Yeah…so, as the title says, work has been rather interesting lately. This is partly due to ICB contracts and partly due to some rather poor planning by the higher ups which has, among many other things, resulted in myself and the other people in my position having a quarter of our hours cut in August for what is, supposed to be, a full time position. This, naturally, has resulted in me having a bit more time on my hands than I was expecting so I decided to do something that I had been meaning to try for a while. I decided to test out the sewing machine that I got for Christmas and try and make a piece of clothing from scratch using a pattern. I did this over a couple of days and it turned out better than I thought it would, honestly.
So, for those interested, here’s how it went…
Day 1: Fabric, patterns, and scissors:
The first thing that I did was to choose the pattern that I wanted to try. Over the past few month, I had picked up a few different ones from local charity shops and I decided to try and make a cloak. This was for a few different reasons, really. For one, if it went well I could potentially make these as Christmas presents for people this year, and for two, it said easy on the front. The latter was particularly important for me as, prior to this, I had never tried using a pattern before. I ended up deciding to try and make cloak B.
Once I had decided on the pattern, I had a look at the back to see what I needed. This pattern came in 3 different sizes and, based on my own measurements, I decided that the large size would probably fit me best. Looking at the guides on the back, I needed 2.1m of both the main fabric and the lining. I also needed 4 buttons which I, luckily, already had.
So, the next thing that I had to do was get the fabric that I needed. I headed into the city and to a local fabric shop. After a while of looking around, I found 2 fabrics that had been reduced. The first was a patterned brown velvet that I just fell in love with (I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for velvet), and the second was a stretchy and quite soft cotton fabric with a static-like pattern. I thought the combination would either look pretty interesting or just look kinda bad, but I was willing to take that risk. I purchased 3.0m of each and treated myself to lunch before going back home.
Once home, I cut out the parts of the pattern that I needed, laid out the fabric, and started arranging my pieces. As you can see, it took up most of my floor and ended up being in both my living room and kitchen. Oh, the joys of living in a studio flat.
When I was happy with the placement of the first lot of pieces, I outlined them and cut them out. These were all for the main body of the cloak.
After that, I cut out the pieces that I needed for the lining.
I ended up with 12 pieces in total and, by that time, it had gotten dark. I decided to leave it there for the day and went to bed. Here is a pile of all the pieces…for some reason.
Oh, and I also made sure to label all of the pieces as I went along, so I wouldn’t be completely lost when it came time to put it all together.
Day 2: Sewing machine, instructions, and google:
At the start of the second day, it was time to unbox my sewing machine and figure out how to use it. While I had used a sewing machine before, the last time that I’d used one was when I was a teenager (close to 10 years ago…oof). So, I turned on my machine and sat down with the instruction manual. After a few minutes of reading, I successfully managed to wind up a bobbin.
Something that you might have noticed is that my sewing machine is on the floor and not on a table. This is because I have a grand total of 1 table in my flat and is too low to use the sewing machine with, as I would have been very hunched over the entire time. I opted to sit cross-legged on the floor and operate the foot pedal with my knee. It took a little bit of getting used to, in terms of adjusting the speed and such, but I managed it.
Before sewing any of the panels together, I grabbed a scrap of fabric and tried running it through the machine. It took a few attempts to get right, but I soon ended up with my first line of stitches.
Then it was time to start reading through the pattern instructions. The first thing that I had to do was to sew the 2 back pieces together. My seem allowance may have ended up being a bit too big, but the line was, at least, pretty straight. Not bad for a first step.
The next step was to sew the front 2 panels to the back panels. As you can see, I managed to do it but it was quite uneven. Nevertheless, I moved on.
The next step was then to repeat the first 2 steps with the lining while leaving a small-ish gap in one of the seams. Then I had to sew the lining to the main body of the piece along the top and shoulders. I struggled sewing around the tighter corners, as I was still getting used to the speed of the machine and using my knee to power it, but it didn’t turn out too bad in the end…even if I had to go over some bits twice.
I then moved onto understitching. Or, rather, to googling what understitching was. After skimming through a few webpages and watching a video tutorial, I found out what understitching was. I gave it a go and, in spite of a few gaps around the edge, I was actually really chuffed with how it turned out. For the most part, it looked good and I could start to see what the final cloak may look like.
After that, I sewed the bottom edges of the piece together and turned the entire thing inside out through the gap I had left in the lining. This hid all of the stitched and uneven bits (so far) inside of the cloak. I then moved onto to topstitching the entire piece…which I didn’t have to look up as I had come across it when looking up what understitching was. So, that was nice.
I didn’t do the best job with the topstitching, probably because I didn’t press anything (due to not owning an iron), but there was one corner that turned out really neat. I have never been more proud of a corner in my life. Just look at it!
After that, I looked up what a slip stitch was and used it to sew up the gap in the lining. And with that, most of the cloak was done! The only thing left to do was to sort out the fastenings. I managed to find some matching buttons in a lot that I bought from a charity shop a few months prior. I debated wrapping them, so they matched the main fabric of the cloak, but I didn’t know how to do that. And, by this point, I was starting to run out of steam.
I then put together the tabs for the buttons. Like with the cloak, I sewed them together inside out. I then turned them out though the button holes (which I wasn’t supposed to do, but it worked nevertheless).
I sewed the button holes by hand, as I had never tried sewing a button hole using a sewing machine and didn’t want to mess things up so close to finishing.
Earlier, when I had been cutting out the pattern pieces, I marked where the buttons of the cloak would go with pins. This is what things looked like after the first button and fastening had been attached. You can see where the pins are for the next set.
Once the second fastening was attached, the piece was done! It’s a little bit rough around the edges but, again, it turned better than I expected it to. The lining, also, didn’t end up looking too bad with the unique velvet of the cloak.
It ended up being a pretty good fit for me, too – so that was a plus! It was also pretty toasty, but I won’t really know how warm it actually is until the winter months roll around.
Throughout sewing the piece, I used the same bit of scrap that I started with to test the machine every time I changed the thread or bobbin around. This was just for my own peace of mind, as I didn’t want sew and entire section, only to find out that nothing stayed together once I took it out of the machine. I also used it to practice sewing around curves a little bit.
Overall, I’m glad that I decided to do this. It was, at times, quite stressful but I’m happy that I kept going with it. I’m proud of what I managed to do and I think I will end up making some as Christmas presents for people this year. This will come with its own challenges, mind you, as I will have to try and modify the pattern to accommodate some people of a slightly larger size. I will also have to copy out one of the smaller sizes for another person. I should have some tracing paper tucked away somewhere, so we’ll see what I can do.
For now, I will leave you with a recent discovery of mine – March of the unheard by The halo effect
See you next time!
Natalie's notebook 