Tetrahedral bean bag for the living room
Here is the pattern and a tutorial for the tetrahedral bean bag. It is super simple and easy to sew, although the folding stage may boggle your mind before you try it.
Keep your trusted machines working! Do your sewing machine maintenance!
If you sewing machine keeps ugly noise or misbehaves it is often due to lack of oiling and fluff accumulation. As we use our machines we must also regularly maintain them. Sometimes even the most misbehaving machines can be fixed with some oil!
10 Sewing Tricks That You Didn’t Know
Some sewing tricks that make your life easier are never mentioned in any sewing book. They aren't necessary expensive or require anything that you don't already have in your closet. Here is my collection of 10 sewing tricks that I have found very useful
Padding and updating a dress form
Tiivistelmä suomeksi lopussa… Dress form is a fundamental tool for a dressmaker. Before I got my dress form about five years ago, I ruined numerous sewing project while trying to get them to fit me. I can honestly say that buying a dress form has saved me a lot of money! My dress form My dress form is Adjustoform size XS. After I got it I adjusted it and padded it and it has been working ever since. Unfortunately my body shape has changed in five years. I got frustrated pinning the skirt waists on the dressform to prevent the skirt waist from moving annoyingly when I was trying to…
Make your own Sandra skirt – a free sewing tutorial
I must admit that I love all kinds of circle skirts. Unlike pencil skirts they allow much more movement and are so much more comfortable. One day I saw this skirt on Pinterest and thought I could easily draft something similar. I made my first attempt and it got a lot of compliments. When I got this red tartan fabric I decided to improve the design and write a sewing tutorial for everyone to enjoy. What is a Sandra skirt? Sandra skirt is based on 1/2 circle skirt and 3/4 circle skirt patterns. The skirts are layered and the overskirt is shortened from the right side to make a nice…
The trench coat project part 4: Gorgeous details and lining
The previous posts about this trench coat project: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Belt carriers, sleeve bands and the belt I had my belt and sleeve band buckles ready, so I adjusted the belt (I include now the sleeve bands with the word ‘belts’) widths to suit the buckles. I added some extra length to the sleeve bands since the original ones were meant to be buttoned up. With the belt, I decided to use the whole width of my gabardine and cut the belt on fold. I also made the belt end pointed. The belts and the sleeve bands needed to be interfaced. I interfaced the belts using…
Back button blouse and a trick for a neater understitching
This blouse 4655 from Lekala was published only a few weeks ago and I bought it almost immediately. The blouse has a fairly loose fit and a ruffled peplum. The shaping consists only of bust darts making it fairly quick to make. I also like the cuffs with the slits in them even if I ended up changing the design a bit when sewing it up. I have been saving some lovely cotton lawn by Atelier Brunette in my stash for a long time, but now decided that it was time for me to use it for this project. I usually get confused if I read Lekala’s instructions, but luckily…
Mélilot-Granville-shirt aka combining two shirt patterns
If you are not interested in the technical description of how I combined the two patterns, scroll to the end to see the results! I have planned to make this post for a while now. Often I feel that one pattern has a really nice fit and the other has very interesting details and that I’d like to have both in the same garment. Combining patterns may be easy if the patterns are very similar or when the mismatch can be easily corrected by adjusting something like gathers at the waistline. For instance, I tend to use the same A-line lining pattern for different skirts since the lining doesn’t have…
Roses, stripes and a useful sewing trick for piping
I just could not resist the powder pink stretch cotton with black and white roses when I saw it in the fabric shop. I feel increasingly girly now that spring has arrived and this fabric just shouted “Make a skirt out of me!”. So I did. I used again the Zinnia pattern with the deepened pleats. If you want to do the same, just cut the pattern along the center of each pleat and add about two cm extra. However, you cannot add much if you want to be able to cut the pattern from lengthwise folded fabric. To add some interest I added white piping between the waistband and the…
