Tag: projects

Oh my gosh, do I like these shirts!  I love the color, I love the tiny ruffle variation and I love how quickly they came together.  I hoping that the dresses will come together quickly too, since I spent a lot of time fitting the shirts.
 

I especially love how the back is fitted. It’s not something I feel like I see a lot in shirts.

Are there things I would improve on, given my druthers?  Yep.  The top of the back is a bit too poofy and I probably could have given the bust another half inch or so.  Also, the tiny ruffles like to roll and expose the bias binding, perhaps because I over stay-stitched the neckline, perhaps because it’s just too much bulk.  The sleeves are weirdly puffy and I clearly have a ways to go in the setting-in-sleeves skill.  But overall?  Very happy.

Here I am pulling bobbin thread to make things fit.
 

And here I am sewing.
 

And here are sleeves attached.

Now I only need to attach the neck ruffles and bind those seams and voila!  I will have finished uniform shirts.

The good thing about making three of the same shirt is that there is time to improve on one’s task at hand.  So it went with attaching tiny ruffles to the sleeves.  I learned that I should trim all the tiny ruffles down a bit before sewing, so the millions of bits of thread don’t have to be removed later. I learned that it’s best to smoosh the ruffles so there is maximum ruffle, because that will still be enough to go around.  I learned that one should attach tiny ruffles to the sleeves and then trim a lot of the bulk from the seam line, which will make it easier to attach the bias tape.
 

Here’s some bias binding happening.  I’m noticing I still haven’t learned the trick for making sure the bias tape endings aren’t raw.  But I learned that trick too.
 

I’ve set in sleeves in my day and I like the process, if not always the result.  I like putting in three rows of gathering thread, which will be exuberantly ripped out once the sleeve is securely in place.  I went with bright orange because I’ve been ripping through the blue thread on this project, but also because contrast is easier to pull out after the fact.  Those are six sleeves, ready to be inserted and three shirts, ready to receive those sleeves.
 

Here they are, three sets of sleeve ruffles, nearly ready to ruffle.
 

And here I am ruffling them.  My fingers ached from all the pulling of bobbin threads.  I do a lot with my hands and they are pretty strong and don’t usually bother me, but something about the pinching and pulling really took its toll.  But there’s no crying in sewing.  (That’s a completely untrue statement.  There is often a fair amount of crying in sewing, especially when you finish a dress and decide the collar is horrid.  Just to take one random example.)
 

Attempt #3 at continuous bias tape was more successful with this tutorial.  The part that helped me the most is in the picture on the screen.  No Big Dill suggests actually numbering your lines so you can match things up and that worked wonders for me.
 

Cutting the continuous bias tape. Very satisfying.
 

French seams are awesome.  They neatly encase the raw edge of your fabric in a tube that is part of the fabric and would otherwise just be hanging out, needing finishing.  To make them you sew the seam with the wrong sides together (it feels so wrong, but it’s right), trim said seam, press open (and then over, if you are anal like me) and then pin the right sides together and sew the same seam again, then press again.  Here is a tutorial if you are interested.

If you followed all that, you have just realized that each seam of my three shirts needs to be stitched twice, trimmed once, and pressed twice.  There are seven seams per shirt (two neck, one back, two sides, and two sleeves) and three shirts so that makes 21 seams total which means 42 seams, 21 trims, and 42 pressing sessions.  All that is to say that all I did today was sew french seams until my eyes crossed.  Holy cow.

Here’s an example of the back.
 

The shoulder.
 

And the sleeve.  Still, they look pretty, don’t they?  And they are strong too, which is good for a work shirt.
 

To give myself a break, I started to make bias tape.  Here’s my fabric.
 

And here’s my joined triangle.
 

And here is me realizing that I have the angles wrong.  Blast!
This image comes from Colette Pattern’s book on the Laurel Variations, which is free to download and where I learned about the tiny ruffle variation of the Laurel.
 

To cheer myself, I cut out the fabric for the tiny ruffles.
 

All the fitting that is going to be done has been done.  So now it’s time to cut.  As you can see, my helper arrived right on schedule.  Unfortunately, he decided the best way to “help” would be to race around on top of the fabric.  This resulted in the helper being shut in the bedroom for a while.
 

Shirt pieces were cut.  And cut again.  And again.  It’s at this point that I think to myself, “If I was only making one of these shirts, I would be done by now.”  I’m sure that will not be the last time I have that thought.
 

Prepping the neckline for facings.
 

I used the tutorial from Gertie.
 

Shirts with neck facings.

Important note from the future:  For those of us making the tiny ruffle variation of the Laurel, I think the organza is overkill for the stay stitching.  There’s going to be a ruffle and bias tape there, no need to add the organza too.  Skip this step if you haven’t already done it.  Just do the stay stitching.  I’m guessing that’s all you need.