Funky mirror tutorial

The loo in my studio was less than pleasant when I took over ... it needed a LOT of cheering up so I spent a great deal of time deciding how to do it and settled on a scheme which just makes me giggle every time I look at it.  I mean that in a nice way.  A fun, modern rockabilly look is what I was aiming for so I painted the walls with a lovely bright cream shade, made a blind inspired by my favourite morning coffee mug, in red linen with a scalloped edge and black and white polkadot binding , and teamed it up with some cheery fake flowers on the window sill and a leopard skin covered mirror on the wall.

I covered a plain pine mirror with scraps in my stash and was really really pleased with the way it turned out.  I couldn't decide how best to stick the fake fur to the mirror frame, until inspiration struck in the form of WunderUnder/Bondaweb - the fusible paper backed fabric used for applique and other sewing related things.

 I took pictures of the process incase you want to have a go yourself!

You will need:

Velboa fabric - this is a short pile smooth fake fur fabric which doesn't fray
WunderUnder fusing fabric
An untreated wooden frame - mine cost £1.89 from Ikea
Staple gun
Iron
Scissors/cutting wheel
Ruler

First of all, divide and measure the area which you need to cover - include the sides and make sure you have about 1cm overlap to the back of the mirror.  I decided to split my mirror into 4 parts and marked them accordingly.

Cut your WunderUnder fusible fabric (backed with paper on one side) to the exact size of each top section not including the sides or the back of the frame.

Cut your fabric pieces to the size of each section, plus the thickness of the frame (1cm in this case) plus a 1cm overlap at the back.

I used velboa fake fur fabric which doesn't fray so I did not have to think about tidying up raw edges - only that the edges are cut with a very sharp straight line.

'Glue' your WunderUnder to your frame with a warm-hot  iron - just as if you were fusing it to fabric - test an inconspicuous area first or do a test on a scrap of wood.  When glued,  leave the frame to cool, and then peel the protective paper off.

Carefully place your fabric onto each section of your frame, making sure all the edges meet up and are smooth and then press with the iron for 3-4 seconds on each section until the fabric is all glued down.  Leave to cool.  (Make sure you test a bit of fabric with the iron before you press your frame, so that you don't burn or melt anything!).

Fold the surplus fabric over the edges and staple along the back of the frame leaving the corners until last.

Trim the corners to reduce bulk and then staple down.

For extra decoration, or for practical purposes (my nail was too high in the wall so I had to dangle the frame) staple a ribbon to the back in a loop formation and hang!  Embellish as you see fit,  et voila!

For more pics of the studio including before's and after's, click here:  Sew Curvy Studio

Restoring a Vintage Sewing Machine.

Have you ever looked at an old vintage sewing machine which is perhaps a bit rusty and thought "ooh I'd love that, if I had time to clean it up" - imagining that it might take a team of magic pixies and a whole year's worth of elbow grease to do..?

Well .. Here's how you can do it without the pixies and only a weekend's worth of low grade elbow grease.  With just a few household 'substances' you can have a very old, very beautiful machine working as well as it was the day it left the factory.  So without further ado, heres is

Mrs Marmalade's definitive guide to Vintage Sewing Machine Maintenance and Restoration!

You've all met Wilma before .. she's 120 years old and has for the last 22 years, lived in my loft.  She was in a bad state when I rescued her from Oxfam but deteriorated a little more over the years.  I thought her sewing days were over.

Poor Wilma has a yellowed bed and rusty parts but she is still young inside, all her bits work as they should.  After surfing around a few sites looking for info about machine maintenance, I figured I could try to restore Wilma.

The 'traditional' method seems to be by soaking the entire machine in Kerosene and then scrubbing and rubbing the thing clean and then lots of polishing preferably with a Dremel.

Well I don't have a Dremel, and Mr Marmalade won't have Kerosene anywhere near the place - it is ridiculously dangerous - much more flammable than petrol, it stinks, it is messy ..yuk yuk..

So instead of Kerosene, this is what I used - I bet you have the same stuff in your cupboards:

Here we have, a can of coke (most important), car polish, metal polish, dusters, wire wool and, not pictured, a toothbrush, some Barkeepers Friend and a camera.

First of all make sure you take plenty of 'before' shots, both distant and close up - you really wont believe your eyes and you wont remember how 'bad' she was before.

Keep taking pictures as you  dismantle your machine, lots of pictures, make labels of all your bits, and take pictures of said bits, on the labels.

If there are multiple parts which fit together, take a picture of the thing before you dismantle it, take pictures as you dismantle it, and take a picture of the parts in the order they should be put back when dismantled - you can never take too many pictures.

If your metal bits are rusty, take most of the rust off by rubbing the part with some grade 00 wire wool - dry.  It will come off quite easily.  If the rust is stubborn, add a bit of WD40.   If there are screws that you can't undo, use WD40 to loosen them.

I couldn't get this part off so I just polished it up with wire wool and Peek

Take off the face plate and the back plate and clean the insides as well as possible with a duster/toothbrush/dry paint brush/air can - don't get the insides wet.  If there is alot of gunk in there, use WD40 to loosen and clean it.

Don't forget the underside - give it a good old clean with a dry cloth and some WD40 if necessary.  The most important thing is to never get the insides wet with water as this will cause rust in unreachable places.

When you were little did you ever do the coke and penny experiment?  Put a dirty penny in coke over night and the next morning it is shiny and new?

A similar principle applies to your metal sewing machine parts - when they are as de-rusted as possible, soak them in the coke overnight.  Do not soak painted parts in coke! Only metal.    *Please note, only soak your metal parts if all there is no chrome present!!  Obviously Wilma started off life with chromed parts but after 120 years there is no chrome left so these parts are back to the bare metal.

While they are soaking you can get on with the body.  I scrubbed Wilma on the outside with washing up liquid and a toothbrush, and rinsed her with a damp cloth - this wont get all the dirt off but it will shift most of it.  If you have really really stubborn dirt, use a 'bug remover' for cars - available in car part shops or Halfords.  If you are in doubt about what you use to clean the body, test a little area first, at best, you may silver the decals, and at worst you may rub them off or dissolve them!  Car cleaning products are generally 'kind' to sewing machines.  You may end up with patches on the machine which look a little brown - don't worry about them.

When you have washed and dried the body, and have dusted and de-gunked the insides, give the machine a liberal dose of sewing machine oil on all the moving parts and turn the wheel so that the oil gets in all the nooks and crannies.  Oil some more.

On the outside, you can polish the body using T-cut, this will do four things 1. remove deeply ground in grime which can't be budged by soap alone,  2) restore the blackness in the colour,  3) give a lovely shine and 4) ...

Even if by chance you have accidentally scratched your paintwork with wire wool, T-cut will make them good.  It's like a miracle!!

these have just been removed from the coke .. as you can see they still look dirty, but the dirt is really loose now and scrubs off easily

The next day, when your metal parts have soaked in coke, take them out one by one and deal with them by scrubbing again with wire wool to remove the now loose dirt, then apply a little Barkeepers friend.   This finishes off the job of the coke, removes really awkward stains and adds a little bit of shine.  Rinse whilst still 'polishing' with the wire wool under running water.

Dry the parts and polish with Peek or Brasso (I prefer Peek).  The metal polish buffs up the metal but also adds a protective coating which will give the metal parts a new lease of life and protect them from immediate rust attack.

You might discover some hidden gems ...

Reassemble your sewing machine bit by bit as you polish your metal parts.  This is where your photos will come in handy - even though it hasn't been long since you dismantled, you will be surprised at how quickly you might forget which screw goes where!

When done,  stand back and admire your work!

There are many more pictures over at my Flickr Stream right HERE.

How to make a skirt pattern - part 3

So now you have your skirt block, you can make a plain 'tailored' skirt with the basic block pattern.

In this post, I shall go through some basic techniques to:

Make a pencil skirt

Make a facing 

Close darts

Make and Mark your pattern

To make a facing for any skirt, decide how deep you would like it to be, and draw a line right across the pattern.  Then trace up from that line, the outline of the top of your skirt - where the red dotted line appears in the diagram below.

Now trace this red outline onto some tracing paper so that you have a front half and a back half.   Make sure you trace the darts accurately.

Cut out the pieces around your outlines, and then fold the paper where the darts are - just as if you were sewing them together.  This will make your front section and back section 'curl' up.  That is fine.  Trace these two shapes back onto your master pattern ensuring the lines are smooth.  You should end up with something which looks like the green lined shapes below:

To make a pencil skirt shape, simply decide how narrow you would like the bottom of the skirt to be - I usually take mine in by about 5-6 cm, divide that measurement in two, and then measure from the centre line of your master block back by that half measurement on either side, and join those points to your hip line.  You should end up with :

From here you can make further adjustments to the design of your skirt.  Keeping it simple, you could either go for the basic pencil skirt as shown, or you could make it into a panel pencil skirt by cutting 10 pattern pieces instead of 4 - ie: by cutting through the darts and flare lines.  A bit more work, but a lovely effect especially if you use flat felled seams.

Now your complete skirt pattern (basic model) plus facing, should look something like this:

Because you have closed the darts on the facing, you do not have to sew darts into it - you can do this with the skirt too if you want to, using the same technique.  However, this pattern description is fora simple pencil skirt which will have a side zip and no seam at the centre front or back, there are 4 pattern pieces which will result in 6 fabric pieces to mark and sew together.

When tracing the pattern, the following steps should be taken:

• Trace with clear sharp lines
• Before removing each pattern piece:
•  make sure the piece is labelled - cf/cb/sf/sb etc.,
•  mark a grain line running vertically from top to bottom in order to ensure that your fabric is straight
•  mark balance points - where you will join the fabric pieces together - I usually do this at the hip line.
•  make sure your darts and any other important features are marked.

Pattern markings should therefore look a little like this:

And the same for the facing:

After tracing the pieces from the block, don't forget to add seam allowance!

When making up the skirt, you might want to interface the facing to give it stiffness, and you might want to add a lining to the facing or underneath the facing.  For the former, you just draw onto your basic block, down from the facing line, thus creating 2 further pattern pieces, or for a complete lining, you just cut out two lots of skirt pattern from the appropriate fabrics.

Other points to consider before you start tracing:

Where will your fastening be?  if at the back, then you will need to cut two separate pieces for the CB - ie: not cut on the fold as per my example.  You will also need a split or splits in order to make walking possible!  You could have one at the back, or one at the front.  You could even do a little peplum - but that is for another post.

And so I hope this tutorial is useful for you!  I hope to return to normal daily blogging next week!

Happy weekend everyone!!

How to make a skirt pattern - part 2

Today we shall talk about DARTS on the skirt block.

Darts are there to shape the skirt - obviously - to your own contours preferably.  You can put any number of darts into your skirt, but for the basic block, there will be 2 at the back and one at the front.  This translates to a total of 6 darts in your skirt.  We're putting more darts into the back as there is more ease there, if you remember.

The waist is going to have 1cm ease which will be split equally between the back and the front of the skirt block - so 0.25cm either side of the block as each half of the block is a quarter of your skirt.

The darts will be 2cm wide each.

You can plot these lines now as follows:

click the image to enlarge

The front waist will be quarter of your waist measurement plus 2.25cm.  That is 2cm for the dart and 0.25cm for quarter of the ease.  Draw a line this length back towards the centre of the skirt and then connect this line to the hip line.  Extend that line by 1.25cm above the top line.   The front dart is usually placed about 7.5cm-10cm left of the CF line.  Draw a line straight downwards.

The back waist will be quarter of your waist measurement plus 4.25cm.  That is 2 x 2cm darts plus 0.25cm for quarter of the ease.  Draw a line this length from CB towards the centre of the skirt and join with a diagonal line towards the hip as shown.  Again, extend this line 1.25cm above the top.  The two back darts are placed at evenly spaced intervals at the back.  Draw these in vertically from the top line, extending them to meet the diagonal line you have just drawn.

Your darts should be the lengths indicated here:

click the image to enlarge

To draw the darts in, measure 1cm either side of each central dart line, and join each point to the bottom of the dart:

click the image to enlarge

Do this for all of the darts, and then, add some curve to all lines like SO:

click the image to enlarge

Now there is just one more thing to do before the basic block is finsihed, and that is to add your "flare lines".  You don't HAVE to add these, but I always do as it helps me define the line of my final skirt.  ie:  If you want a flared skirt with godets you would put the godets where the flare lines are.  Or if you wanted a panel skirt then you would cut where the flare lines are and these would then become seams.

Flare lines just extend from the bottom of the dart to the bottom of the block.  You can have more flare lines than this depending upon your design, but for this block we are sticking to the basic.

The basic skirt block, complete with flare lines, looks like this:

click the image to enlarge

NOW you are ready to make a toile (muslin).  What you have to do is trace your block onto some thinner paper - I use plain greaseproof paper (not baking parchment with silicone as that is too slippy).  Trace the two halfs - front and back - with the dart markings.  After tracing each half, you have to add a seam allowance of 1.5cm to the sides only.    The centre front of this pattern is cut on the fold of your fabric as is the centre back - so for the purpose of your toile for fitting, the opening to your skirt will be at the side.  Make the toile up in cheap fabric, and fit it to yourself.  It should already be quite a good fit, but may need a little adjustment at the waist and hip.  Mark where your adjustments are (if any), then transfer these to your block.

et Voila!  You have your own personal skirt block which can be customised in various ways to make virtually any skirt you can think of!

Future posts will include ways to do this.  

To preserve your block so that you can use it time and time again, it is a good idea to transfer it now to some thin card.  Make sure to transfer all of the basic markings too.  When you come to make patterns, you just trace around the block, marking where the darts, flare lines and hip line is, and then create a new pattern.

If you are new here, or if you have found these posts interesting, I would love to hear from you!  Please do say 'hi' in the comments.  I will upload a PDF of this post soon.

How to make a skirt pattern - part 1

At last I have some useful information for you.  Here is the first instalment of skirt pattern (block) making.  Click on the diagrams for a larger view.  For ease of reference, click here for part 2 and part 3.

Part 1, is measuring and applying the measurements to the first part of the "block".   You need only THREE measurements:

Waist

Hip

Final length of skirt

When taking measurements, don't breathe in, don't leave the tape slack.   Measure snugly as you would like the skirt to fit.  Ease to allow for movement will be added later.

The block works with half your body.  You therefore need to half your measurements, and then quarter them for half of each side - front and back?  Are you with me?  Don't worry, there's a diagram at the end.

First of all,  record your measurements - and do the calculations.  I like to make a table for easy reference.

Don't bother filling out the grey coloured squares as you don't need those measurements.   Here you can see that we're adding half the total amount of ease to the finished block measure.  So the total amount of ease on your skirt will be 1cm at the waist, and 3cm at the hip.  This will allow for comfort and movement, but also give a nice fit.

The final block measures are as follows:

Waist =  quarter of the waist measurement plus 0.5cm
Hip back = quarter the hip plus 1.5 cm
Hip front = quarter the hip

So if we were using my own measurements, the chart would look like this:

I tend to like my skirts on, or just above the knee, but with your block you can go as long or short as you like.  You do not add hem allowance or seam allowance at this stage.

SO.  Now you have your measurements, you need a large piece of paper, a long ruler, a set square, a pencil and a rubber.  The piece of paper should be able to accommodate a square which is the width of half your hip measurement plus ease (50.5cm in the above example) and a few inches longer than your final length of skirt measurement.  Personally I prefer to use dot and cross, or squared paper because my eyes are funny and can't see straight lines no matter how hard I try, but brown paper or even the white back of wrapping paper will be fine as long as it is wide enough!

You will need a set square in order to get perfect 90° angles.  ALL angles at this stage must be 90°.

First of all, draw a square, which is half hip + 1.5cm wide and length of your skirt long.  Label the left vertical edge "centre back" and the front vertical edge "centre front".  The top line is your waist.  From here, measure 20cm down (or the length of your waist to hip) and draw a horizontal line across.  This is your hip.  Measure quarter hip plus 1.5cm across from the centre back (left side) and draw a line down to the bottom.  You should now have a diagram which looks like this:

Note that all the ease for the hip is at the back - this is where you need the space for sitting down etc., and obviously, it's where you are most 'fleshy'.  

So from the hemline up to the hip, the basic block is done!   Next post I will show you how to shape the waist with darts and how to trace the pattern off and make it up.

How to make fabric flowers

edit: This post has been hit over 1,000 times. If you use this tutorial and post the results on your blog, please do me the courtesy of posting a link back here. Thankyou!

How much fun can a girl have with a candle and some silky fabric I ask you?

I was inspired by the beautiful poppies and roses in my garden - they are my favourites, red ofcourse, and I really wanted to make some pretty flowers to embellish some things i'm working on. I had a definite picture in my mind, but my last pathetic and ugly attempts were so horrid I gave up trying to sew them.

But then I remembered somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind, a trick with synthetic fabric and flame.

What you do is cut some circles, no need to be perfect, or you can cut rough flower shapes, or even petal shapes. Then you hold them near the flame - just near enough so that the edges curl, and you keep turning the shape until the whole edge is singed. Then you sew together in any formation you like, and add beads or buttons for the middle.

I've used organza for the red flowers and a silky lining fabric for the black ones. You can't use natural fibres for this otherwise you will set fire to them! Only synthetic fibre works because essentially what you are doing, is melting it!

Each fabric behaves differently over the flame so you have to practice and experiment, which is half the fun, and I can tell you ... once you start, you can't stop!

How to use an invisible zipper foot

I don't want to become a boring old sew and sew, but as Mr M has been on call all weekend, we haven't been able to go 'out and about' together, so while he has been tap tap tapping with his hammer, mending fences and gates in the garden in time for next weekend (when I will have something ridiculoulsly exciting to report to you) and making sure that Eggy and Peggy are 'safe' as it's been a bit like 'Chicken Run" around here of late, I've been left to sew the weekend away as my latest pattern obsession has taken shape. If you think this pattern piece looks a bit like a torpedo, just wait till you see the finished article.

Full picture tomorrow as it was dark by the time I finished. In the meantime, Here is an illustrated story for you on "how to insert a concealed zipper".

They are difficult! But they are worth it. The first one I did last week, was unpicked around 50 times for various reasons including sewing it on backwards, and unpicking the wrong side by mistake.. grrr!

The first thing to ensure upon embarking on a session with one of these, is that you are fully awake and preferably undistracted (remember... shit happens and so do back to front zippers).

Start by ironing your zipper so that it lies quite flat on the underside. This is so that the needle can get really close to the teeth of the zip when you sew it.

Next, sew a line to mark the seam allowance where you are going to sew your zip. It is best to do this on an open seam (ie, don't sew any of the seam until the zipper is in). The zipper teeth are going to sit on this line.

This is an invisible zipper foot. It is made of plastic, costs around £3.00 and is 'multi fit' - so it can be used on lots of different machines. Most machines are "short shank" and this foot is for short shank machines. It came with no instructions and took me a while to realise that the regular machine foot has to be removed in it's entirety in order to fit this foot. The brown base slides through the blue part in order that you can line up the needle properly.

In the (terrible) picture below you can see that the needle is right in the middle of the foot, the mid point being marked by a notch just behind the needle. The notch can be better seen in the picture above.

An invisible zip is sewn in an open position unlike a regular zip. Align the right side of the open zip to the right side of the fabric, with the teeth sitting just over the seam line that you have marked. Pin it in place and then baste. It is very important to baste the zip on before you machine. Trust me, it only takes a minute and will avoid alorralorra heartache later, not to mention a sore back and a sore head. In my experience, once you start unpicking, you can't stop! It's as if suddenly a curse arrives on the zip.

Here you can see how the zipper foot works. It has a groove which rolls the teeth of the zip over to once side whilst keeping everthing 'on track' and enabling the needle to sew really really close to the edge. This is the secret of the invisible zipper.

I now sew with a long machine basting stich... just to make extra sure. It's easier to unpick if you need to, and won't spoil the zip like a smaller stitch could. As you sew, you have to be careful not to sew over the teeth otherwise the finished zip won't close.

Because the foot is really quite cumbersome, you can't get right to the end of the zip like you can with a normal zipper foot. So just go as far as you possibly can on both sides.

When both sides of the zip are attached to your satisfaction (ie: so that when you close the zip you can't see it on the right side), and you have sewn over your machine basting with a stronger stitch, you can finish sewing the seam that it's on.

Sew the seam from the bottom to the top in the normal way, and when you get to the base of the zipper, pull it to the inside, so that your machine foot can sew right up the seam allowance to where you stopped sewing the zip. This will close the seam. (note that the zip is still 'undone' at this stage).

For a neat edge, attach your usual zipper foot and sew down the other side of the zip on the seam allowance.

This will give a secure and neat finish to the inside of your item.

Et voila! You should have a perfectly invisible zip !