Book Club Hacked

Hey, friends! Have you seen the new top from Ellie and Mac? The Book Club top is adorable!! I love the V color blocking and the loose sweater fit of this top. It's so much fun and leaves so many options for customizing. 

Recently I wrote a blog for Ellie and Mac about how to do an FBA on the Book Club top. Tops with color blocking across the chest can be complicated to do an FBA on and I wanted to be sure that everyone who needed an FBA would be able to do it with minimal complications. The blog has not yet been published, but when it is, I will come back with a direct link.

Well, in the process of writing this blog I discovered that I really wanted to hack the double V color blocking into a single V and then I had about 3 million other ideas but I can only make one at a time and even then I'm still learning how to take photos to show how I hack things, so I hope a single photo and some great explanations will get you there.

The first thing I did was trace out the pattern in my size with my adjustments and then I just taped the top and middle sections of the pattern together and treated them as one piece. The photo above shows the sleeve but the back and front pieces are going to be treated the same. Oh, I bet this top would be adorable with the middle and bottom piece treated as one and just the top piece be separate from the others and with a V-neck! See, so many ideas! This technique is also great for making a solid top. The fit of this sweater is awesome. I can definitely see why one would want to make the Book Club in a multitude of styles.

I know, pretty lame pattern hack, but I'm still trying to get a hold of this whole slow-down-and-take-photos thing. I keep forgetting to take it easy and enjoy the process, but I'm working on getting better, I think.

Have you ever used this kind of pattern hack? What is your favorite pattern to hack?

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And the Whole Family

This was my first (that I have photos of) challenge to sew for a whole family that was not my own husband and children. I had so much fun planning and measuring and sewing these shirts! I totally want to do it again!

Thank you, Nathan and Heather, for letting me invade your home and take measurements and photos and plan this all out without your input of what I was making.

You all turned out so adorable! And even if Greyson was a pill, the photos are super cute!

I really would like to try again sometime. When we can get outside in the warmth and sunshine with a good camera that has a fully battery so I don't have to fall back on my phone's crappy camera.

Ahhhh! I seriously have the cutest niece and nephew!

If you're curious as to the patterns and fabric, please check out "Fancy Raglan Hack" and "Like Father Like Son"

I had so much fun! Watch out Kim, you might be next!

The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!

Like Father Like Son

Sewing for my sister-in-law and my niece was so much fun and their shirts turned out so cute (check those sews out here) that I just knew I needed to get my brother and nephew in on all the fun.

Though I'm not sure how much fun Greyson was having. When I arrived at his house and refused to change his shirt. That was to be expected. He is only 2. Kaylie was able to convince him to change his shirt, but he was definitely not going to consent to me taking his photo. Absolutely not!

My brother tried everything! We had high hopes of him coming around, eventually.

A quick note about these fun shirts. The front is made from a beautiful tie-dye DBP from The Fab Clique the rest are from a variety of other places that I probably can't even place.

Greyson's shirt is the Petite Stitchery Ragtag Raglan. These great color-blocked sleeves come as part of the pattern. There is also a solid sleeve option. The pattern begins at size 2T and goes up to size 12. It has a nice straight cut and a trim fit.

Nathan's shirt is the 5 Out of 4 Ryan Raglan, and it is such a versatile pattern with a hood and round and V-neck. The cut looks amazing on him! The color block on the sleeves is not included in the pattern. I used the color block on the sleeves of Greyson's top as an example to make them look the same. It was a fun process and the results are spectacular.

This next photo is my favorite! Greyson was being a typical 2 year old and didn't want to do anything he was asked. So much stubbornness in this boy! But look at my brother, look at his face. That is the look of patience and love!

He looks just like his daddy did at this age! I love these two! Thank you, Nathan and Greyson for letting me sew for you and photograph you!

Do you have a crazy toddler that you try to photograph? Do you have any tricks or treats that work to get good photos? Please share!! I need to know!

The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!

Fancy Raglan Hack

Ages and ages ago, when I very first started sewing I would spend hours and hours browsing Pinterest looking for some of the neatest looking clothes that I could figure out how to hack. Some of them I tried and others I just pinned and waited.

Well, I recently received some beautiful fabric from Whisky Tango Fabrics with the challenge to "make it unique!" Raven wanted us to make stuff that stood out from the crowd, something with a little bit of a twist so that people would stop to take a closer look.

I am not very good at standing out. I like to go with the crowd. It's easier that way. I also really like solids! So when I opened my package and found tie-dye stripes I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. What on earth was I going to make with tie-dye stripes?

Rayon Spandex and absolutely beautiful, but definitely not a solid 😂 This was going to take a lot more creativity than I thought.

The other two fabrics, equally as beautiful, were a yard of this amazing turquoise chiffon and 1.5 yards of white geo shapes on stretch mesh. I knew exactly what I was going to make with the mesh! But more on that in another post.

The chiffon and the tie-dye stripes coordinated beautifully! They needed to be sewn together, but how exactly?

This pin, from years and years ago, popped into my head and I knew it had to happen!

Now, I have to give credit where credit is due. This adorable hack can be found over at Peekaboo and it is different from mine, but this is where my idea originated. I just didn't know it even existed. Shame on me, but the photo on Pinterest didn't have a link and I didn't do a reverse search until I wanted to write this blog post and wanted to credit the right person for the idea and the photo. So, please go over there and take a look! You wont be sorry!!

My beautiful little niece, Jenna, is modeling for me! This whole tutorial is based on her shirt, but I made one for her mamma too.

Using the Ellie and Mac Unisex Raglan as the base, I traced out the front pattern piece in Jenna's size onto tracing paper. Set the original pattern piece aside for the moment before cutting it out in ivory cotton lycra along with the neckband. I also cut the back and sleeves out of the rayon spandex tie-dye stripe.

Now to finish our piece on the tracing paper. We aren't quite done with it yet.

I traced out the changes in black to make them a little easier to see. I added 1.5 inches to the fold so that there would be some fabric to gather at the neckband. If we didn't add this fabric, the chiffon, being a woven would give the neckband no stretch and it would be near impossible to go over Jenna's head. Now I tell you this now, I wish I had added closer to 3 inches, not for any reason in particular, but I would have liked to see more gathering at the neckline. What I did was find, but I think it would look more fancy to have had more, that's all.

Now at the bottom of the pattern piece, I want the hem to be curved a little, so I added 1 inch to the middle and then curved it gently back to the side so the bottom of the chiffon would hang down past the middle of the shirt front. (If you have spotted my error, please leave it for everyone else to find as I expound on it a little bit later)

I started by sewing the sleeves to the back of the top. Here you see the sleeve attached to the back bodice. See how beautiful the tie-dye is? Sorry, my photos are such a mess!

Next, I serged the raw edges of the chiffon, and this is where I realized the mistake I made. Notice that I didn't realize what I had done until it was completely serged? Yeah, I have no idea how I missed it, but it makes me laugh to think about it.

Yep, I drew the curve on the bottom of the pattern piece in the wrong direction! Thank goodness I had enough chiffon left to draw it again!

I just simply trimmed off the incorrect curve and taped some paper to the end and redrew the curve an inch down, just like before, only this time I knew it was going to be correct.

 Okay, now after messing up, I finished serging the chiffon raw edges and then hemmed all bodice pieces. The pattern calls for a half-inch hem, so I just folded up the cotton lycra hem and the rayon spandex hem half-inch and topstitched them down. But for the chiffon, I tried a little bit different approach. Chiffon can be a little finicky and kind of likes to slide, especially against its self, so I serged the edge and folded it over twice on the serged edge and then topstitched close to the edge. It looks really great and the extra stitching gives the hem just a little bit of weight.

The next step is to gather the neckline. There are lots of different ways to gather, check out this blog I wrote for Eunoia if you would like to learn of some great ways to do it, or you can just pull up the middle straight line of stitching from the right needle of your serger and gather that way. I was going to do that, but I didn't get close enough on one part of the neck and that middle thread isn't in the fabric, so I can another line of stitching through the middle of the serging line and I used that to gather.

Then comes the hard part, making the gathering match the length of the original neckline. You can, and probably should baste it together. I didn't, but I like to live dangerously 😆😈😇😂

At this point I went ahead and sews the sleeves to the front piece, making sure I caught the chiffon while sewing. And then went ahead and finished the side seams too. Look at how good this is looking! I am just tickled that it looks so good!

And with the addition of the neckband and a quick hem of the sleeves, we have a complete top! Yay! It turned out so good! Even though I kind of wish there had been more gathers at the neck, I am very pleased!

And here we have Miss Jenna and her mom, Heather in their finished shirts! They turned out better then I could have dreamed they would!

And here they are together! Awww, so sweet! Jenna was not happy about having to get up and take photos, she was much happier on the ground kicking and playing and watching.

The base pattern for Heather's Fancy Raglan is the Runway Raglan from Petite Stitchery. It's a beautiful pattern with some very fun sleeve and shoulder details. The only thing I did was cut the unchanged front and back bodices with a straight hem and the chiffon overlay on the curved hem and cut the chiffon to be 1.5 (again I wish I had done more like 3) inches from the center fold and added about 4.5 inches of swing to the chiffon with a cut and spread method. I am very pleased with how Heather's Runway Raglan turned out!

Photos could have been a little bit better, but that's what you get when you forget to change the dead camera battery and have to use your crappy little phone on wiggling targets. Oh man, I have so much fun stuff to show you from my photoshoot with my brother and his family. This is just the tip of the iceberg!

Tell me, when was the last time you were so confident in what you were doing that you made a whole lot of little mistakes? This whole endeavor, even though it turned out well, was a small series of little mishaps that kept setting me back in my confidence. All in all, it was a good experience and I hope I can remember not to be quite so overconfident next time.

The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!

Eliminating the Everyday Back Seam

I've been busy writing blogs for Ellie and Mac again! If you want to check out all the details of my sewing adventures, please head on over there and find out all the fun I've been up to!!

"It's no surprise that The Everyday Tee is my very favorite top. I'm pretty sure making this one made put the number of them in my closet up to 8. One of the things about this pattern that makes me love it so much is the seam in the back that all I have to do is fold my yard of fabric in half and cut out the front on the fold and the back on the other side, super quick and easy because I don't have to refold the fabric! A seam up the back is also very helpful for some adjustments like swayback (link to a tutorial here), but not everyone needs that adjustment. So I'm going to show you how to eliminate the back seam. 

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And there you have it! Well, you will if you check out the blog post over at Ellie and Mac. The Everyday Tee cut with the back on the fold! In the photo above you can see my need for a swayback adjustment, which is why I love the center back seam and left it on my pattern, that adjustment is so much easier with a center back seam. Follow the link to the Swayback adjustment if you'd like to learn a little bit more about diagnosing and adjusting for swayback."

Talk about fun! I love being able to make small changes that make my sewing more personalized and more "me" and teaching other people to do the same feels like a HUGE blessing! Thank you for taking a moment to check it out!

The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!

Coby's Spring Start

What do you do when the love of your life supports your crazy sewing addiction? Why you make him a new shirt, of course!

Coby has this thing about big colorful floral type prints. He has always loved them! Back when we were first married we would comb the thrift stores for the brightest "Hawaiian" button-ups we could find and then he would wear them until they wore out! At one point he had like 8 or 9 of them!

Eventually, we had children and stopped buying him all the florals and had to start paying attention to clothing the children. Which is super fun and very important, but now that our children aren't growing out of everything we bought them last week, we can concentrate a little more on the clothes he likes to wear. A dress code change at work that allows him a little more self-expression is helping an awful lot.

So I made it my mission to find a bunch of fabulous men's patterns and get my hands on fabric's he would like so that I could fill his side of the closet with clothes that he enjoyed and made him feel good. I think we are well on our way.

This is the Mark Tee from Annelaine Patterns and it has some great options, including color blocking, a chest pocket, long sleeves, short sleeves, and a vest option as well as a crew or V-neck. I picked the simplest version for this shirt because of the fun colors it already has, just a short-sleeved V-neck and it's pretty much perfect.

The fabric is Double Brushed Poly from The Fab Clique called Xitlalli Tropical Leaves and it is the perfect fabric for beginning Coby's Spring/Summer wardrobe. Because I'm going to be making him, lots of them, if I have anything to say about it.

Now that the Spring wardrobe has started, we just need to wait on the snow to melt before it can actually be spring and Coby no longer needs a coat to keep him warm. Coats cover up my work!

What other men's patterns do you know of? I have several, but clearly, I need more, please share with me your favorite designs.

The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!

Buttons and Buttonholes

I spent two weeks researching buttons and buttonholes as thoroughly as I possibly could to bring you all of this great information. But I am only going to give you a small taste of what was written because I would very much appreciate you showing support to the Eunoia Design Group for commissioning me to write this blog. You can find the whole blog post over there in all it's glorious detail! Thank you!!

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Buttons, as intimidating at they may seem really aren’t that difficult, once you understand the basics. First, when you have a pattern and you know buttons are needed, the pattern should give you some indication of the size button (not that you need to use buttons of that size, but they are usually what is recommended). This button size should be written right into the pattern with the notions needed. You are more than welcome to use whatever size buttons you want, just keep in mind that the specific look the pattern was designed for maybe based around the buttons and changing them, while fun and probably super adorable, can change the balance of the pattern and you may need to adjust the spacing and size of the buttonholes.

Buttonhole placement 

Generally, buttonhole placement is marked with a large “I” shape that is either vertical or horizontal "H" depending on which way the buttonhole needs to be. Usually, but not always, there can be an X indicating the actual button placement. It may be on the opposite piece from the buttonhole (just like a button would be opposite a buttonhole) or it may be on the buttonhole, or it may be missing altogether. That’s okay, a button and a buttonhole go together, so if you’re missing the “X” just use the buttonhole placement guide, it won’t steer you wrong!

These markings need to be transferred to your fabric. Now, let’s say your pattern calls for one-inch buttons and you decide you would like to use half-inch buttons but you want to have the buttons be more frequent to make up for the smaller size, or just to look pretty. You can absolutely do this! What a great idea! But you may have a little math to do to keep everything even. Now, I’m not going to give you this math, because it’s going to be different depending on the size buttons, size of the pattern and personal tastes, but I will show you a tool that will make this so much easier!

Photo from Amazon

This is a sewing gauge. It is used to help plan the button placement you want on your pattern. I wish I had one to show you how to works. But this one isn't mine, it's from Amazon. This is not an affiliated link, just a link back to the product to give credit where credit is due.

Anyway, you can use this fancy tool to help calculate the distance of the buttons without any fancy math. How cool is that?!

Okay, so buttonholes have been marked! Step one down! Yay!

Next step! 

Stabilization!

Unless you are using a really heavy and stable fabric, you are going to want to stabilize your fabric before sewing buttonholes into it. You should have instructions in your pattern to the weight of the stabilizer you should be using, but a light to medium weight should work just fine. You will want a kind that is made for collars and buttons. I prefer to use iron-on interfacing, but where we will be sewing into this, you can use a sew-in stabilizer and it should work just fine, it just might slide around, but I wouldn’t know for sure, because I always use iron-on. Do not use an interfacing that is labeled as no-sew, it will gum up your needle something fierce, I learned that lesson the hard way, learn from my mistakes, my friends. But feel free to use knit interfacing on knit fabrics and woven interfacing on woven fabrics, unless your pattern specifically says different.

Real quick, I want to show you the difference between a buttonhole with interfacing and one without.

The one with the interfacing looks so much more crisp and clear and even. The one without has uneven stitches and is stretched out a little. 

Speaking of the “look,” did you know there is more than one kind of buttonhole? There are a whole bunch!

I have a Brother SE-400 and I have 10 different programmed 1-step buttonholes! And I am quite sure you could find more styles if you wanted to look. But because I only have my machine to play with, I’m only going to talk about these particular and common buttonholes.

But before I delve into the looks and uses, I want to show you my buttonhole foot. From every angle.

This is what’s called a 1-step buttonhole foot. That just means that when I select the buttonhole I want to sew and set it up correctly all I will need to do is start the machine sewing and the foot will tell the machine all it needs to know about how and where and how big the buttonhole needs to be.

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Oh, my friends! That was a lot to sit through. I am super impressed that you have made it this far! Thank you for joining me on this journey through buttonholes and their many creations and buttons and their fun! I have a deep love for buttons and a collection that rivals my mother’s!

I sure hope that you have come to appreciate and understand buttons just a little bit more, at least enough to make them a little less scary.

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If you are intrigued by this and want to learn more, please stop by the Eunoia Blog and take a look at the whole thing. There is a lot of information and a lot to take in, so if you have questions, leave them here for me and I'll get back to you! Thank you for taking a moment to check this out!

The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!