Sewing the Waist and Finishing Touches - Style Arc Misty Jeans Sewalong

You who!?!  Where'd ya go?

Sorry, Friends!  Halloween costume making got the better of me towards week's end.  Captain America was very happy with his costume though!

Captain America

I may do a post about his costume at a later date.  That star in the middle of his chest lights up!

Anyway, back to the Misty Jeans.

To attach the waist band, you have to decide on the size of your waistband.  I did not use the waistband guide for this step.  There are so many different types of elastic out that have varying stretch characteristics, that I felt it better to determine the elastic size myself.  I first put the elastic around my natural waist to my desired amount of tightness, then made sure that the elastic would stretch enough to go over my hips with relative ease.  I cut two pieces of the elastic to this length with about an inch of extra length added in for overlap where we will be sewing the elastic together to make a round waistband.

ZigZag Stitch 5.0 Width 1.0 Length

I set my sewing machine for a zigzag stitch (#5 on my machine) with a 5.0 stitch width and a 1.0 stitch length.  On a zigzag stitch, 1.0 is a tight stitch length that will place your stitches close together.

Joining the Ends of the Elastic

Next, I took one piece of my already cut to length elastic, brought it together like a belt would go together (a round loop, with no twisting of the elastic, just one round solid loop) and overlapped the elastic pieces by about 1/2 inch.  Then, I sewed the elastic together with my zigzag stitch.  I started about 1/4 inch from the top edge of the elastic.  Then I sewed to the bottom edge, reversed my stitch and sewed all the way back up to the top of the elastic, set my stitch back forward, and sewed to the bottom edge again.  This might be over kill, but it is what I always do when I am sewing elastic together.

  

This is what your seam on your elastic will look like once you are finished.  Just a nice solid line of stitching that will keep the elastic together, and keep it from fraying.

Trim the Elastic to Keep it Neat

Next, I trimmed away the extra elastic on both sides of the band, leaving a scant 1/4 inch outside the seam.  Now just repeat these steps to make a band out of your second piece of elastic.

ZigZag Stitch 5.0 Width 2.0 Length

Once both bands were joined it was time to sew the two bands together.  I will continue with a zigzag stitch with a 5.0 width, but I will change the stitch length to 2.0 so that there is space between the stitches.

Evenly Spaced Seams

In this step it is important to make sure that the areas you sewed to join your elastic to form bands are on opposite sides of the waistband.  If you put them together, it would cause problems with bulk, and the stress of those seams does not need to be in the same place.  Spread the love!

I only used two needles to hold the elastic together here.  You want to get your zigzag stitch as close to the edge of your elastic as you are comfortable with.  There is no reason to stretch the elastic as you are sewing at this point.  If you are the brave type and want to sew a straight stitch instead of a zigzag, you will have to stretch your elastic as you go, but I don't recommend trying that if you are a beginner.  You will get an opportunity to sew a stretched seam here in a few steps if you wish.

These Clips Rock

As I was sewing, the elastic bands were trying to move around a little on me, so every now and again I would throw one of these little clips on there in the interest of straightness.  It isn't necessary, but it helped.

Center Front Pinned in Place

Once you have joined your two pieces of elastic together, it is time to attach the elastic to the waistband.  Style Arc gives you directions that say to attach the waistband to the pants, because it gives you creative freedom to decide what method you want to use to join the two.  A really awesome thing about the double thickness of elastic is that you could use the two pieces of elastic to encase the top of the pants, and that would be a really awesome finish.  It is however a harder feat to achieve, so in the interest of keeping these pants beginner friendly, I am using the easiest method I am aware of.

Nancy Zieman goes in to this a bit on her website, except her tutorial that I found was for encasing the elastic with the pant fabric (I will encase the elastic on the next pair of Misty's that I make, but I won't be using this method).  With the Misty Jeans pattern, the elastic is actually part of the design element.  Still, her tutorial is a good one that will help with this step.  

You want to pin your elastic to the outside/right side of your pants.  I placed pins first at my two side seams, using the areas where I had sewn each elastic loop together as my quides.  Then I pinned my center front and center back.  After that, I placed a pin evenly between each of the pins that was already there for a total of eight pins.

 You can see from the picture above that my elastic is going to have to stretch to be the same width as my pant fabric.

This gives you a better idea of what this will look like once it is in your sewing machine and under the needle.  I am using the same zigzag stitch that I used to attach the two pieces of elastic to each other (5.0 wide, 2.0 length).  Once I have placed the needle in to the fabric, I will gently stretch the elastic to meet the pant material using my left hand to stretch behind the needle, and my right hand to stretch in front of the needle.  It is very important not to try to use the needle and one hand to stretch the elastic.  This can mess up the timing on your machine, break needles, and just wreak all kinds of havoc.

You could just stop at this step and be done with the waistband.  I wanted to run a row of topstitching along the top of the pant at the waist attachment to help keep the elastic neat and turned in the proper direction.  To do this, I turned my elastic up (how it would be when I wear the pants).  I set my machine for a straight stitch with a 3.0 length.  Then I stretched the elastic to it's maximum stretch and ran a stitch through the pant fabric, and the elastic that is on the inside of the pants (where we had attached the elastic to the pants).

Broken Needle #1

Over the course of this seam, I proceeded to break not one, but two needles.  This was completely my fault and not my machines.

Broken Needle #2

I have my machine set to stop with the needle down in the fabric.  When you are sewing through elastic that you are having to stretch by hand, you always want the machine to stop with the needle up.  Otherwise, when you let go of the fabric/elastic to readjust the area you are stretching the elastic will move and snap your needle.

If you have never snapped a needle before what kind of sewing sorcerer are you, there are some things that you will want to know here.  It is very important to make sure that the bottom of the needle does not drop down in to your machine as it is a PITA to try to retrieve and could do major damage to your machine if you tried to sew and forgot the needle piece was in there.  I generally go ahead and cut the thread with the fabric and presser foot still in place, remove the broken needle piece, and then go about changing my needle.  You will just want to start  your stitches about three stitches back from the point where you broke the needle.

Front of Style Arc Misty Jeans

Back of Style Arc Misty Jeans

Once you have finished the topstitching, the front and back of your jeans will look something like the pictures above.  See how the fabric puckers evenly between each stitch?  That is what we are going for.  I know that some of the more advanced sewist participating in the sewalong are using the harder method of encasing the pant fabric between the two elastic pieces.  I can't wait to see how those jeans turn out.

Our final step here is to sew the lower hem of the pants.

For this step you will need to employ a friend, spouse, or kiddo to pin the your hem.  Put your Misty Jeans on inside out and flip the lower hem up.  Have your helper get the hem even and pin it in place (then go check it in the mirror).

Notice my helper pinned the pins in the wrong direction

Once you are satisfied with the hem, take your pants off, and press the hem in place.  I like to do this around a tailor's ham, but have had equal success just pressing the hem flat.

Proper Pin Placement

After you have pressed your seam and then removed the pins, it is time to set up your sewing machine for this final step.

Insert a double needle, select the double needle setting if your machine has that function.  Select a straight stitch with a 3.0 stitch length.

If your machine has a removable free arm, take it off to reveal your perfect space for sewing pant hems.  If you don't have a removable free arm (why does that now sound right) then you can still sew this, the free arm just makes it a little easier is all.

Turn your pants right side out and remove your pins.  Your pressed edge will be your guide.  Line the pressed edge of your pants hem up with the one inch line on the throat plate of your machine.  If you don't have a one inch line, just put a piece of tape one inch out from the center point where your needle would align for a straight stitch.  Does that make sense?  I like to start hem stitching at my inseam.  Just sew a twin needle stitch all the way around the pant hem, and do the same for the other leg, making sure to overlap your stitches at the beginning/end for a few stitches.  Now press the hem to set the stitches, trim your excess fabric from the inside of the hem, and guess what?  WE ARE DONE!!!  Yay!

Neatly Trimmed Hem

Finished Hem

Friends, thank you so much for sticking with me through the ups and downs of October and making it to the end of this Sewalong.  You are real troopers!  Tomorrow (hopefully) I will have the reveal post up along with the details for entering your own Misty Jeans into the sewalong to win cool swag.  I can tell you today that I have decided to leave the entry open til November 30th.  If you guys are having half the craziness in your lives that I am having, I know that you will need the extra time.

Sewing Knits With A Twin Needle...The Unofficial Tutorial

Friends, it has been all over the sewing blogosphere lately that people are having problems using a twin needle with knits.

The stitches look wonky, but I promise they aren't!

I too was having this problem until very recently when I read my manual, and my child read the back of the needle package and told me I was doing it wrong (thank goodness for little boys that read everything they can get their hands on and love to prove Mommy wrong...I think!).  After much research and combing blogs and YouTube, this is what I have come to learn.  I hope that these tips will be helpful for some of you as well.

This first one is one that I have always known, but I guess a lot of people didn't realize.  You don't need two rolls of the thread you are going to be using.  Simply wind a bobbin with your thread color and use that as your second roll.

Your rolls of thread should be spooling in opposite directions.  So if the thread you are using for the left eye is unrolling clockwise, then the spool you are using for the right eye should unroll counter clockwise.

If your machine does not have a second spool holder, you have two options.  You can either thread your spool and bobbin on one holder or you can use the peg that is for winding bobbins for your second holder.  The choice is yours, just see which gives you a better look.

On some but not all machines you can see the pressure plates that give your upper thread tension.  If you can see these and manage it, you should thread your left thread to the left of the pressure plates, and your right thread to the right of the pressure plates.  I don't have a picture of this as my machine isn't made so that I can see the pressure plates.

If your machine has a twin needle setting make sure to select it.  It does some kind of adjusting of tension, though I can not see a real difference on my machine if I do or don't select this feature.

This next tip is probably one of the biggest mistakes most of us are making.  When you thread the needle, thread the left needle through the thread holder/bar that is just above the needle.  When you thread the right needle, DO NOT thread it through the thread holder that is just above the needle.  I know...shocking, right?  This is supposed to really help with the tunneling effect that can sometimes happen when we are sewing knits with a twin needle.

Some people like to prepare their fabric with knit stay tape.  I especially recommend this if you are using a lighter knit, but really find it to be an unnecessary step with heavier knits.  With this t-shirt weight knit I just pressed the hem under an inch.

One good thing that knit stay tape does do though is give you a line to follow since you can't see where the fabric ends since you are stitching on the right side of the fabric.  Since I know that my hem is pressed under an inch, I know that if I line my fabric up at the inch mark, then the two needles will fall on either side of the hem/raw edge.

Make sure that you are not stretching the fabric as you sew it.  This will lead to upper loops that rise up from the fabric.  Just let the feed dogs do their magic, and while you are at it, slow down.  Sewing fast is not going to be helpful here.  I usually line my index finger of my right hand up with whichever measurement guide I need to be at and let that be the only thing that guides my fabric through the machine.

Your goal with the double needle is to straddle the cut edge of the fabric so that one line of stitching is above the actual raw edge and one line is below, thus encasing your raw edge.

See how the upper threads get pulled to the underside, and the bobbin thread ends up making a zig zag between the upper threads?  That is what gives the twin needle stitch it's ability to stretch with stretchy fabrics.

Finally, make sure to spread your stitch out some.  I prefer a stitch setting of 3.0 for twin needle stitching on knits.  I also end with a back and forth stitch so that I don't have to tie off the ends, but that is just my preference because it seems that when I try to tie them off, I manage to tie too tightly and mess up the stitches and cause puckering.

I hope that you find these tips helpful.  Please feel free to comment with any additional tips that any of you might have.

Bound Buttonholes

Are you a fan of the PBS series It's Sew Easy?  If you aren't familiar it is an informative show on sewing, quilting and embroidery hosted by different industry experts, as well as bloggers and writers.  Gertie of Blog for Better Sewing fame and Angela Wolf pattern designer (though not plus friendly) are two of my favorites to watch when they are on an episode.  I try to catch the show when I can on TV, but also like to watch the episodes online.  Each week a different episode is available for viewing online.  If they are totally quilt related, I will usually skip them because I am not a quilter.

This weeks episode is only available through Friday at Noon.  You can view it at www.itsseweasytv.com.  The first lesson was Angela Wolf embellishing a woven jacket with applique.  For me it was a snooze fest, but if that is your thing by all means go watch it.  The second lesson was by Marie Zinno who was doing embroidery on a sweat or yoga jacket.  Again, it was a bit of a snooze fest for me.  I don't have an embroidery machine, and honestly if I were going to embroider an item, I would do it by hand, as I enjoy the tediousness of hand embroidery.

The best lesson started at 18:10 in to the video.  

Screenshot taken from www.itsseweasytv.com

In this lesson Janet Pray (just click on her name to read her Craftsy instructor profile) demonstrates proper technique for making a bound buttonhole.  I don't know about you, but bound button holes are one of those things that confound me at times.  My brain often can't compute the idea of sewing something on the right side of a garment and then turning it in to the wrong side.  I thought that Janet's demonstration of the technique was concise, and not confusing at all.  It was the way my grandmother would have been taught to do it instead of some of the shortcut ways that are in tutorials all over the internet.

You have about 24 hours to go catch this video before it is on to a new episode.  If you have some coat making in your future, the 12 minute investment of time is well worth the knowledge gained!