This is a very short tutorial to teach you a couple of easy techniques that can have huge impact on your garment making. A lot of modern patterns skip these steps, often suggesting top-stitching instead. Top stitching is useful, even pretty in some cases, but it certainly isn’t refined. Once you understand grading and understitching you will see how useful they are. You can use these easy techniques in your facings, waistbands, linings and anywhere else that your seam allowance is pressed together and not open. Grading reduces the bulk of your seam allowance and encourages the seam to lie flat. The understitching keeps the inner layer from rolling to the outside and gives a clean, professional look.
For me, it’s the little tricks like these that really give me such pleasure and pride in my dressmaking.
Here it is! My very first online photo tutorial. This is a super easy project, that can spruce up your sad ironing board into something rather charming. If you’re following along, I’m working on making my ‘ironing stations’ more bright and cheery with pin boards and now cute ironing board covers. I thought I’d share the process with you in case you wanted to do the same thing.
It was harder than I thought, making sure every single step was documented. If something isn’t clear, please leave some comments. I’d love love love to hear what you think! (Especially if you like it & I’ll do more!)
I bought my first button press about eight years ago. I had visions of making buttons from everything around me – postage stamps, newspaper classifieds, doodles and FABRIC. It was a disappointing moment when I realized that the button press always tore or stretched the fabric. It didn’t stop me from making thousands of buttons from everything else, but it was always a sore spot that fabric was not an option.
How excited was I to read this post on WhipUp today about this tutorial that shows an ingenuous way to make covering buttons with fabric work. It’s absolutely brilliant! This could pose a serious problem for scrap-hoarders, it makes a mere 1.5″ round piece of scrap worth holding onto.
