Thursday, March 8, 2012

All hemmed!

I got a sudden burst of sewing energy this evening so I worked on my new black, white, brown, blueish-charcoal-gray and pink skirt.

First step: pattern matching

For those of you who may be wondering how to do this, I folded back about 3/4" of fabric at the side seam, ironed it and then made a tube of my skirt fabric (I cut the fabric for this skirt with the selvedge forming the seam allowance at the waist so it is just one long piece) and laid the ironed edge on top of the other side. I made sure the two pieces lined up at the hem and waist and then moved the prepared (ironed) seam line around until the pattern matched. I then pinned it into place on the front of the fabric, pinned it again on the wrong side for sewing purposes, removed the original set of pins and stiched it together in the fold-line I had ironed in. After the seam was stiched I cut off the excess fabric which was lost to pattern matching (a skirt length piece about 9" wide, in this case).

The technique is pretty easy but I had to measure and try matching the pattern in different areas and ponder quite a bit before I cut the fabric because the pattern repeats didn't match at the edges of the fabric.

Step two: the hem

I'm a big fan of doing something interesting with the inside of the hem on skirts. I find it's kind of like wearing fancy underwear, I feel special and a little naughty, which puts a spring in my step, and since the inside of hemlines show surprisingly often I get to share a little bit of intrigue with the rest of the world. Anyway, my hem is faced with a wide pink houndstooth patterned ribbon--in a matching pink--which seems like it will have the additional benefit of rustling when I walk

Nice














When I showed off my new hem to my Clarence I flashed him a peek at the interior and he got a big smile and said "Well, aren't you the wild one?" So I guess it works!

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