Piano Music Piano Music Hello. Shirley Adams here. On the last
program, first of the series, we listened to fabric and then we made it into the
appropriate garments dictated by its weight and its behavior. On this second
program we’re going to do a few contrary things. if we change the character of
that fabric so that it no longer behaves the same way we open up a whole new
realm of possibilities for fabric usage. quilting is the change we’re going to
try today using the jacket I’m wearing as an example. this fabric began as a
blouse fabric it’s rayon shally, and it’s fairly lightweight and after a
trip through the washer and the dryer it proved to be also a fabric that wrinkles
easily and that made it undesirable for packing and traveling because it’s going
to get crushed and it’s going to need to be pressed every time.
well quilting will eliminate that wrinkling since the filling layer keeps
it puffed out and now it can be washed, dried, and it’s ready to wear without
ever an iron well we’ve all done a lot of Blazers a lot of tailored clothing
and so I’m not going to do anything tailored in this quilted program I’m
instead going to use some very soft styling something a little light-hearted
in these quilted jackets now use a very simple pattern because complicated
details and seaming would just get lost in all this design that’s here all this
quilting that’s done so you don’t want a whole lot of seams you don’t want
pockets in such details that would distract from that instead you want just
your design to show up that’s the star of this garment so whether it is a print
fabric or whether it’s a solid either one the fiber content can be anything of
your choice it can be knit or woven you can mix them up just make sure that
they’re compatible because all layers of this jacket are going to stay together
permanently and so they have to be either washed or dryclean or done in
whatever way the same the same thing has to be done to all of them I’m going to
show you another one in a little bit that is the fashion fabric layer is
going to B of one fiber construction one
fabrication it’s going to be woven and the reverse side the lining side is
going to be a knit so you can mix these things just make sure they’re all
compatible then the filling layer that’s the inside that’s what makes it puff up
or batting layer now this can be the fluffy type made for quilts or it can be
cotton or poly types made especially for quilted clothing or fleece is another
possibility but it’s considerably more firm than the others so it might not be
a bad idea to try a little sample of each to decide about what your personal
preference is so of the things that I have here here is just quilt batting now
this quilt batting is kind of heavy its kind of thick if I would use it as is so
what I’ve done in the jackets that where I use this was peel it apart it’s just
very nicely comes apart in thinner layers and that way it’s not a problem
of any sort so if it’s thick you would do that but I’ll get back as I talk
about some of these things about some of the other possibilities and how you test
them then the bottom layer of all this the lining layer that layer also can be
anything of your choice whether it’s knit or woven or whatever but if you use
something silky slippery as I’ve done here then it slides on and off very
easily making it very comfortable making it easy to wear and an additional lining
layer is unnecessary as long as this slide so well so let’s see how all this
begins this little sample that I have here is just to show myself what I want
to put together in these layers what I’ve done on this side is put some of
that quilt batting that fiberfill that is just very soft and I have split it so
that it’s a thinner layer and this is very soft when it’s quilted to the back
of it to the lining everything’s very soft here here I’ve actually used fleece
and you can see by the way I hold it and it doesn’t just droop down completely it
stands out a little bit you can see this is stiffer this would be very applicable
to making belts it would do very well for that but my personal preference for
clothing is to use a batting now also there are several new things
just recently on the market that you might want to try here’s another of that
quilt batting that you can peel layers apart but some of the new things on the
market are thin fleeces they’re thin enough whether they’re this one’s
polyester and this one’s cotton they’re thin enough that they won’t make it too
terribly firm as you if you do put this as your filling layer between the lining
and the fashion fabric layers it won’t make it too terribly heavy but it will
make it a little bit more firm then that original one that I showed you then the
quilt batting now here’s one that really was not intended for clothing and you’ll
find this also so don’t mistake this when you’re doing the others this is a
fleece meant for other craft project is great for belts but it’s not meant for
clothing because you can see by by putting my hand under it how it is just
quite firm quite stiff and so it isn’t the best thing to use probably for an
article of clothing that you’re going to wear well where all this started was
from an article I wrote for Sol news a little while back this was the cover of
it I no longer have that jacket because I have a daughter who’s the very same
size as I am and she fell in love with this jacket and its colors and all its
quilting and she conned me out of it now if you have a daughter you know what I’m
talking about she comes home and reads my closets but anyway I don’t have that
but I do have some scraps of the same fabric and I’m going to show you how I
stitch that so this is where the idea came from and I got so much reader
response on this thing we’d like to see more of this that’s why I decided well
let’s do a program on that and do a little bit more of it so here’s where I
would start if I were you in making these choices as far as what filling
because that’s the biggest choice I think what filling layer you really want
to use with this so here I’ve made a little chart for myself and I can refer
to it from time to time if I’m going to make a bunch of jackets but a few months
in between each one I can go back to this refer to it to see what my
preferences are so what I have up here is the various types of fleeces and I’ve
put them in between and they’re sticking out here so that I can see what they are
and I even have them printed the labels printed here so that I can refer to them
you use the same brand if I want to sew after I’ve put those between a couple
layers of fabric and I’ve stitched around just any old way to quilt it so
that it simulates the jacket it’s going to finally become and down here is the
quilt batting the very soft one then I can feel all these and decide on each
individual project okay what do I want for this and it will vary remember
depending on what fabrics that you use for the top for the under layer so you
might use different things at different times whatever suits you best well the
easy way to get going on this and one of the things I love about sewing is that
there are at least 20 ways at least to do everything that you might consider
doing and all of them can be very successful you just find the way that
works best for you and with your equipment and go on from there well the
way I do this is to first stack the layers I’m going to use so what I have
stepped here is a lining layer on the bottom and then I have on top of that my
filling layer my fiberfill my batting layer and then on top of that I have my
fashion fabric layer and I’m going to put those layers down and cut them out
all at one time if I want to with the pattern or I can cut this individually
one layer at a time and put them together later now it probably depends
on how big a piece of fabric we’re talking about it because if it’s yards
and yards it doesn’t make sense to stack them first and then cut out it would
make a whole lot more sense to cut out the individual pieces then stack them as
you’re ready to do some stitching now when we stitch this it’s going to
possibly condense a little bit it may not be quite as large and for that
reason every time I cut mine out whether they’re Jackets vests whatever I might
be making I always cut it a little bit carelessly frankly and you can cut this
either with scissors or you can use a rotary cutter either way to cut through
the layers whatever your preference is but as I cut this out I’m a little
careless and I always cut it slightly large or maybe about a half inch larger
all the way around then the actual pattern is that way if it condenses
while I’m sewing on it while I’m doing the quilting it doesn’t matter I still
have that little insurance policy all the way around and then when I’m
finished with the quilting then I can put my pattern piece on again
and recut it trim off a little bit of excess around the outside so this is how
we get going then we decide before we sit down at that machine and do anything
exactly what kind of designs we’re going to do and here’s how I decide what I’m
going to do if it is a very prominent pattern as this first one was that I had
here this pink jacket it was really quite prominent it had very definite
little flowers here abstract sort of but flowers and so I quilted around all
those then there were areas here where it had nothing that could be used for
tracing so that’s where I just joined it all with straight stripes so this is a
combination of striping and tracing around the design and that made it very
easy now all of these are very easy nobody has to be an artist to do any of
this no matter how unartistic you might be you can still do this successfully
just let the fabric speak to you and give you some good ideas on what type of
quilting to do so here’s one type this by the way is kind of pretty on the
inside I didn’t mean to wear this wrong side
out I suppose I could I’ve bound all the seams and finished it carefully remove
the shoulder pads and I could perhaps wear it inside out so think about this
if you want to do two for the price of one go ahead and make it reversible but
this vest definitely is reversible and on this one it also looks if I would
reverse this it looks on the inside as though oh my and artist took a lot of
time drawing the lines doing this design making this pattern when actually you
and I know that nothing artistic was involved in it at all
all this is all this little tracing around here is simply tracing the print
fabric that was on the other side I just used the prominent design and traced
around there which is very easy to do and we can all do it successfully so
this is another way to do it just trace around the design and if it’s very it’s
a prominent design then you can use that design completely and not wear
about doing any other lines here’s a really easy way and what I did on this
one is just stitch straight across well maybe you can see it a little bit
better on the inside since this is a dark print now this print originally I
had bought for a blouse it’s a thin wool but it’s kind of an expensive wool to
the point where I thought oh it’s a waste to make another blouse I have so
many many blouses it’s important enough than it needs to be a jacket so that’s
why I quilted it and made it into a jacket to make a more important garment
but what was so easy about this one is the fact that I just started I first of
all did a line that was perpendicular to the center front line use an L square
for that or use a piece of paper which always has a square edge that’s a
90-degree angle there just put that down along the center front and stitch one
line across on your machine so that it is perpendicular to the center front
line thereafter you simply use your presser foot as a guide and just do
parallel rows all the way along that just stitch all these parallel rows so
this you can just do lickety-split actually this dark print jacket that I
have here and that original pink jacket I made in about two days time and that
was including cooking dinner and running errands and doing anything else this one
took about a day in the third and this one took about 2/3 of a day to make so
they aren’t all that time-consuming but on this one the fact that every time you
go around you have to do some starting and stopping you have to decide whether
to tie knots whether it’s a stitch in place where whether to back stitch but
all that takes a little time and you try it always to see how it works out best
for you on this one what made it so very quick is that it was just parallel lines
just stitched very simply and I didn’t have to start and stop anywhere I just
started one edge of the fabric and stitched way off to the other edge so
that’s why it made this extremely easy to do and then I have another jacket
here which is just contemporary when I saw this fabric it rang a bell as I saw
this in the store for what reason I didn’t know it’s not ordinarily the
colors that I wear but somehow it attracted me and it said eight I want
you to buy me so it suddenly hit me why it’s because I knew
at home I had this bag of wonderful yarns little odds and ends of yarns that
a friend had given me and it just hit me all of a sudden even though I hadn’t
looked at these yarns for months that those are the same colors that are in
this fabric this is an upholstery fabric actually so that’s why I bought this and
decided that this sort of semi striped design on this just looks sort of
windswept it looks like the wind is blowing this way in that way so that’s
exactly how I stitched on the inside but I’ll show you a little bit of that now
in a while I’ll demonstrate some of that but you can see it just sort of blows
back and forth and while the wind was blowing on it I put a little bit of that
yarn here and there and just stitched right across so I do have yarn
throughout this the yarns that I got from my friend something else that was
fun on this jacket by the way was the fact that there were no buttons that
would do that would even remotely come close to being agreeable with this
fabric and the mood of it so finally in desperation as I was looking at buttons
on the card I turned one over and looked at the backside and I thought bingo
that’s it it exactly works even though the right side the side that was
intended to the button doesn’t do anything for it so think about that use
things the wrong way sometimes if they are more suitable for whatever it is
you’re doing so okay these are the jackets that I have with me today and
I’m going to show you the different types of quilting I’ve done by after I
have all those layers all stacked together and a few pins in it and you
may not want to put any pins in it at all
when you’re doing yours you may want to instead do some basting or maybe just
hold it together if it’s large enough you may want to put it in a hoop and
stitch that way there are some other variables that we’re going to have to be
concerned about for one thing what kind of foot are you
going to use now what I have chosen to use for right now that I’m going to be
demonstrating on is a darning foot it works very nicely it kind of walks with
the fabric and so I kind of like that for doing this quilting so that works
well some of the other feet that you have that you might want to try would be
the roller foot that might be the best thing on your machine and with the
fabric you have depending its thickness and its firmness the
walking presser foot would do quite well this also can be done very successfully
with just the standard presser foot that you would have on your machine for most
sewing so try it always possible on a little scrap before you ever start and
make that scrap big enough that you might be able to turn it into some sort
of a project later on so I have all those put together here I might as well
just use this little jacket I guess and the jack I’ll do this the way I did that
jacket that my daughter has on temp on permanent loan is what it is she’s going
to have it forever and ever and never give it back to me I know but with this
darning foot I can just move this around any way I want to I don’t have to have
because this is firm enough I therefore don’t have to have and I have it down
the pressure down too far so I’ll lighten up on that somewhat I am NOT
going to have to have a hoop or anything under this to firm it up this is firm
enough as is and I’m just going to move it around like this and go at whatever
rate of speed is the best for you and make different shapes so I’m just doing
this to try it out okay the shape I actually did on that
jacket out of this fabric with a big leaf design kind of like Elm leaves
don’t do a complicated leaf for goodness sake or you will be forever doing this
so I just sort of did big shape like this and elm Lee since it’s simple since
it’s easy and then just using the presser foot just go round and round
with that and it can go backwards sideways any which
way but become adept at this and be able to use it very easily very very
proficiently before you go ahead and do your regular project but try this on a
sample so this is one way and I just go around and keep making that leaf bigger
and bigger and come in with some other leaves from other directions and just
keep covering it completely until finally there were no bare spaces left
it was all covered with leaves made bigger smaller etc you might also
besides doing that just do something completely different a different shape
let’s see what else I have here maybe this one I would follow the lines
completely I’ll show you on this one how I just did the straight stitch and why
that’s so easy and that’s because with the straight stitch you simply start
stitching here and go right along those lines from one end to the other because
on this particular fabric as I’m holding it here I can see that it’s creeping a
little bit the top layer is creeping slightly so if that’s the case then it
might be better as long as you’re making straight lines especially to not use the
darning foot that’s when you’d switch to a straight stitch foot and do it more
simply that way here I’ve just made a little corkscrew same fabric but just a
round and round with that foot and you’ll find that it’s just not a problem
here’s the pink jacket so let me do a little stitching here now where I had to
make some decisions was how do I start and stop it maybe with the foot down so
you just stitch in place first and then you start going around in which case use
a little something to stop fraying so that it won’t
Ravel out when you’re finished at the beginning in the end or else your other
choice would be to actually back stitch a little here or there so okay here I am
following the fruit flowers whatever we have there and then just doing stripes
in between so this was another technique and then really a fun one was doing that
windswept design and I see I need to pull my thread out a little
more there we go okay this windswept design that I had fun with the
upholstery fabric I kind of like to use fabrics that aren’t intended for the
particular purpose that you’re you’re using them in this case but upholstery
fabrics make wonderful jackets and so it’s kind of a good idea to use it for
jackets or vests and with this one I also was just stitching back and forth
as the mood moved me this is sort of mindless stitching all this is it’s kind
of idiots delight you don’t think about it you just while your cares away as you
do all this stitching so with this one I did just throw little pieces of yarn on
here and there as I was doing the stitching and I’ll just take a small
piece here and as I was stitching this particular piece here since it does have
the same color in it as I was stitching back and forth I’d put some yarn there
and simply stitch over it and do whatever I wanted with that and you can
see how easily that would work out also anytime I’m doing any of these things I
feel it easier to do big things first big designs for instance on that plaid
one that I started out with I would come in from all the edges and do a big leaf
here and a big leaf there and do different leaves of that sort so that it
would hold the jacket together pretty well and then I could take all the pins
out and not be bothered with them there after well I did the same thing with
this windswept one I first of all did one line across this way and then one
big line across this way and then maybe one down here and then I filled in all
those spaces later and this is the easiest way to do it so that you first
temporarily hold it together before you then start stitching and filling in all
the spaces now the more you stitch on this the more lines you have going back
and forth and every which way the firmer this fabric will be so if you don’t want
it terrifically firm if you want it to stay kind of soft it’s a good idea to do
less of these rows except I have warn you you do get carried away and you just
keep stitching away because it’s such fun and you hate to let go of it
well after you have all of these pieces done individual pieces you then go ahead
and put your pattern back on it so that you can cut it down to size
because it possibly has convinced someone so cut it down to size and then
you’re ready to just put it together as you ordinarily would that jacket you’re
also going to have to decide after you put it together then exactly what you’re
going to do about finishes every place well what I did with this as far as
seams go I eliminated them I told you about eliminating a seam on the last
show well I’ve done the same thing here on the side seam
they were completely straight lines there so I just overlapped front and
back put the seams together at the pattern stage before I cut it out and
now I don’t have to worry about that seam that means I don’t have to on the
print fabric worrying about the matching which makes it gives you a little head
start on it so that’s kind of a good way to do it whenever you can
anytime I’m dealing with big pieces I don’t want to do it that way because
it’s too much to put under the presser foot to put under the arm of the machine
here it’s just too cumbersome so if there are large pieces I’m going to keep
them individual and not combine them the only seems then that we’re actually in
this we’re right here on the shoulder I just had to put the shoulder seams
together and with that shoulder seam up here
I took it to the outside first and then the outside I put another piece of
fabric on top right here it’s hard to see because it blends in quite well I
just put another piece of fabric on top here with the seams turned under on
either side and top stitch that in place and that holds or that hides the seam
what I’ve done to the edges of these jackets several of these around to the
neck edge and up and down the front edge here I’ve bound that with some bias and
I’m not going to demonstrate this on this program because I’m going to do it
on a layer program do some bias binding on things what this actually is is a
blouse pattern if you can picture this just an ordinary blouse that you’d have
a collar sleeves I simply turned over the front here this is kind of like a
little blouse pattern I simply turn the front to lapel back you’re down to the
waist and I cut it that way I used the arms eyes as they were from
the blouse pattern no changes there and I cut it off at the waist then and down
here at the waist I put a casing so that I could put this drawstring through it
and it ties it adjusts that way so that’s one way to finish it
some of these have just hymns so this is this is not meant to be worn inside out
at all it’s not reversible but I’ve simply turned up a hymn I cut
it extra long to begin with and turned up a hymn I think I’ve done the same
thing on the dark printed jacket here I’ve just turned up a hem and so that
also over here worked out quite nicely again it’s not meant to be reversible so
if you’re going to reverse you better bind it you better do something else
that will work out more to your liking well try these things out as I said
first on a scrap but don’t try it out on just a scrap that you’re going to throw
away do a nice crap that’s big enough to make some sort of a project like this
little purse which could be a little formal purse or it could be a little
makeup bag but do something of this sort what you need to make this is just an
ordinary sized piece of paper a piece of typing paper which would look about like
if I can pull one out here which would look about like this okay eight and a
half by eleven it’s probably how I started out in this purse this makes a
nice size sample because when that’s folded in half later on that would make
a little purse so that you wouldn’t have wasted all your time so this one also I
did with metallic thread notice and with this little stitching of metallic thread
here and there it’s slightly glitters and so it gives it a little bit of a
festive look since it does have that metallic in it here I’ve done a sample
that would also make a purse if I wanted to a makeup bag perhaps and I’ve done it
so that it’s two different colors a different plan on each side then I still
have time to decide okay which is really going to be the outside of my purse is
it going to be the blue or is it going to be the pink side you might do
something with metallic threads and put some beads on it also as I have here
after I got through stitching it with metallic thread on the machine then I
hand stitched a few of those beads here and there this would make a terrific
formal purse so this is something you might want to try what I loved on this
sample is the fact that I used something really kind of crummy for the backside
it was just some lining fabric that was not pretty at all but by the time it’s
quilted and the quilting I did here of course is following the design and the
fabric the print design that’s there is how I
this but by following that design it makes a really pretty design on the
backside and it’s something that you might be very pleased with so the print
makes you look like an artist when it shows up on the solid now any fabric you
like from the bolt you’re going to like even better when you quilt it and its
value also greatly increases well these garments fall in the wearable
art category which means that they don’t easily succumb to fashions ever-changing
whim you’ll be able to enjoy your work of art for several years
and speaking of works of art and this one in particular this vest
they’re everywhere this year we’ve all been wearing vests we love them they
just complete things very nicely they run the whole gamut of possibilities in
fabrics there are all kinds of shapes long and short and fitted and blousy
so next time let’s consider the vest and how it can help complete the wardrobe.
come join us then Piano Music