Tuesday 21 November 2017

Working with Faux Fur



Patterns - Love Notions' Oakley Vest for Women, Acorn Vest for Girls
Skill Level - Intermediate
Fabric - faux fur from Fabricville Online
Skills - working with faux fur, using a craft knife

The newest Love Notions pattern is a vest - for women and girls - with the usual offering of options.  There's a simple, open fronted vest which can be made of faux fur.  Two zipper-fronted views give you a choice of straight front or princess seams.  Pockets, of course - and a choice of collar or hood.  I'd never worked with faux fur before, so of course I chose View A and hit the Internet for clues on how to handle it.
One of the first things I learned is that most faux furs have a nap - that means that the "fur" fibres will lie in one direction.  It's very important that all of your pieces are oriented in the same direction - either with nap going up or nap going down - or it will be obvious that your naps are in opposition to each other.  You can see from the picture above - left faces down and right faces up - the down nap appears darker than the up nap.  And the garment will actually wear better if the nap is facing down.
My View A is lined and I chose a heavy black satin to give the inside a luxurious feel.  Some faux furs will have a finish on the inside that doesn't need to be lined.

Cutting the pieces is another new thing to me.  You don't simply lay your pattern pieces on the fabric and rotary or scissor cut.  You trace the outline on the backing of your fabric - which is why the back pattern piece is a whole one.
If your backing is a light colour you can use a marker to trace your pattern piece.  Mine was black, so I used tailor's chalk to mark the outline.
And remember that with the front pattern piece, you're dealing with mirror images - don't forget to turn that pattern piece over to mark up the other side!
Now to cutting!  The best tool for the job is a craft knife.  Holding the fabric steady with one hand above where you'll be cutting, draw the blade of the craft knife down on the inside of your mark.  This way, your fingers are safe and the fabric is taut and easier to cut.  You are just cutting the backing this way - not the fur.  If you don't have a craft knife, just scissors, and the fur fibres are long, cut from the back, moving the fibres out of the way and making little snips.
By cutting on the inside of the mark, your pattern pieces will be more accurately sized than if you cut through the middle or on the outside of the mark.
When you're finished, you're going to have fluff all over the place!  I even had to vacuum my cutting mat!  Be sure to have a vacuum cleaner handy.  Packing tape or a lint roller will help, too.  And to get all of fluff off your pieces and minimize the mess, you can put your pieces in the dryer on the lowest heat setting you have.  Toss in a couple of old towels to help keep the pieces tumbling and run them for at least 10 minutes.
When sewing, pin, pin, pin!  Or clip, clip, clip if clips are your choice.  If your fur fibres are long, tease them out of the seam to the right side to make your seam as invisible as possible. And once you start sewing, the pattern comes together quickly assisted by detailed instructions and videos to help you along the way.
The Oakley is the women's version and comes in sizes XS to XXXL.  There is also a vest pattern for girls called the Acorn and comes in sizes 2T to 16.  And, of course, you can buy both pattern bundled.  You can get the patterns through my affiliate links below.

Oakley Vest for Women
Acorn Vest for Girls
Oakley and Acorn Vests Bundled


Tuesday 7 November 2017

The Sloane - My New Winter Friend



Pattern - Love Notions' Sloane Sweater for Ladies
Skill Level - confident beginner
Fabric - Fabricland rayon/spandex and brushed shirting
Skills - Applique

The Sloane Sweater is such a quick and easy pattern plus it's so comfortable, you want to make a bunch.  And with so many options, there's lots of scope to make sweaters that are unique.  But how about mixing things up - I mean - can you add a woven component?  I thought I'd give it a try!

I make most of my husband's shirts and for winter wear he especially loves brushed shirting so I usually have a lot of leftovers on hand.  I also had olive green rayon/spandex that was an exact match for one of the plaids which was a remnant from a shirt I'd made my son.  Perfect!  Click on any of the pictures to see them in more detail.
To make sure that there was "give" in the woven component, I decided to do my cuts on the bias.  First of all, I cut a square from the plaid and gave it a quick iron so it would lie as flat and square as possible.  As I was planning on adding elbow patches as well, I made the square big enough for both.
I folded the fabric diagonally, matching as best I could the stripes of the plaid, and laid out my pieces.
Using the rotary cutter, I had my woven component ready. Stitching in the yoke wasn't going to be a problem.  My big question was how to handle the patches.  Do I just stitch around and leave raw edges?  Do I use a straight stitch?  A zig zag?  I decided I was going to serge the edges and stitch on with a long, shallow zig zag.
But first, I should practice! I cut a second set of elbow patches and serged around the edge of one.  I wanted the end of the serging to be as invisible as possible, so when I met up with the beginning of my serging, I lifted the presser foot and turned the patch out of the stitching line, then dropped the foot and serged off.  The resulting tail would be pressed under the patch.  Great - I liked the look!
Now to practice stitching onto the rayon/spandex!  I pinned the patch to the knit fabric and chose a long, shallow zig zag on my sewing machine.
Since I had serged in black (picking up black in the plaid), I threaded my machine with black and the resulting stitching was lost in the serging line.  A quick press to take out the waviness and I was happy with the result.
I have inherited my father's long arms so I knew the patch would be too high on my elbow.  I wound up moving the patch down 3/4" - and probably could have done with a bit more!  I used lots of pins to attach the patches to the sleeve and the resulting elbow patches have turned out perfectly!
Attaching the yoke went as quickly as I'd thought it would - just one note here - you're moving from knit to woven (albeit on the bias) and back to knit again.  When serging on straight knit I had my serger's differential on 1.5.  When serging on knit and bias woven, I changed it to 1.3.  If the woven had not been on the bias I would have used N.
Once these two processes were out of the way, the rest of the sew was very quick.  And now I have another Sloane to add to the pack - bring on the cool weather!

If you don't already have the Sloane, you can get it through my affiliate link below.  And don't forget there's a Sloane for girls!  You just can't have too many Sloanes!

Love Notions' Sloane Sweater for Ladies
Love Notions' Sloane Sweater for Girls


Be sure to visit all the Sloane Blog Tour bloggers for some amazing versions of this super pattern!