So I went and picked up some Christmas socks that looked suitably obnoxious. I tried to freehand the pattern based on some youtube videos I'd seen... the results? We shall not speak of them... very disappointing, all I can say is those guys in the videos are better at freehand cutting than I am. Anyway, I got smart and used a long sleeved shirt pattern for knits and a bit of single fold bias tape and here are the results...
The bias tape made it quite easy to finish the edges neatly. And for anyone who is hesitant in working with knits, I had little problems with stretching while doing the underarms, but if it does become an issue, adjusting the tension on your machine -or- (if you hate changing the settings on your machine when you have them just the way you like) using the paper trick seems to help keep things from warping out of shape.
The paper trick (for those unfamiliar) consists of running a strip of paper along your seam as you sew the knit fabric sections, it acts as a stabilizer and after you've finished you simply tear the paper away from the inside and outside of the garment like perforated paper (because after you've sewn it that's pretty much what it is). It comes away easily enough and you have a nice unwarped seam. Of course you don't need to do this where the bias tape is used because it has pretty much the same effect.
For anyone wanting to use the pattern I found this on on the internet long ago and can't seem to find a proper link to it anywhere so here's a pic with a ruler for size...
I've long since lost the instructions to go with it but I pretty much just put bias tape on the ends of the sleeves and then folded the fabric along the dotted lines, matching up A to A and C to C. Then you just sew the underarm and the sides of the torso together (you can finish with a bit of a zig zag to prevent raveling if you're worried about that). Then you can finish the remaining edges: neck, back, and the bottom of the torso, with bias tape as you choose. You can have the back overlap and close with snaps (as I did) or perhaps sew the bottom half way up and leave the top of the back open, finishing it with some surging or zig zag to keep it from unraveling.
This has been a fun little project and it went pretty fast. I may make some more for my other Blythes.
Edit: Ha! Found it! The pattern is HERE. It's the one for the boat neck T shirt.
No comments:
Post a Comment