Saturday Sewing: Back To School Knits!

Imagine this scenario: You’ve braved the mall for the perfect first day of school outfit, and the only shirt they like is way over your budget. (I’m sure this has happened in many homes this month!) I set out to create a garment that would put any store-bought garment to shame and that only my girl would have. I had so much fun making this shirt for her!

I used the Hudson pattern from Hey June Handmade and some custom printed fabric out of my stash that my daughter loved. I did have one problem tho: the panel was too small, and I only had a large scrap of the matching print. So I appliqued the panel to the front piece, and distressed it with some cuts in a circular shape to match the image on the panel. Then I used the HP2 foot to sew it to the front pattern piece.

My hope is that the raw edges will curl after it’s washed!

After I had the front piece done, I set about to constructing the rest. My Janome AirThread Serger made this quick and easy. Something that people find challenging is getting the seams to line up properly when stretching one side and sewing at a higher speed. I discovered an awesome technique for sewing cuffs. Follow along in the photos below:

1. Lay your cuff piece in front of you, right side up.

2. Fold in half long edges together, then in half again so that you have 4 raw edges.

3. Sew along the raw edge, and flip one side over so that you have a loop of fabric.

4. Now when you go to sew the cuff to the sleeve, you only have two seams to match up.

This method of sewing the cuffs together makes it so much easier to have perfect alignment for your seams.

The next thing I wanted to do on the garment, to bump it from home-made to hand-crafted, was to make buttonholes for the sparkly drawstring I found. Buttonholes on knit fabric are way easier than you think! I stabilized the back with a scrap of interfacing and then marked my placement lines.

The buttonhole foot makes it so easy to create a buttonhole on many different types of fabric. And no button was needed to mark the width, I simply measured how big I wanted my buttonhole to be and opened the back of the foot to the same amount.

Don’t forget to pull the buttonhole lever down from behind the needle threader!

Once the drawstring channel was sewn (with sparkly thread to match the sparkly string!), I attached the cowl piece to the main body of the garment, and voila, the perfect one of a kind garment!

So don’t be afraid to up your game when it comes to garments. You’ll be glad you did!

Until next time,

JanomeGirl