Pattern Hack: Chevron Color Blocking

If you have a top or a dress pattern that you love, but you want to jazz it up a little bit, you can add decorative seams anywhere you like and not just straight seams either. I'm going to show you a technique for doing an angled seam for a little bit of a Chevron effect. And I'm going to show it to you on a sleeve pattern. But once you know this technique, you can apply it anywhere on a garment or on other projects as well. So to start, we are going to look at our sleeve pattern and to get the angle symmetrical on both sides, I like to fold my pattern in half and mostly patterns will have a, a notch up here at the center of the sleeve cap and that's a good place to align for your center, but align with the, the lower edges and the side seam edges even.

And this pattern is going to be one that already, you know, fits you, you know, the sleeve is the length that you want and we're just going to be adding a seam just for fun. And this scene can be used for color blocking stitching, you know, each part of the pattern in a different color or for adding something in the seam like trim, uh a lace uh piping fringe is always fun. So you can do different things with the seam and it's not going to change the fit at all. This is just decorative. So for my angled seam, I want the point at the fold here, I want to be sure I'm not interfering with the hem at all.

So on mine, I have about an inch from the lower edge tied up in my hem. So I'm going to make sure I stay well above that. So I'm gonna actually go about 2.5 inches up from the lower edge. And that is where I'm going to end my seem. And the angle that you take for your angled seam is up to you, the higher and tighter the angle, the more difficult it is going to be to sew.

So I'm going to try for more of a midrange angle. I'm gonna pull it down right about here and just draw myself a new line. And I love this tissue paper variety of pattern paper because it is see through and I can just flip it over and see my line on the other side and draw that in. So I have a perfectly symmetrical angle on each side. Now, this is going to be our new seam line.

So we're going to cut this apart right along our line and we're separating this pattern piece into two pieces. So I have a new pattern piece now and any time you create new lines on your pattern and you cut it apart. So we have a new seam line. So we have to add new seam allowances. So I'm going to place my new pattern piece on some new paper and I'm going to tape down these edges, keep everything nice and flat and whatever seam allowance you're using on your pattern.

That is what seam allowance you want to add here, make things easy on yourself. Just use the same seam allowance and mine is three eights. So I'm going to add 38 to each cut edge. And at the edge of the pattern here, we're just going to kind of extend this line for our new seam allowance. Just pull that over to connect and you're going to cut that out.

And this is your new cutting line and we're going to do the same thing with this piece, take down our edges and draw in three eights from that edge. And we want to make sure we extend this line enough so that we get a, a nice point down here. And again, we're going to just extend that line into our new seam allowance. So there are our new pattern pieces, there's my cut edge and there's my new cut edge for that and we're going to cut out those pieces and here is what they look like. So my lower part of my sleeve and my upper sleeve now because we have an angled seam.

Now, we're working with some bias angles. And when you have something cut on the bias, it is a lot easier for it to get stretched out of shape. Uh, rather than if you're working on a straight grain or a cross grain. So try not to over handle the fabric. And I'm going to use some stay tape.

This is fusible stay tape. I'm going to use that on the wrong side of my seam allowances, uh wrong side of my seam line to stabilize it. So it doesn't get stretched out while sewing and so that it will keep its shape nicely. And this is a very fine woven stay tape. This is so key brand by Emma Seabrook and I really love this because it is super, super fine.

It's not going to add any stiffness to your scene and there are multiple varieties. She has a knit variety as well. Um Depending on what fabric you're working with. And this is great for a lot of different uses. So I'm using it to stabilize my edges here.

So I'm going to lay this along my seam line and this is half inch wide tape and I'm using 3/8 inch seam allowances. So if I just lay this next to my raw edge, it will be, it will get caught in my sea line and I'm going to do this to both pieces. So we're going to press this on and one side of this tape is fusible and you're able to feel the, the feasible side because the glue has a little bit of a rough feeling to it. So I'm aligning that nice and flat and I'm just going to press just one downward motion with a little bit of pressure on the iron. You don't want to go back and forth in an ironing motion before this glue is set because it's going to shift the placement of your stay tape, right.

So just up and down motion to get that pressed on and same thing on this piece, uh, if it's difficult to tell which side has the glue on, it just be mindful when it's coming off the roll, decide of the tape that's facing. The role is the feasible side. All right. So I have my stay tape on my seam. Now, I'm going to mark my seam allowance on this piece to give myself a line to follow and to make sure I'm stopping at this point right in the exact right place.

And I'm marking on the lower piece because that is the piece that is going to be facing up when I'm sewing. So there's my seam allowance line and right here is the point I'm going to stop and pivot when I'm stitching this next line. Yeah, to make this line a little bit darker. So I don't have to guess. Now we are going to place these pattern pieces with right sides together.

And when we align these pieces, we have um seam allowances that are, that are uh going off in opposite directions here. So we want to make sure where our seam line is, that is where these fabric pieces match and I'm pinning along the seam line. And when I get down here, I'm going to stop with my needle down in the fabric right here. And actually I, I'm going to lock my stitch when I get down there and I'm gonna take it off the machine so that you can see what I'm doing. So I'm gonna bring my machine in and we're going to stitch this right along my seam line.

So we wanna make sure as we approach this point, we go slow, we don't overshoot. So it looks like I'm right where I need to be. So I'm going to lock this and bring it off the machine. When you get a little bit better at this, this technique, you might not need to bring it off the machine. You can do everything right under the needle with the needle down in the fabric, but so you can see what I'm doing.

I'm taking this off. So I'm going to clip into my seam allowances of, of this upper piece and that is going to release this seam allowance. So I'm clipping up to about an eighth of an inch from this point so that I can swing this around and align my other side with my remaining edge. And if you need to, you might, I need to come in and do a little Y clip. So clipping a little bit to the side of the clip, you just made to release that even further.

So that this lays flat so your edges match up right at your seam line. OK? And we're going to start stitching right where we stopped. So here's where we stop stitching. We're going to start right there or as close as you can get to it and we're pushing this fabric over so that we're trying not to get a tuck here or a, a pinch or a fold in the fabric at all.

We're going to bring this up to our machine again and try to get your needle right down in where you left off. All right. Let's see how we did. So we're going to open this up, flatten it out and let's iron it down. So we can really see when you press it.

We want to press the seam allowances down. And hopefully we didn't get any pinches or tucks in the fabric. Sometimes if you do get a little uh tuck, it can press out or if you need to, you can unpick a stitch or two at the center and try to flatten that fabric out There we go. So it looks very nice and flat and you can run a line of top stitching along uh the lower edge underneath this scene to hold everything down, keep everything nice and flat and top stitching just it gives a nice look to things. So once it, once it's top stitched, it'll look like this with a nice line of decorative top stitching under your decorative scene.

So once you learn how to do this technique, you can apply it in other areas of a garment such as across the body of a garment um across um the front of a skirt. Or you can translate this to the front of a purse and add fun color blocking to a purse or add something in your decorative scene.