It’s really quite smart, you sew seam binding into the skirt’s waistline seam, edge-stitching the top and bottom so it’s nice and strong, and then when the bodice and skirt are sewn together, there’s a stable, thick waistline seam in there to accentuate the waistline and strengthen that area of the garment. This is what I love about vintage sewing patterns, there’s always a few little gems in there, construction methods that we don’t see that often in simple modern sewing patterns.

If you have a dress with a waistline seam, you could add this to your project too!

Here’s how it’s done. First cut a length of seam binding according to the guide. The guide is basically the measurement of the skirt’s waistline, if you are adding this to a different pattern. Or, if you think the waistline needs to be a little tighter, cut it the length you want the waistline to be, plus seam allowance on each side.

Sew the skirt pieces together, and pin the seam binding to the top edge of the waistline. Baste in place. (I think I skipped basting and went right to sewing it permanently.)

Now, edgestitch both the upper and lower edges of the seam binding. These two rows of stitching help to strengthen the waistline, as adding topstitching adds stiffness. Sewing it to both sides makes it strong and keeps one side from stretching out. This seam allowance doesn’t get trimmed, we’ve sewn the binding to the seam allowance and it’s going to stay that wide.

Now, sew the bodice to the skirt, along the seamline. The seamline is going to be right where the seam binding ends. Here’s what it will look like when it’s sewn. I’m glad I have contrast stitching to show you!

Here is what it looks like as we sew up the lining:

It’s going to be hidden between the layers, nothing more fancy than a strong, untrimmed allowance reinforced with binding. Our waistline will never stretch out but it won’t be too restrictive either.

A step back, looking at the same thing as the last photo:

And that’s it! It’s completely hidden in the inner workings of the dress.

What do you think of this method? Does it count as a ‘waist stay’ in your opinion? Have you ever seen this type of construction in a sewing pattern before?

Why do I like inserting zippers by hand, when there are faster ways to do it?

• It’s strong.
• It’s easy to adjust as you sew, so the zipper opening is even and the zipper is centred
• It’s nearly invisible, and if it shows it looks good (in my opinion anyways!)
• If the zipper breaks later on, it’s easy to rip it out and replace with a new zipper, without having to unpick the construction of the dress

For the Cambie Dress pictured below, I decided to insert a hand-picked zipper instead of the invisible zipper called for in the pattern instructions. I had a brown vintage metal zipper that matched fairly well, and I liked the idea of using the vintage zipper in this vintage-inspired dress.

Do you think the zipper manufacturer likes exclamation points as much as I do? Automatic Locking! Smooth Running! (That’s a lot of excitement for a zipper!)

How to sew a hand-picked zipper in the Cambie Dress:

Sew the shell of the dress, and the lining of the dress as directed in the instruction sheet. Now, pin the lining to the shell as if you’d sew the zipper into the dress, but without actually sewing the zipper in.

Sew shell to lining along zipper opening, from the top edge to where the centre back seam starts.

Now, clip the seam allowance at the corners, and turn the dress right side out.

The green lining makes it easy to see what’s happening here! We have a nicely-finished opening at centre back, all ready for our zipper to be sewn in.

Now, take the zipper, and turn the tape ends under at the top edge, with the tape ends facing you.

Pin zipper into centre back opening, lining up the folded top edge with the cleanly-finished top edge of the dress.

Here’s what that looks like, from the inside:

Continue pinning the zipper in place, making sure the waistband seams and the top edges line up.

You can see the opening is finished with lining, so there’s a little peek of the lining along the centre back zipper opening.

Sew in the hand-picked zipper as shown in this post here – A Hand-Picked Zipper.

Now you may not like having the lining show like this, but once the zipper is sewn in, it will be hardly noticeable. If it still bugs you, choose a matching lining. Or don’t follow these steps, and instead, slipstitch the lining to the zipper tape once the zipper is inserted. (The advantage to doing it the way I did, is that the zipper is easy to replace if it breaks.)

What do you think: do you love hand-picked zippers as much as I do? Or are you an invisible zipper fan all the way?

What if you’ve shortened the zipper, and have a cut end that looks like you cut it yourself? (Which you did, but we don’t want it to look that way if we can help it.) What can we do?

This!

Oops, I didn’t trim my threads before taking photos.. and didn’t seem to take any after trimming them. (The dreaded Hairy Garment!) Ah well. Imagine there aren’t any hairy loose threads distracting you from the main point of this photo – the fabric-covered invisible zipper end!

On my Hazel Dress, I shortened the invisible zipper, and thought I would cover the end so it’s pretty as well as comfortable.

It was quite dark when I did this, so my photos aren’t the greatest but I thought I’d mention how I did this, in case you wanted to try it on your next scratchy zipper end. (And also for my own records. Sometimes I forget what I did, it’s nice to read through my own posts as a reminder.) It adds a nice finishing touch and softens a stiff zipper, to make your garments more comfortable to wear!

How to cover a scratchy zipper end:

Cut a small rectangle from scrap fabric. I wish I’d measured mine before sewing it up now, but it was about the width of the zipper plus seam allowances, and four times the width of the zipper for the length measurement.

Press under the seam allowances on either side, so that the zipper cover (we’ll call it that from now on) is the same width as the zipper tape.

Press under the other ends too. Sew to the zipper, with the inside of the zipper facing you, as shown in the photo below. You’ll wrap the tab up and to the front, so it’s easy to sew from the right side.

Next, wrap the folded end around to the front, and line up the folded edge with the line of stitching you just sewed.

Stitch all around the zipper cover as shown, pivoting at the corners. When in doubt, stop short of each corner, as it’s easy to overshoot and sew off the edge. (Ask me how I know!)

(And don’t forget to trim those stray threads.)

I hope this helps! I know these aren’t the greatest photos, but it’s challenging to photograph black fabric late at night. The point was to give you an idea of how to cover the ends of your zipper if you wanted to try it on your next project!

Have you ever done this with your zipper end? Any tips to add?

It’s not complicated to do but I did take photos as I cut the muslins, so I thought I would share them in case they are helpful to you!

This was a muslin for the Hollyburn Skirt. There’s not a ton of fabric to work with, but we’ll save a bit of muslin by cutting small pieces.

When you’re cutting apart the first muslin, you don’t have to be super accurate. The goal is to salvage as much as possible! (You could unpick the seams, but that would be much slower, and speed is important to me.)

This works best if you’re about to muslin a pattern with many small pieces. While cutting the muslin for Hazel, I also cut a muslin for Parfait at the same time, which has several little pieces that are required for the muslin.

Now we have two decent-sized pieces of muslin to work with here!

When you’re placing the pattern pieces on the muslin, look through the tissue to find the grain of the muslin. It’s not super easy to see. If you’re having trouble, you could tear the edges of your fabric to determine the crosswise grain, and then use this edge to find the grainline. You’ll end up with less muslin to use but it’s best to have your pieces cut on grain as much as possible, for the best fit.

I cut one piece at a time but you could easily place all of the pieces and cut them all at once.

Look how many pieces I was able to cut from just the skirt fronts! That’s a bodice back, a bodice side front, a strap piece and a strap tab. Four pieces that I’d have to cut out of fresh muslin otherwise.

Do you do this, re-use old muslins for new muslins? If not, it’s a great way to reduce the amount of waste we create! (Especially me. Between Caroline and I, we make a lot of muslins.) If you’ve never thought of doing this, I hope this post was helpful!

I came across these photos from the making of this dress, and debated whether this was interesting enough to post. I decided yes, so here you go!

As I unfolded the pattern pieces, thinking of how careful I was going to be in tracing them off so the delicate originals would last longer, I thought of a lazy way out good alternative! (It only works on small pattern pieces, but every bit of time saved is more time to enjoy sewing…)

First, you’ll need a photocopier.

Carefully unfold the small pieces and arrange them face-down on the photocopier glass. Smooth out any wrinkles or folds.

Press copy, and voila!

Double-check the copy against the original, to make sure it printed out correctly.

Nice, eh? It works better if the pieces are pressed first. Next time, I’d give them a gentle press with a dry iron to make sure they don’t copy with creases in them.

Even better if you can trick the photocopier into copying on ledger-size paper! (For us that’s twice the size of a regular Letter-size page.)

What do you think? Easy and fast, right? The sooner we trace (if we do decide to trace) our patterns, the faster we can get to the sewing! Although not many people have copiers in their homes so you’d have to bring the pieces to work, the library or school, and hope no one is looking as you start photocopying vintage pattern pieces.

The most important thing if you do photocopy patterns is to make sure they come out exactly the same as the originals, same dimensions, no wrinkles, no shrinkage.

Oh and one other thought – save the scrap paper cuttings for alterations, notes, etc. Perfect for when you’re adding length and you need to insert paper between slashes of the original pattern!

Have you tried this before? (Has everyone been doing this and I’m just discovering it now?) I thought I’d show you in case you were wondering if it was an acceptable way of preserving the patterns, but didn’t know who to ask. I did it, it works, and I only had to trace the large pieces – front, back and sleeve. I saved the time it would take to trace six pieces!

What do you think, is it a reasonable alternative to tracing or a lazy way out?

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Just putting them in a properly marked envelope isn’t enough. I also wanted them to be stronger than the regular tissue paper so they’d survive multiple uses. Instead of tracing, I decided to fuse some fusible interfacing to the pattern pieces. Why not? It adds a fabric-like feel to the tissue, strengthens the tissue so it resists tearing, and even makes the ink show up brighter!

Before starting, I cut a small scrap of interfacing and a scrap of the tissue to test. You might want to do this to see if the fusible interfacing is a good match for the pattern tissue. I’m using a non-woven interfacing, the cheaper kind that I don’t like to use for sewing but seem to have a lot of in my collection. It’s a little stiff, thinner than a sheet of paper but not too thin.

Important: Turn off the steam on your iron. Steam makes the tissue shrink up and ripple and distorts the shape of the pattern piece. And once the interfacing is fused to the pattern piece, it’s staying that way! (I know this, but forgot when I fused my test piece – now that was a good way to remind myself.)

If you can’t turn off the steam, turn the heat setting down to the synthetic setting. Often there’s a little indicator next to each heat setting, letting you know at what heat temperature the steam turns on.

Here’s what the test looked like. You can see how much thicker the pattern pieces will be!

My pattern pieces are stronger, without being too bulky to fold up. If they get wrinkly in between uses, I can give them a quick press and they’ll be as good as new!

For the actual pattern pieces, I cut loosely around each pattern piece, leaving an inch to half-an-inch around the cutting lines.

If the tissue is wrinkly, press it with a dry iron.

Now cut a piece of interfacing slightly larger than the cutting lines, about the size of the tissue with its edges. It’s OK if the pieces aren’t exactly the same size. We’ll trim off the excess tissue and interfacing when we cut around the cutting lines.

Place the interfacing sticky-side up under the tissue. Fuse the interfacing to the tissue, using a press cloth if you want. (I didn’t, but it might be a good idea to avoid getting sticky residue on your iron.)

Cut around the cutting lines for the size you plan to make.

The fused pieces are still flexible…

and you can pin through them easily…

Seems like a good idea! I’ve never done this to a pattern before. I’ll report back after using the pattern if you like and let you know what they were like to work with. I’d imagine tissue fitting would be fine, if not slightly easier to do.

Have you ever done this with your pattern pieces? How did they hold up over time? In your opinion, are there any drawbacks to fusing your pattern pieces to fusible interfacing?

Here are more blog posts about the Renfrew Top. (Get the pattern here.)

• A Big List of Tips for Sewing Knits!
• Three Tips for Sewing Stripes
• Introducing the Renfrew Top
• Sewing the Renfrew Top: What Would You Like to See?
• What’s a Stable Knit Fabric?
• Assembly-Line Cutting and Sewing
• Cutting Knit Fabric: Making Sure Your Project is Cut On-Grain

A jersey knit like this has a wrong side, and a right side. The right side has tiny little vertical lines almost like ‘ribs’ on the surface, while the wrong side has no vertical lines and might look like there’s a horizontal texture to it. I hope it’s somewhat visible in this photo!

Can you see the slight vertical ‘stripe’ texture on the right side? The right side is on the bottom of the photo, the wrong side is on the top.

Another way to tell the right side of the cotton is the selvedges curl towards the wrong side. If you turn over the edge, the wrong side has the curled edge that can be unrolled. In the photo below, the wrong sides are on the inside.

Have you ever had a knit tee shirt where the sideseams twisted on you? Fresh from the laundry (or the store), the shirt would be well-behaved with sideseams at the side. Then as you wear it, one of the sideseams starts working its way towards the centre of your shirt. Why does that happen?

Most likely, if it’s not an intentional design detail, it means the fabric was cut off-grain. Remember those little vertical stripes we saw on the right side of the fabric? If your garment is cut with those ribs not completely straight, the sideseams will twist. That’s the wonderful thing about sewing our own clothing – we can fix these things!

Here’s how to ensure your knit fabric is cut on the grain:

First, figure out how we need to be folding out fabric to cut it out. We’re about to spend a bit of time folding our fabric, it’s a real pain if you find out it was supposed to be folded differently after all that work!

Look at the fabric cutting diagram and find the one for the view you’re making. Sometimes there will be one fold, sometimes there will be two folds with the selvedges folded into the middle. Or sometimes, there’s both types of cutting layouts for a single view.

Now, we’ll fold the fabric. This is going to be tedious but I feel it’s worth it to ensure your shirt is cut on-grain.

Fold your fabric according to the diagram. I’m folding two folds with the selvedges in the centre, like the left diagram in the photo above. Fold it loosely, this is just a guide to start correcting the foldline. (I hope you can see where the edge is, the dark purple is hard to photograph!)

Now, we’ll work on that fold. This next step was again, pretty hard to photograph. In fact, here is what happened when I tried to get fancy with the camera…

Yeah. Not very useful, right?

What we want to do is line up those little, vertical striped rib lines along the fold. Here, this photo turned out much better!

You can see that I’m pinching the fold along the ribbed, vertical lines, making sure that one or two lines are along the fold line.

Pin along the fold line to keep the ribs on the fold.

Keep on pinning along the fold line until the entire fold line is pinned. Now when you smooth out the fabric away from the fold, the fabric will stay on grain. If you have two folds in your fabric, repeat with the second fold. (Don’t forget to remove the fold pins as you cut your pattern pieces!)

This is a very thorough method (and perhaps a little fiddly) to keeping your knit fabric aligned and on-grain when you cut it. It might seem like an awful lot of work for such a simple project! I’m a particular person and I’d rather spend the extra time now, than end up with a garment that frustrates me later by twisting. You might not want to spend the time fiddling with the fold and pinning it along the ribbed lines. Do you have to? Of course not! Depending on your fabric, you may be able to fold it and have the straight of grain line up perfectly, no pinning required.

This is actually one thing that makes cutting striped fabric easier – if the stripes are knit into the fabric and not printed, the extra work that it takes to line up the stripes also takes care of the grain at the same time.

Here are more blog posts about the Renfrew Top. (Get the pattern here.)

• A Big List of Tips for Sewing Knits!
• Three Tips for Sewing Stripes
• Introducing the Renfrew Top
• Sewing the Renfrew Top: What Would You Like to See?
• What’s a Stable Knit Fabric?
• Assembly-Line Cutting and Sewing

You tell me: is there an easier way? How do you cut knit fabric to ensure it’s cut on-grain? I’d love to hear your feedback!

You might wonder why there is a seam in the belt. One, because it’s easier to cut out. One really long belt piece uses up a lot of fabric. Two, because there is limited space on the pattern tissue, not enough to stretch the belt out as a single piece. If you want to eliminate the seam, simply place the seamline of the belt pattern piece on the fold for a one-piece belt.

First, let’s sew up the seam in the belt.

Press seam allowances open.

Fold the belt right sides together, lining up the long edges. Sew this seam from end to end, leaving a space of about 4″ (10cm) close to the middle of the belt.

Trim corners, as shown. I rearranged the trimmed-off pieces in place to show you where they were cut from, it makes a pretty photo!

Turn the belt right side out. This part takes a while, so sit down, make yourself comfortable and gently ease the belt right-side out. When it’s turned, it will look like this – a fabric sausage!

Press that fabric sausage flat.

Now, the last step in the instructions tells you to slipstitch the opening closed. You could do that, but I try to avoid hand-sewing on a casual blouse like this. I have a faster method!

Here’s the opening we left – press it in place, turning the seam allowances in evenly with the rest of the belt.

What we’ll do is sew very close to the edge of the fold of the opening, and backstitch at both ends. Start at the end of the fold, backstitch, and sew to the other end, getting as close to the fold as you can without falling off the edge.

Here’s what it looks like, close up:

It looks noticeable in this photo, and it will if you look for it, but once we’re wearing the belt it will be hardly visible! Especially if your fabric is darker, or if it’s a very busy print.

On a casual blouse, I prefer this speedy step than slipstitching. It’ll take way longer to look for a hand-sewing needle and get it threaded. If you have purchased items with tie belts in your closet, take a look – they might use this method instead of hand-sewing the opening closed!

I thought I’d share this time-saving trick, as I know we’re all fitting sewing time into busy lives. What do you think? Would you prefer to slipstitch or do you like this method?

Here’s how I did it:

I sewed the first row of stitching, following the 1 centimetre (3/8″) guideline on my sewing machine.

After that, I moved the presser foot to the left as far as it would go, and used the edge of my presser foot as a guide for the second and third rows of stitching.

The key to making it easy to topstitch is to use the edge of your presser foot as a guide, once you stitch the first line close to the edge.

What do you think? It’s subtle, but pretty. On this fabric, it sort of gets lost in the print and the fact that you can see the outline of the facing. (It might not be so transparent on a real body – my dress form is purple so her ‘skin’ shows through more than mine will.)

I do like the look of topstitching. It adds more structure to the neckline, and frames the face nicely. And I love that a bird ended up swooping across the neckline!

For more impact, try using a contrast colour thread. Or plan your project around the topstitching, with white thread on a black blouse.

You could add more or less rows of stitching if you wanted. Just move them closer together or farther apart! If you’re making the scoop neck view (the neckline on View C) you’ll have more room to add more rows of stitching as there’s no centre ‘V’ to go around.

An added bonus: the extra topstitching will keep the facing in place, making it less likely to flop out of your neckline!

Want to get started on your own Alma blouse? Get the pattern here.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

The first thing that came up? I noticed this fabric was fairly sheer after making the dress, and wondered how the facings would look using self fabric.

I was short on fabric, so I planned to use solid cotton for the facings if I ran out of print fabric. With a little careful rearranging, I was able to cut the facings out of the print too. And then I realized – do I actually want them out of print fabric? What if it looks bad?

Sometimes it’s nice to see how these things look both ways in order to make a decision! It’s a good reminder to think through all parts of a project before you start, or be ready to adapt mid-project if you’re not happy with the look. So I cut a second set of facings out of solid voile and compared the two options.

Here’s the front facing, cut out of bird-print:

And here’s the front facing, cut out of ivory cotton voile:

Much better! While the facing is visible either way, I prefer the look of the solid ivory rather than the print-under-print. The solid ivory highlights the print, while the printed fabric shows through the white parts of the blouse.

So if you’re considering a sheer fabric for your Alma blouse, consider using a solid fabric for the facings. Or if you’re planning to use eyelet or lace, a solid fabric may work better for the facings. And if you’re using up small remnants, barely enough to cut the blouse, cutting the facings out of a different fabric will help!

Like this blouse? Get the pattern here. More mini-tutorials and sewing posts to come!