Insta project

When we are on the road my husband does 100% of anything related to food. Buying, cooking and cleaning up. 

The kitchen in an rv is tiny and he loves to organize it. This is a man of a million systems. Also when he was growing up his father, a man of multiple enterprises had a restaurant he sometimes worked in.

My husband also says cooking is to him what sewing is to me, something creative that relaxes him.

So our agreement when we are on wheels is that I stay out of the kitchen and do all the dog walking, the laundry, and my many projects. I also do the phoning people up and talking part. I am better at that than he is.

Every once in a while though I feel guilty. Women of my generation have somewhere a little voice that says if you aren't working all the time around the place then you are pulling some kind of scam.

OK I am pulling a scam here, but the scamee seems happy with it.

Occasionally I wonder out loud about things we could do so he would have less cooking to do. My daughter-in-law has just bought an Instant Pot and I thought maybe those are a good idea. Of course I am the princess eater here not on the production end of this operation, but it's a nice thought right? Like those 50s husbands who used to give the wife a new vacuum for Valentine's day.

Any one out there have one and think they are really really good?

I mean Valentine's Day is coming up right?

In the meantime while I wait to hear from my consultants (that would be you folks) and am engaging in some Insta projects.

When you are living in an rv Insta projects make a lot of sense, particularly the ones you cut out at home (and remembered to pack all the pieces of) if you have promised to stay out of the kitchen, since that more or less leaves just the bed and the driver's seat.

I started with my all time favourite Insta project- this neglected and quite amazing Jalie shirt, described, accurately as V neck and high back:

Now this is the cover shot of the version with a zipper.

I made mine without the zipper and also without the bike helmet and the bike shorts. Seemed like a good idea.

What is amazing about this top (you can add sleeves if you want they are included) is that it essentially can function as a great tank or under cardigan type top and can be made in about 30 minutes.

The upper part of the top, the V neck, is made by laying two front pieces on top of each other (they are sort of rectangles no neckline shape at all) sewing a short 5" line of straight stitches up the middle at centre front, and the folding the pieces, wrong sides together, to each side.

That's it. 

A beautiful V neckline with zero sewing around it, no points of the V, no binding, just a nice folded edge that lies beautifully.

At this point I should stop and say I am fully aware that the above description makes no sense at all and only marginally describes the picture I have in my head, so your main take away here is - no sewing - super easy.

As far as V necks go this one's a scam.

After you have done what I have described, properly because the directions make sense in the pattern, all there is left to do is the back, lower front, side seams and turn and stitched hems around the armholes and along the bottom.

Here is my version - a black knit with a sort of a built-in texture wave I like, modelled in a non kitchen part of the rv, meaning next to the bed and in front of the bathroom door. I am posting two more or less identical pictures because I couldn't decide which one was worse:

Full RV view in my glasses for this interested.

After my busy day yesterday the serger seemed to be too heavy to lift off the floor and put on the table so I sewed this whole unit up with a straight stitch on the Rocketeer using that stretch Eloflex thread.

I know some folks have had issues with that thread but I learned a few tricks that kept it working just fine in my old 60 year old travelling machine:

1. Wind the bobbin slowly. If you whirl that bobbin around too fast the thread will stretch on the bobbin and retract in the stitches, puckering them.

2. Sew slowly and steadily. When I sped up the thread obviously got stretched thin and tight in the tension disks and then broke. When I kept up a conservative and constant pace this did not happen.

3. I bypassed the little thread guide just above the needle and this eliminated any possible fraying. Eloflex looks to me to be a 2 ply twist and is quite stiff. The stiffness means that it dropped down to the needle without having to be further held close, so dispensing with that last thread guide was fine. It also meant that this thread guide which is quite tight didn't get a chance to saw away at the thread.

I also have an idea, untested as this machine has few fancy stitches, that the simpler the stitch the better this thread will perform. A complicated stretch or multi action stitch would probably stretch and strain it a lot and that might contribute to the issues some sewists have reported. 

I wonder. 

Now off to dinner. I have some Indie pattern reviews coming your way and then I think I am going to do a series on hand sewing, like I did on hemming knits.

Does that sound like a good idea?

A new year and some new techniques

I once had a very old Singer man tell me how he sat at a dealers' convention in the '50s and saw the first zig zag machine introduced.

"Well now they have thought about just about everything," he said then.

I think the point here is that no matter how much you think about sewing there is always something new to consider and, potentially, a new way to solve an old problem.

With just three days into the new year, here are some of my personal favourites:

1. Yoga band instead of an elastic waist. Obviously highly appropriate for yoga pants or leggings (make sure the band is sizeable, like say a cut width of at least 6 1/2" or a finished width of 3" for an adult). Would be perfect for maternity wear or those of us who have past maternity influenced waistlines.

I have mentioned in a previous post that I used this technique for Billy's jammies and can report that since the fabric I used is a good recovery cotton/lycra, they stay up very well and are super comfortable:

2. Sewing clips. I first saw these used in bag making to hold stiff and multiple layers together under the sewing machine needle when obviously mere pins wouldn't do the job. I really liked these little units when I tried them myself. I bought a ton of them for very little on Amazon and was surprised at how easy they were to remove as I sewed - I just pressed down on the top (coloured side) of the clip on the bed of the machine and kept a bowl beside me to toss them into.

In garment sewing I have found the clips super useful for sewing knits and holding them still with some strength. Elastic or neckbands (or yoga bands) for instance or just for seaming.

Here they are in action on the seam of a ponte skirt:

3. Finally, and I promised this a while ago, I tried and am sold on, Eloflex thread by Coats.

First here are my observations on this thread:

• It really is stretchy. I was surprised how much so. As a result I was concerned that winding the bobbin action and high speed sewing could extend the thread before it got to the fabric and that once there it would relax and consequently pucker the seam. Anticipating this I wound the bobbin really slowly and sewed with a slow but steady pace to prevent that from happening. This seemed to work.
• It is a slightly stiff thread, and a 2 ply that has a tendency to unwind. This made getting it into the eye of the needle a bit tricky - took 4 tries - and I was aware of a few loops as the thread approached the tension disks but these seemed to work themselves out before the seam. After much sewing I had the thread fray above the needle only once and this was after I did some start and stop sewing. Since it was only once after a lot of stitching I felt this did not outweigh the benefits of the thread, and that I could deal with this in future with some steady sewing. I am also wondering if this might be one of those threads that some machines might like more than others but really since I did my test sew on a 60 year old machine to fully test it I am not sure about this. Of course I used a knit needle for my sewing.

Here are some pictures to show how I used this thread:

Straight stitched knit hem from the outside. Kind of nice to have this as a hemming option as the straight stitch of course won't over work the fabric and produce wavy hems.

A seam in my laser cut ponte near the hem where it gets lacey. I didn't want to serge because I figured that would make the seam too obviously although I did stitch twice since I was trimming the seam allowance close.

The knit hem fully stretched out, not a stitch breaking or bubbling. A fully stretched knit hem done with a straight stitch on a vintage machine. I mean really. How cool is that?

So count me pretty impressed and on my way down to the fabric store to get more colours to take with me on my sewing travels in the rv. 

Would also be a good option I think in the needle when sewing active wear too. I am really happy to know that there is a practical option for me to sew those detail areas in knits, like a V neck, with a reliable straight stitch for precision.

So what's new to you so far this year?

Hold the phone! Late breaking hemming knits news

In all the discussion about how to hem knits I neglected to mention another solution, and a new one, which is a stretchy sewing thread - a new one from Coats called Eloflex.

I didn't include mention in this in my hemming series because, until today, news of this new product slipped right past me.

Sometimes events happen in the world I miss, I don't know how it happens, but it does.

I had one of my lovely all day sewing days with my friends from the sewing guild today and my friend Pat brought this thread to me and let me feel it. It certainly was stretchy if you pulled on it, strong and didn't break.

If in fact it will allow us to sew a good simple seam or hem in knits on our standard machines with a standard straight stitch (which being a minimally active stitch by definition is the least likely to cause a hem to wave) this in fact will be a game changer.

Right now, as in this very minute, I am at my daughter's babysitting as opposed to at the fabric store. However it is my intention is to run down and pick some of this stuff up tomorrow and do full on research type lab test on it.

Expect that report to be released soon afterwards.