Pandiola Lane: serge

Showing posts with label serge. Show all posts

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Chiffon Shawl

A friend of mine was going to a fancy wedding and needed some sort of shawl to match her dress and she asked if I could make her something. I admittedly am much more comfortable sewing with cotton but was willing to try working with whatever material she wanted. You have to start somewhere, right? We found this ivory chiffon (which scared me at first since I'd never sewed with it) but I got about 2 1/4 yards. She had the bottom hem of fabric from the dress when she had it altered so I incorporated that with some beaded trim. I LOVE how it turned out!

That serger in the background made a perfect rolled hem on the edges.

I love the way the bead add some shimmer and the rolled hem adds a slight curve to the edge of the chiffon.

My creation in action...

Saturday, December 10, 2011

T-shirt skirt

I finally did it.

I made a piece of clothing for myself that I

#1 LOVE and

#2 feel comfortable wearing outside of my house.

Here's the story:

My husband had these two grey shirts.

They were sooo soft but ended up in my sewing room because one had tiny holes and one had odd stains. So I cut strips around the holes and stains and whipped up an elastic waist skirt!

I wouldn't even attempt a tutorial on this because the whole project was an experiment with my serger. I'm still not sure if I had the correct settings for the differential feed, but I managed to get the seams smooth.

No puckering!

Whew!

And I've even worn it....in public!!

More than once!

That in itself means it was a successful project!

Go be thrifty!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Super Easy Napkins and Table Runner

It's Baseball Week on Pandiola Lane!

The morning of our Home Run Derby Party, I thought, wouldn't baseball napkins be fun?!?!

Better head to Joann's to get some fabric....

I bought a yard of this Alexander Henry "baseball": (the background is navy)

and half a yard of this:

I just bought myself a serger (a "end of the school year" present to myself) and am I LOVING how easy rolled hems are to do on it.

(If you've never used the rolled hem feature of your serger check out this Prudent Baby video on how it works.)

Ok ready for the steps? Here it goes:

1. Wash, dry and iron fabric.

*NOTE: this is the longest step of this project.

(No need to cut off all those threads from the wash since the serger will cut them off for you.)

2. Fold the yard of fabric in half (cut sides together) and trim the edges if needed to make the edge even.

Then fold in half again the same direction.

Then fold your long rectangle in thirds the other direction.

You will have it piled to make 12 napkins.

Does this picture help? (I forgot to take a picture.)

3. With the fabric still folded cut along all the folds. (Stick your scissors in the folds and cut as straight as possible.) You'll end up with your napkins all stacked up in a pile.

*NOTE: If you are very particular about all your napkins being precisely the same size, a cutting mat and big ruler might be a better option for you. If you need to make napkins SUPER FAST (like guests arriving in an hour fast), do it the way I did.

I figured if our guests were comparing napkin sizes, we must be throwing one super boring party.

4. Serge a rolled hem around each side of all the napkins, leave a chain of stitches hanging off each corner like so:

5. After you have your pile of napkins serged, keep them in a stack. Trim all the chains off one corner at a time of all 12 napkins (rather than all 4 corners of each napkin one at a time).

(This is just to save time - remember guests are showing up in less than an hour!)

Then dab a little fray check on each corner.

Repeat for the other corners.

6. And you're done!!

OK, ready for the table runner steps?

1. Serge a rolled hem on all 4 sides of the half yard of fabric.
2. Cut thread chain off corners.
3. Dab fray check on all corners.
4. DONE!