Stitched Tunic Session 1: Overview
National Sewing Circle EditorsDescription
In this session, we’ll go over the list of supplies needed to make your tunic, plus get a brief overview of all the skills and techniques you’ll learn while making your tunic.
In this class we're learning how to make a decorative stitch tunic. And I've packed this lesson full of skills and techniques that you can use for any future project. So in this session, we're going over all of the supplies where we'll need to make our tunic and all of the skills and techniques that we'll learn and use while making our tunic. So first we'll talk about facings. How to use them to finish edges for a nice clean look.
And facings are great for curved edges. They're great for a neckline edge like this, that's got all these sharp corners and curves. It'd be a nightmare to bind. So facings make it really easy. Facings don't just have garment applications.
You can use them on home dec projects or accessories, anywhere you have a curved edge or even a straight edge that you don't want to bind or turn and stitch, you can use a facing for. And facings are, the pattern pieces are really easy to draw on your own. So say you had a commercial pattern that said to finish an edge one way but you wanted this nice clean, finished look instead. You could just trace the pattern, the edge that you want to finish, because it's just the pattern piece looks exactly the same along that edge. So it's really easy.
We're talking about inserting inseam pockets which is fantastic. I love pockets. Why wouldn't you want some extra storage in your garment? It's great. The pattern piece is really easy to draw.
I've provided a piece for you but if you wanted to alter it or anything if you needed some more room to get your hand into your pocket, it's really easy to alter. So you could, you know you could draw your own pattern piece. It's just an oval. Just trace your hand. The one edge is angled.
So there's a little bit of a technique to it. And we'll talk about all of that when we insert it. We have set-in sleeves in our tunic. So we're going to use the flat sleeve insertion technique which just means instead of sewing your sleeve seam in your side seam and then inserting your sleeve cap into your armscye in a circle stitch, we're leaving everything flat and we're stitching the sleeve into the armscye first, which makes it a lot easier, in my opinion, to get everything flat under the needle. You can see what you're doing.
You're not getting any extra tucks in there. And then instead of sewing three seams, you're only sewing two. So then once you insert the sleeve then you get to stitch from the cuff all the way to the hem all at once and super easy. We are talking about decorative stitching. So how to you use different kinds of stabilizers with different kinds of threads to get smooth decorative stitching.
We don't want any puckers in our fabric. So there are lots of options depending on what fabric weight you choose. Lots of options for different kinds of stabilizers and different kinds of threads for totally different looks. And finally, we'll talk about a couple of pattern alterations and a couple of really quick and easy things that you can do to customize your tunic to get lots of different looks. So for supplies we will need two yards of 45 inch wide fabric.
So we are working with lawn today and lawn is just 100% cotton with a high thread count. So it's got a nice tight weave and a nice hand in drapes. You get that cotton washability and wearability and breatheability, and it's really easy to work with. Now, this print shirt behind me is Tencel which is just a brand name for the fiber lyocell which is a natural manmade fiber which sounds like an oxymoron, but it makes sense because it's made from regenerated wood cellulose. So wood pulp, that's the by-product of other processes, gets somehow spun into a fiber which they can then weave in any number of ways.
So it's great. It's really environmentally friendly, it's 100% biodegradable. It's a little bit more expensive because of that but it's got a gorgeous hand and drape, it's really soft. I love to wear it. This weave was a little bit more open.
So it was kind of like a gauzy fabric. So it was a little bit harder to work with, the fibers were like shifting around a lot. So just so you have all the information, beware. So two yards of that, my pattern is a small medium. So if you wanted to size that up any you might need a little bit extra fabric.
So, fabric. We'll need some scraps of tearaway stabilizer and you really just need kind of scraps. It's just for going under our decorative stitching. I use tearaway. We'll talk about different kinds of stabilizer a little bit later.
You will need thread. So all purpose thread for construction in a similar or matching color, and then we will need heavyweight thread. So I use just it's just called plain old heavyweight thread. I use that for my decorative stitching on my Tencel, and we'll sew with it today. But you could use rayon thread, which has a nice sheen.
You could use metallic thread, that might be fun. 100% cotton thread has a nice matte look, kind of natural organic look, or you could absolutely use your all-purpose thread for your decorative stitching. That's what I used on my lawn behind me. It just gives kind of a more delicate, lighter look. So depending on what look you're going for choose your thread accordingly.
So we'll need, you know, your scissors and your rotary cutter for cutting out your fabric. I like to use a sleeve board. We'll definitely need a pressing ham and then your tracing wheel and tracing paper to mark all of our pattern markings or whatever supplies you need for your marking method of choice. So I like to have a pair of snips on hand. Nice, sharp little snips.
Those are always good to have around. So just your standard sewing fare here. So once we have all of our supplies gathered we can then talk about pattern layout and pattern cutting and marking.
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