New Patterns and Kits

Florence and I listed a bunch of new patterns and kits over at beAd Infinitum.  Here are photos and links to our newest patterns.
Hour Glassy Beaded Bead
using herringbone stitch

Toggle Clasp & Cable
using herringbone stitch

Circle Starburst by Cindy Holsclaw of beadorigami

Check out our newsletter, Sparkling Symmetry, to read about and see photos of all the rest of our updates.

Steampunk Oxford Shirts with Ruffles

I've been sewing shirts lately.  I always wanted to know how to make an oxford shirt, so I thought I should start there.  Since I'm a big fan of steampunk fashion, I tried to steam them up a bit with sewing details and my fabric choices.  I've made three so far, all with Victorian ruffles and tailored for a woman's figure.  I like the way the vertical seams around the waist mimic a corset but way more comfy!

The fabrics mostly came from my old quilting cotton stash, which has been sitting rather lonely for the last few years.   It's been fun riffling through my collection, seeing how some of my tastes have changed over the years.   I collected several tropical prints, but I didn't use any of those in these shirts.  I chose stripes, hand dyes, black, brown, and a new Jane Sassaman gothic print (above), and a few other prints, some reversed to show the "wrong" side.

The fabrics are pure cotton (even the interlining) and the ruffles on two of the shirts are pure silk charmeuse. So soft!  I even used the silk in the inside of the collar and cuffs for added softness right where you want it.

I did my best to finish all of the seams nicely to make them last.  I found ways to tuck away every raw seam... Well, except where the sleeve meets the shoulder.  I checked out several shirts in my and my boyfriend's closet, and I learned that most shirts have an interlocked seam at the sleeve cap.  So, I sewed the seam twice (1/8 inches apart), and then picked a fancy overlock-type stitch on my sewing machine, and sewed over the raw edges to finish them.  The front plackets and cuffs (on the long sleeved versions) are finished with snaps that I set on my professional quality snap setter.  I am super happy with how these shirts came out.  I definitely want to make more some day.

What I learned: I finally learned the mystery of the contruction of a shirt collar.  You make them from the top down.   In other words, you sew the collar (or ruffle) first, baste that to the interfaced, outside piece of the shirt stand (the part that sits right next to your neck.  Sew the inside shirt stand to the outside stirt stand, catching the collar in the seam.  Flip the stand inside out revealing the collar (or ruffle).  Now, you sew the whole collar/stand to the shirt: first by machine for the outside seam (of the stand), and a second time by hand for the inside seam (of the stand). Voila!  Easy as pie.  Not really.  It takes me a good long while to sew a collar, but slow and steady wins the race.  These are all available in my Etsy shop in the "Clothing" folder.  I almost forgot to mention, I can now sign all of my clothing with my new woven tags.  They say "beAd Infinitum: hand made by Gwen Fisher" and have my little infinity sign with a needle, thread, and a few beads.  You can see one in the last picture.

Sewing a Sequin Fabric Dress Seams and Hems

My sewing teacher asked me to help her sew some sequined dresses for an upcoming show at our local theater.  She gave me a lime green dress to work on, and here's what I learned.  This dress is "flat lined" meaning each of the major pieces is cut twice... once from the sequined fabric and once from a lining.  Both the fashion fabric and the lining are sewn together with a longish straight stitch around the entire perimeter of each piece.  Thus, the name flat lining, where each piece is lined while still flat.  From then on, both pieces are treated as a single piece of fabric. Since the sequined fabric here is stretchy, she used a stretchy lining fabric.  The lining serves three purposes.  First, it gives the dress some body so that a delicate fabric can gain strength.  Second, the flat lining prevents the seams from showing through the front of the fabric.  Third, it makes a sheer fabric non-see-through.  This technique of flat lining is useful for working with any sheer fabric such as thin silk or lace.  Here is the dress finished, except the back zipper still needs to be set.

I learned that one should be hesitant about making sequined dresses with sleeves since the sequined fabric is fragile and when it rubs against itself (like a sleeve rubbing against the side of the dress) the sequins can catch the fabric and ruin the dress.  Thus, this dress is sleeveless.

The dress came to me with all of the major pieces flat lined, and already sewn together on the major seams.  Plus it had been fitted on the actress, and pinned on the outside with safety pins for alterations.  I marked the inside of the lining with pencil where the safety pins were to mark the sewing line, removed the pins, re-pinned it, and sewed the new seams on my machine, right on the pencil lines.  Then, I removed the stitching on the old seams that had been adjusted.  Then I clipped all of the corner seam allowances at a 45 degree angle.

Because sequins are sharp and scratchy, the sequins in the seam allowances (on the inside of the dress) must either be removed or covered where they will hit any sensitive body parts.  This includes over the bust, under the bust, and under the arm holes. Because this dress is for the theater, and may be altered later, I added lining to these seams rather than removing the sequins.  (In couture sewing, the sequins in all of the seam allowances would all be removed or the sequined fabric would be designed ahead of time to not have sequins in the seams at all.)  Anyways, covering the sequins is faster than removing them all.  To line the seams, use a 2 inch strip of the lining fabric, cut on the straight grain, since it's stretchy.  If using non-stretchy fabric, you should use bias cut strips.  I pinned and sewed one side on my machine, then pinned and sewed the second side, again on my machine.  Then, I used a hemming stitch to sew both sides of the lined seam allowances down by hand.  These edges are sewn only to the lining.  (Alternately, if using a fabric that frays easily like silk, one can remove all of the sequins from the seam allowances, and then fold the allowance over twice, and sew it to the lining by hand with hemming stitch.) For the seams that I didn't cover, I just tacked them open with cross stitch, done by hand.  Here you can see the covered seams.  I cut off the extra lining strips and tacked the seams open after I took this photo.

After all seams were finished, I finished the arm holes and neckline.  When sewing the neckline, start by stabilizing it: sewing a strip of 1/4 inch twill tape centered on the neckline on the inside.  This keeps the neckline from stretching over time. In sewing the twill tape, you need to add ease.  Specifically, add an extra 1/8 inch to the twill tape per 1 inch of the sequin/lining. In other words, the twill tape is slightly longer than the neckline.

The next step to cover the neckline is to cut two 2 inch wide strips of lining fabric (one for the left side and one for the right side). To make a "double bias", I folded the strips in half lengthwise, then pinned them to the right side of the neck line, matching cut edges.  I used my machine to sew a 1/2 inch seam allowance. (Next time, I would move my needle to 3/8 inch SA to make the next step neater and easier.)  When sewing on the lining strips, start at the back (where the top of the zipper will be), and sew to the center front, each side done separately.   I then flipped this strip to the inside, and tacked it down with a hemming stitch. I finished the center point entirely by hand so that it would lay symmetrically because I can sew much more accurately by hand than by machine.  The center front is finished with a mitered corner.  Although the lining is a little puckered on the inside, I think any little imperfections will be completely obscured by the sequins.

I finished the arm holes in the same way as the neckline except I omitted the twill tape.  Also, since the arm hole is a closed loop, I folded one end of the strip inside by about 1/2 inch (before folding it in half), and I tucked the other end inside before sewing the strip to the arm hole.  This gives a neat finish.

To sew the hem, I cut about 1/2 inch of the sequined fabric off the bottom, and double folded the lining up over it.  I sewed the lining here by hand using a hemming stitch.  Then, I folded up the hem inside the dress, (about 6-8 inches, again since this is for the theater and might be altered some day for a different show), and sewed the edge with cross stitch by hand.  You can see the hem in the second photo (above).

All that's left to do is the back zipper.  I gave the dress back to my teacher, so I don't think I'll be doing that part.

I ended up with sequins all over the table, floor, and chairs.  My dining room looked like a glitter bomb went off.  Here you can see the mess I swept up.  Sparkley!

Off to Wyoming

I'm off to Wyoming tomorrow to speak about how I use mathematics in my art, as well as how I use art to teach mathematics.  Here's the flier for my talks, workshops, and art exhibit. So if you're in Cheyenne, I hope you'll drop by.

Finally my own bloomers design

I've been working on making up my own pattern for bloomers with ruffles.  I had tried making a few other pairs that I discussed earlier, but I didn't like the gathering at the knee and the bow tie in the back.  Tying my pants up behind my back is a little fiddly, so I decided to try other options.

This pair above is made from a wonderful blue black hand dyed cotton I bought during my quilting days.  I designed a wide leg cropped pant, decorated with two rows of double edged ruffles and no gathering at the knee.  The ruffles are hemmed on both edges.  (That's a lot of hemming!)  These have an elastic waistband which makes them much easier to take on and off than a bow in the back.  Super comfy, too, but they're a bit big on me, so I've listed them for sale.  I also added some pockets with piping on the edge because I can't successfully leave the house without pockets in my pants.

The problem with an elastic waistband is you still need extra fabric in the waist to get them over your hips.  You can remove the extra fabric by adding a zipper instead, but up until this week, I didn't know how to sew a zipper.   For MONTHS, I've been trying to learn how to set a zipper.  I keep reading instructions, but hadn't actually tried to do it. Finally,  I decided that if I started with a lapped zipper, I could sew anything.  So, I found a pattern for a lapped zipper, and after following the pattern with some scrap cotton, I found that the pattern didn't produce a very stylish result.  I found at least three errors.  So I spent a full day designing my own pattern off of the faulty one, until I got everything to line up properly.  It took my 5 iterations to get it just right and ready for use.  Since the green fabric isn't stretchy at all, I also decided to add a bit of elastic in the back of the waistband.  For this reason, my sister dubbed them "buffet pants." 

The green pair of bloomers include the lapped zipper, back darts, ruffles, and two front pockets with piping.  I also added a little tag with my name and the fiber content because it's the law if you want to sell clothing that it be labeled with fiber content.  Who knew?  I'm thrilled with the workmanship on this pair.  The details are very nearly perfect.   But, they're still a little big on me, so I'm selling them in anticipation of making myself a perfectly fitting pair.

Topologically Equivalent Surfaces in Felt for the Math Nerd in You

This is a set of 4 topologically equivalent surfaces that I just listed. Each surface has two faces shown in the two colors of felt, and each surface also has exactly two edges, shown with button hole stitching in green and black.

All of these surfaces can be THEORETICALLY* deformed into any of the other three, but you might have to allow the surface to intersect itself to do it. In mathematical terms, each of the four surfaces is homeomorphic to the other three since they all have Euler characteristic -2. Secondly, three of the surfaces are isotopic to each other, but one of the surfaces is not isotopic to the other three.  The one with the three-fold spiral is the odd man out (rightmost piece in the first photo).  You can see that this one is weird since the black edge is a trefoil knot.   That's how you know that you would have to intersect the suface to deform it into the other surfaces.  Each of the other edges on all four pieces can be deformed to a circle without crossing itself.

*Note, you can't physically deform these felt models to make the other surfaces.  You have to imagine or visualize how to do this.  

The Euler characteristic is calculated by drawing a map on the surface and counting the number of faces, edges and vertices as V + F - E.  For 3D polyhedra, the Euler characteristic is always positive 2.  For example, the cube gives 8 + 6 - 12 = 2.  The tetrahedron gives 4 + 4 - 6 = 2.

I made these by wet felting pure wool over a cotton base, and when they were dry, I hand stitched the edges with cotton yarn. These little sculptures are stiff enough to hold their shape, but flexible enough to be folded. Three of them can be arranged to sit in at least two different configurations.  It's hard to measure how big these are exactly, but they range from about 2 to 4 inches.

Harlequin Playa Coat Using McCalls 5092 Pattern

I finally finished my blue and green playa coat.  This is the first fake fur coat that I sewed entirely from scratch.   This coat is based upon McCalls 5092 in the medium size (size 14-16), but after making a muslin mock up, I found it was HUGE, like a cape. I  took out somewhere between a quarter and a third of the width of the fabric in the skirt.  I also narrowed the underside of the dolman sleeves considerably because dolman sleeves and backpacks are not a good combination.  Plus, I haven't liked dolman sleeves since 1989.  I like the way one can flip up the collar for when it gets really cold.

The fabric is a wonderfully soft, and somewhat stretchy, poodle-like fur that is probably nylon or some other synthetic.  The lime green lining is pure silk, which also lines the pockets.  To make sure the seams will last, I used French seams on the lining and I binded all of the seams of the fur with twill tape.  Because I wanted really big green buttons, I made them myself out of some scrap wood in the garage and some leftover green house paint.  Each button loop also has a second loop from which I can hang glow stick bracelets.  I can't wait to wear this on the Playa!