What Day is this?

I found myself asking this question often…

I will say, after two nights uninterrupted sleep, I am actually starting to feel human.  And today, for the first time in quite a few days, I felt like my brain was working on all four cylinders.  I felt organized in my thoughts, and felt like I sort of made sense while I was lecturing.  Everyone seemed enthusiastic, and wanted to try out all of the techniques I showed them.  Today’s topic was basic sewing skills and all sorts of Seam and Edge Finishes.

I love the sound of purring sewing machines, and had all sorts of bias strips, nylon tricot, press bars, lopi yarn, and other oddities for the students to play with.  My favorite seam finish of course, is the Hong Kong, and I provided some lovely pink acetate from a bolt I will never finish, to create bias strips for making the Hong Kong finish.  I don’t have all my production photos in this computer, so I can’t actually show you the finish, but I think you can find it in one of my previous blogs.  I also taught them to make piping, and I love to stuff the piping with soft Lopi yarn, every fiber enthusiast has a skein of that floating around in their stash.  It makes great stuffing for piping and I had a ball for them to play with.

One of my other favorite seam finishes was a product called Seams Great.  Sadly this product is no longer available.  In essence, Seams Great was a nylon tricot bias cut strip, about 1 1/4″ wide, which encased a seam allowance beautifully, with no weight and lots of flex.  So I found a source for 15 denier nylon tricot, and offer it to my students, to cut their own bias, and showed them how to use it to encase handwoven seam allowances, and to make curved shirttail hems a breeze.

I also showed them how to make bias tubes with press bars, I use a 3/8″ wide duct fastener, which looks like a cable tie on steroids.  We did all kinds of interesting things with them.

When the class was winding down today, Bettie Bahen from Ann Arbor, MI, who had taken a jacket making class when I visited Ann Arbor last year, came in to show me her blouse.  It was really pretty, and it looked great on her, and she proudly told me that she had used my jacket pattern to draft the blouse pattern!  I was soooo impressed.  She said it was the best fitting pattern she ever used, and that made me feel great!  And I loved the print!

One more day of class, then I get to judge the fashion show!  Tomorrow, Closures…