Step 7.
Match up the seams.
Step 8.
Pin the raw edges together and then sew, leaving an opening for turning it right side out. About two inches is plenty to pull the inside out.
Step 9.
Go ahead and turn it right side out. It’s almost finished!
Step 10.
Ladder stitch your opening closed. Use small stitches and it’ll hardly be noticeable!
All done!
Just ignore the crazy hair. At this point in the day, I was just happy my fourth grade photographer managed to get both the scarf and my head in the picture!
Happy Sewing!
Kelly
Sewing Tutorial: Create a Cover With Handles to Carry Your Bible or Other Study Books!
This tutorial was created for Sewing Mamas by Kelley, who is Chrisnkelley in our forums. Thanks Kelley!
This is what we are making:
This is a Bible cover for my daughter. The cover has 2 ribbon straps to hold the Bible in place, pockets on the front and back for papers, and a spot for 2 pens on the spine.
You will need about ⅓ yards of fabric, fusible fleece, interfacing, and ribbon. Also, you might choose to add snaps, buttons, magnetic snaps, or something else for a closure. The pieces are all rectangular and are based on the size of the Bible (or other book) that you are making the cover for.
The first thing you’ll do is cut 2 pieces for the outside and inside of your Bible cover. This will be based on your Bible’s dimensions. As you can see in the photo below, I laid my daughter’s Bible down open so that the covers and spine were all spread out, then I measured 2 inches out widthwise on each side and 1 inch out top and bottom. The Bible I used is a children’s Bible. My personal Bible is larger, so these dimensions won’t be correct for all Bibles. The pieces I cut were 10-½ inches high and 16 inches wide. Cut 2 of these pieces.
The next thing I did, which you can see in the photo above, is to cut 2 pieces for the pockets. These pieces should be the entire width of the cover pieces, but about 3 inches shorter. My pocket pieces are 16 wide by 7-½ inches high. This is not critical if you go a bit higher or lower, it will just affect pocket depth. You can see this if you look closely above, especially on the right side. I laid the pocket pieces on top of the cover pieces.
Next (not shown), the same size as your cover pieces, cut 1 piece of fusible fleece and 1 piece of interfacing. You can use 2 fusible fleece if you want a puffier case or 2 interfacing if you want it thinner, but I personally would want at least 1 layer of fusible fleece in there.
Then, cut 1 piece of interfacing the size of your pocket pieces. You could interface both pocket pieces for a stiffer pocket if you’d like, or even use fleece. I did 1 piece of interfacing and I think it turned out great.
Next, in the pic above, I cut 4 strap pieces. I cut them 10 inches long by 2 inches wide. You can adjust your strap size/width to your liking. I didn’t interface these, but you certainly could use interfacing or fleece. Alternatively, you could use something else for your straps such as grosgrain ribbon. You also don’t have to make straps. You could just sew in ribbon on each side that you could use as an attachment to tie a bow to keep your Bible in place. Also, you could make a tiny strap with a buttonhole and sew into only the back of the cover, and then pop a button on the front. Its up to you! But the instructions are for what I did, which is a carrying handle strap on each side. :)
Here’s what you should have by now:
(2 cover pieces, 1 fleece cover piece, 1 interfacing cover piece, 2 pocket pieces, 1 interfacing pocket piece, 4 strap pieces)
Now, sew 2 strap pieces together along the long sides, then turn right side out and press. Topstitch the long edges. The short edges can remain raw since they’ll be sandwiched in the seam of the Bible cover.
Now, fuse your fleece to the wrong side of 1 cover piece and the interfacing to the other cover piece. Then fuse the pocket interfacing to one of the pocket pieces.
Now, put your pocket pieces right sides together and sew along 1 long edge for the top of the pockets. Then turn it wrong sides together and press the pocket edge and topstitch as pictured above.
Now, we will make a sandwich. Start with your front cover (the fleece fused one) right side up. Then place the pocket on that, also right side up. This will be the outside of your cover. Make sure to align the raw bottom edges of the pocket piece with the bottom of the front cover.
Then place the handles. They go in the center of each side of the cover, facing in so that just the raw edges get sewed in the seam. Pin the heck out of these so they stay in place and don’t get caught in the seam funny. I also placed a few pins along the pocket while I was at it.
Next, place the inside cover piece right side down on top of it all. Put a few pins in there to hold it all together. I also decided to add a seam tag, so I pinned that in – that’s why I have the corner pulled up here:
Now, time to sew. Sew around the Bible cover making sure to catch everything in your seam. Leave about a 3-4 inch opening in one side. I left mine on the bottom edge.
Now, take out the pins and turn it inside out. Be careful, as you do this you’ll run into all the pins on the inside. I kind of felt around a bit and tried to remove as many as I could prior to turning. Turn it all the way out, poke the corners so they pop out nicely, then press flat. Make sure when pressing to fold in your opening nicely also.
Then go ahead and topstitch all the way around making sure to use care at the opening where you pressed the edges in. Mine got wonky in that area because I tend to go too fast, so be warned! Use caution in that area if you don’t want a wonky bump on the bottom of your cover!
Next, I drew 3 lines for my pen pockets. 1 line right down the center (top to bottom), and another line 1 inch on each side of the center line. I couldn’t find any marking pencil other than my white one conveniently, so as you can imagine that worked great with this fabric (not so much!) You might want to choose a pencil that contrasts your fabric. Just sayin! Then stitch down the lines.
Next, I cut 2 pieces of ribbon the height of the Bible cover for the inside Bible straps. You could also use FOE if you’d like. Fold over a tiny bit at the top and bottom and stitch down to the top and bottom of the cover, right in the center of each side, like so.
Insert your Bible to make sure all is well. These don’t keep it super tight, but they keep it from slipping out.
You are now finished unless you’d like to add some sort of attachment to the straps so the Bible stays in place if its in a bag or something. If you chose to just do ribbons instead of straps, you won’t need an attachment since you’ll just tie cute little bows. I chose to add snaps. You could do magnetic closures, buttons, velcro…
Enjoy your new Bible cover!
Hey, that looks great, doesn’t it? Thanks so much to Kelley for taking the time to take all those pictures and write out all the instructions!
If you make one of these, be sure to post it in our Runway!
Happy Sewing!
Kelly
Not So Quick Zig Zag Crib Skirt Tutorial
I went down to my sister’s to visit her family and meet my new nephew. While I was there, she mentioned that she had made curtains for the nursery with curtain clips and hem tape. She thought maybe she could use the hem tape to make a crib skirt as well. I did not think that sounded like a very good idea.
While I was there, I took a couple quick measurements.
The crib base is 51″ x 29″ and we decided the skirt should have a finished length of 8″.
Since the crib has a changing table on one end, only two sides will be skirted.
I’m using this fabric from Fabric.com for the skirt.
For the top, I’m using a white broadcloth. The top piece should be cut at 51 7/8″ x 29 7/8″
51″ for the length of the crib base + 3/8″ for the seam with the skirt on the left + 1/2″ for the hem on the right = 51 7/8″
29″ for the width of the crib base + 3/8″ for the seam with the skirt on the front + 1/2″ for the hem on the back = 29 7/8″
There’s also a very good chance I just cut this 52″x30″ and called it good. :)
Skirt measurements:
The width of the box pleat depends on the width of the zigzags. This is also a matter of personal choice. In this case, I went with a pleat that was the width of a W’s worth of zigzags.
Measuring, that’s 7.5″, which means we need to add 15″ to the skirt width to account for the fabric that’s going to be folded over to make the pleat.
Not too bad, right? So the skirt fabric on the left (short) side will need to be 45″ x 8 7/8″
Following the same formula, the front skirt fabric will need to be 67″ x 8 7/8″. This means the front skirt fabric piece needs to be longer than the width of the fabric, so it will be necessary to seam it and hide the seam in the pleat.
I’m going to deal with the short side skirt fabric first because it is simpler.
First, I know I want a half inch hem, and I want to have the blue points at the bottom of the hem. I need to straighten out the last cut line on this fabric, so I find the closest row of zigzags that still have half an inch past them on the fabric.
There, that’s better!
Now that I have a straight line, I need to cut the width to 8 7/8″. I don’t cut the length yet, because I need to make sure the pleat will end up in the center. And I want the zigzag to match up on a point, so I can’t simply fold the piece in half to place my pleat. (If this were a solid or horizontal stripe, it would be fine to cut the length now.) I find the zigzag that is upward and closest to the middle of this piece and finger press the pleat just to make sure I’m still going to have enough length. Looks good!
At this point, I’m going to mark my center. Since the piece I need here should be 45″, I need 22.5″ on both sides of that center.
Hem the short sides. Please use the iron. I’m using my Dritz EZY-Hem to turn up and press a 1/4″ and then folding that under and pressing.
Since this is a pretty small hem, I moved my needle over to the right a bit so I can keep more of the fabric under the presser foot and on the feed dogs while I’m stitching.
Not too bad!
Hem the bottom, and if you carefully cut those zigzags so they would have all their points aligned at the bottom, double check to make sure you are hemming the bottom and not the top!
Now that the hems are done, it’s time to put in the pleat. Remember, the iron is your friend. Also, a little spray starch never hurt anyone. (Or at least I don’t think it did. I suppose it’s possible. Please read and follow any and all warning labels just to be safe!)
Pin the pleat in place and then stitch across the top in the seam allowance. This will make it easier to keep everything nice and neat when the skirt is attached to the top.
Now repeat all of this for the longer skirt piece that will go in the front. I had to seam this one, so I fretted a lot about where the seam should go. I knew I wanted to hide it in the pleat, but where? In the back layer? In the middle layer? I kept pinning and holding it up trying to guess what would be better. Helenanne, who’s very wise, reminded me that this is for a baby. Anyone seeing it is not there to view the crib skirt, they are there to see my adorable little nephew. I have trouble remembering these things.
A quick tip for matching patterns when seaming:
Place pieces right sides together and hold against a sunny window. Pin together!
Normally, I’d just seam this by running it through the serger. Since this is going to have a small hem, I use the sewing machine so I can press the seam open and there’s less bulk. I trimmed the seam allowance with my munchy scissors, aka pinking shears.
Once the skirt panels are complete, this finishes up quickly.
Attach the short side panel to a short end of the base piece, right sides together, leaving a half inch on what will be the back side for the hem allowance. This leaves about the same amount on the side where the front skirt panel will be attached. It’s about a half inch on either side.
Once the short side is attached, line up the long side, leaving about half an inch in the corner that’s shared with the short side. I forgot to take a pic when I laid it out, but this is how it looks when both skirt panels are attached to the base piece.
With the entire piece right side up, press the seams. Pin the side hems of the skirt base.
Next, make the corner where the two skirts meet nice and neat.
Place the piece wrong side up, and pull the corner of the base under the skirt seams you just pressed. There should be a little triangle of base fabric there. Press well.
This will get tacked down with the topstitching and hemming.
Stitch all the way around the rectangle of the base piece – you are putting the hem on the sides without the skirt and topstitching the sides with skirt pieces.
Now my cutting table has a lovely skirt. See the corner where that base bit got folded in a triangle?
That little space there will make the skirt hang nicely around the corner pieces of the crib.
And that’s it!
Happy Sewing!
Kelly