Piped Lined Faux Flap Pocket

New pocket! 

This was originally part of the full garment tutorial, which got too long. Decided I'd split that and give the pocket its own post here. 

This is how to add piping to a lined patch pocket which can then be folded over to create a faux flap. 

You will need two pieces of fabric the size of your pocket - one for the outside of the pocket and the other for the lining*. You will also need piping. The seam allowance of the fabric pieces should match the seam allowance of the piping (usually about 3/8").

*In a three-layered pocket (like an inset pocket), we call this backing layer "the "facing. For this two-layered patch pocket, we'll stick to calling this "the lining".

Step 1

Begin with one of the fabric pieces, right side up. This will be the outer layer. Use a regular zipper foot with the needle aligned to the leftmost position.

Line up the seam allowance of the piping with the seam allowance of one side of the fabric piece. The piping cord should face lie away from the edge of the fabric. Begin about half an inch from the end of the piping, 

hug the piping cord with the edge of the zipper foot, and begin to sew as close to the cord as possible.

When you reach a corner, stop with the needle in the down position and raise the foot.

Snip the seam allowance of the piping to about 2mm from the piping cord. Shift the piping to align it with the next edge of the fabric to be sewn. The snip you made will allow the piping to "turn the corner" neatly. Lower the foot and continue sewing all around the perimeter of the fabric piece.

Overlap the ends of the piping when you reach the place where you began stitching. That half-inch you left unsewn at the start in Step 1 will help you do this neatly. See this tutorial for how to overlap the ends.

Step 2

Lay the other fabric piece (the lining), right side down, on the first piece. Pin in place. Using the zipper foot to hug the piping cord underneath, sew all around the perimeter of the fabric piece, leaving an opening for turning out. Sew as close to the piping cord as possible- you will not be able to see the cord but you can feel it underneath the fabric layer. In the photo below, the seam allowance is all irregular because I didn't bother to cut it precisely. Yours should look much better! 

Step 3

Notch all the corners of the seam allowance.

Step 4

Turn right side out through the opening. Turn out the corners as sharply as you can, and press.

Step 5

Fold a portion of the top over to form the flap. Remember to keep the layer with the hole (the lining) as the back of the pocket. Top stitch the flap down.

Note: This pocket was cut on the bias (i.e. stretchy in all directions as a result), so it got a little asymmetrical during the sewing process. A light fusible interfacing would have helped stabilize it.

Step 6

Top-stitch the sides of the pocket to the garment. Because of the flap, you will not be able to sew all the way to the top edge of the pocket,

meaning that the top corners will pull away from the garment.

Step 7

Stitch-in-the-ditch between the piping and the fabric in just that upper corner to secure it to the garment. The presser foot has been removed for clarity in this picture.

Now the top corners are securely attached to the garment.

and you can sew on a button if you wish. Note that the button is sewn only to the pocket, and not to the garment as well. If you had wanted a buttonhole, it should have been sewn before Step 6.

Here is a variation of the same pocket, with two differences:


1 The lining and outer fabrics are different, adding contrast when the flap is folded down.

2 The pocket is rounded and has no corners. 

Store-bought piping is cut on the bias, so it hugs curves easily without your having to snip the seam allowance. If you make your own, and if it isn't cut on the bias, then snip every 1/4" along the seam allowance so it fans out as you sew it.


Here is another lined patch pocket made to impersonate an inset slash pocket. Only the edge of the opening is piped:

Attach the piping to just one edge, then stitch both layers of the pocket together, right sides touching. Leave open and unfinished, the sides that will get tucked into garment seams later.

Turn right side out and press.

Top-stitch along the edge of the pocket opening.

Then pin the pocket in place on the garment and top-stitch all around to attach.

Continue to assemble the garment, concealing the unfinished edges of the pockets within seams.

This tutorial has also been added to the pocket series here.

My Bullet List on The Mother Huddle

Do you know The Mother Huddle?
Co-authored by five talented mothers, it is a delightful collection of sewing, crafting, food, inspiration, wisdom and good common sense. I met its lovely founding editor, Destri, when one of her sewing tutorials inspired me to try doing my waistbands differently. We emailed a little bit; she invited me to write a bullet list for her blog and I said yes, oh yes.


But a bullet list about what? Sewing- since I do so much of it these days? No - I thought I'd write about balance. It's something I have to keep learning again and again because I throw myself into things with such energy and wholehearted blockheadness, oftentimes. You all know about that midlife craft crisis, right? And the Christmas epiphany? Now, I'm naturally slightly nuts, and parenthood has induced some kind of early dementia, but I like to think I am still methodical and analytical somewhere in the mix. So I sat myself down to figure out what was making me feel decidedly uncrafty. 


I started this blog to write tutorials because I'm an incurable educationist. But it all began by first discovering other crafty bloggers during the early days of Kate's life. Nothing inspires a person like reading about peg dolls and puppet theaters at 3 am while being stuck in a rocking chair, nursing, and being completely unable to get my hands on any craft supplies. When I finally had a moment to myself, I ran screaming into the craft world like a woman possessed. This is what passion looked like: I made gifts for everyone in the known universe. I opened an etsy shop. I started writing patterns. I filled notebook after notebook with all the exciting ideas in my head because my hands couldn't turn them into products fast enough. 


Looking back, this is what I saw: I went from working professional to stay-home-mom to immigrant-stay-home-mom to crafting stay-home-mom to crafting-and-blogging-stay-home-mom to crafting-and-blogging-and-etsy-stay-home-mom and.... well, it was a full plate. And where did the fun go? Blogging was and still is a great creative outlet and a means to maintain sanity, but it, too, along with the rest of my crafting, had begun to feel not very exciting in the last year. I traced it back to the time I ventured into etsy and pattern retail (late 2009) - that's probably when some of the pure fun began to change to something responsible and "proper". Not bad in itself, and now that I actually know what it was, it's glaringly obvious and really quite silly that it caused me the amount of consternation and puzzlement that it did.


So what was the problem? In a sentence:  I had a job again but I refused to see it that way. I called it "a fun way to earn pocket money by doing what I love." Snort! The rubbish one believes when one is in denial!


It wasn't only the actual hours spent developing patterns, the time spent responding to buyers' inquiries, or trying to fix computer-related download problems. Or deadlines. Or dragging three children to the post office in the snow to send off a parcel. True, I'd underestimated the idiocy of Internet Explorer and the might of a Minnesotan snowstorm, but those were things I foresaw, so I took them in stride. What threw me off were the subconscious expectations and standards I imposed on myself as a crafting-businessperson. I'd seen this happen with other bloggers - they may not have said it in so many words, but it was there between the lines. It gave me a sense of solidarity that I was not cuckoo all by myself! It also made me wonder why on earth we do this to ourselves.


I'll spare you the grisly details and just say that I'm not burnt out or cynical or anything dramatic like that. It was more like a dull "Eh?" As I said in the beginning of this post, I've done this over and over all through my life, oscillating between passions, losing and recovering my balance. I'm regretfully very familiar with its concept, but it does take me a while to recognize its many faces and new manifestations. 


Anyway, I thought it would make an interesting bullet list to share what I'd learned the past year - both from my own journey and from other people's that I've watched evolve in blogland. Read my bullet list here on The Mother Huddle!

I'm giving away my sewing patterns on No Big Dill!

Attention book lovers! 


Once in a blue moon, I find something on someone's blog that so grabs me that I have to tell everyone about it. I don't take the time to surf the net a lot, and my usual way of discovering (and accidentally losing) new blogs is through a link-to-a-link-to-a-link. Last week, using this exact ingenious method, I found, for the first time, Katy's blog, No Big Dill! Gorgeous in itself. And then Katy announced a very, very exciting new and brilliant feature that she's doing in the month of March:

It's sewing inspired by books! 

Love.

I wanted so much to share in it that emailed Katy and begged her to let me share some book-related stuff. Yes, begged her. Oh I have no shame. But don't you love the idea of books inspiring making? When we have little ones in our lives, those two things just go together, don't they? So many of the things I design and make were conceived in stories from my childhood. Today I'm excited and honored to jump-start Once Upon A Thread by sharing a roundup of some of these projects on Katy's blog. You, my regular readers, will find them very familiar!


But wait - there's more! I'm also giving away three of my sewing patterns that were inspired by books - the egg-laying Chicken, the lactating Pig, and the Toadstool House/Fairies. If you'd like to win one, go over to the post and leave a comment for Katy!

And go back in March for lots and lots of features and guest posts by incredibly talented book-lovers and seamstresses. Be inspired, and share your inspiration!

How to Use Print Fabric When You Actually Prefer Solids

By the time I'd organized my sewing closets, I discovered that I own a lot of print fabric. This was strange - because I've always preferred working with solids, I thought most of my stash would be solids. Instead, about half of it is patterned. Half!!!

So I started to analyze what I actually did with those print fabrics in my sewing. And I found that

• if I count polka dots, gingham and stripes as "print", then why yes, I do use a lot of print fabrics.
• I hardly ever coordinate different print (motif type) fabrics together in the same thing I'm sewing. One print fabric is already visually overwhelming for me, and to have two or three, especially when they aren't pre-coordinated by qualified fabric designers, would just about ruin the project.
• there's funky prints and then there's funky* prints. I own both kinds. Eek.

* as in, "Eeeeeeew, that is some funky-smelling cheese!"

Now, I'm probably in the minority in the crafting world where designer prints sell products and designers themselves are like royalty. Most of you already happily use lots of print fabric, and have absolutely no problems buying more. But for the handful of folks out there like me, here are one dozen ways in which I use print fabric when I don't want it to be the main event.

1 Quilting

An easy one for those of you who quilt - this is why quilting cotton exists in the first place. I don't quilt, but occasionally I need to sew a um... wall-hanging made of small elements. In such cases, I'd happily use print fabrics, but on a background that's solid. 

Erm... and since that's the sum total of the "quilting" I've done, let's move on, shall we?


2 Lining

This is probably the main way I use print fabric in large amounts, especially in bags and other receptacles. The print fabric is almost invisible to passers-by because it is hidden, but the owner gets to see it a little bit when actually using the bag. Feels funky without actually looking it. Score.

I also do sneak this into garments that I want to leave externally plain/solid. Here is the waistband of a denim skirt, lined with print on the inside.



I've also used them for other facings - on bodices and pockets - when the external fabric is solid.

3 Alternating with solids in bands

I use this easy design a lot: I alternate solids with prints in bands in many of the things I sew - bags, like the owl bucket:

tiered skirts:

tiered nightdresses:

4 Piping

Piping is a lot of fun to use because you can make your own to coordinate or contrast with the main fabric. And because it is stiff, it holds the shape of whatever you pipe around.

I often let myself go a bit with receptacles - pencil cases, 

and bases of pouches and bags.

Occasionally I use piping in garment-sewing, particularly for contrast:

5 Edging

Edging is like piping, but flat. Similar to piping, whenever I want a project to be primarily solid/plain, but still want a bit of print visible, I edge it. Easy things to edge are 

pockets

waistbands

and faced hems. Apologies- I know this one is the reverse of what I'm trying to say because the edging is solid white and the hem and main body are both print. Imagine this the other way around, OK?

6 Binding

Wherever you have an opening, you can use binding. Like rims of bags (look: there's matching piping on the base, too!)

tops/yokes of pockets:

and on waistbands and more pockets:



If you are binding a curved edge, cut your binding strips on the bias of the fabric because they hug curves better. But they use a bigger area of fabric this way. If you are binding a straight edge, you can cut the strips along the regular cross-grain of the fabric and save fabric.


7 Trim
I often use narrow strips of print fabric for solid straps so they coordinate with the rest of the project:

If the rest of the project is primarily solid, I have also made the entire strap out of print fabric, with solid piping along the edges. 

8 Pockets

are another way to use print fabric in largish amounts. This is a bag that features a large panel print - it became a natural pocket.

Here are some funky pockets on solid backgrounds:

9 Applique
This is a very easy way to embellish one element of a project so it coordinates with the rest of the project. I once made an apron out of denim that had a sea creature print. I fortuitously also had a fabric with large fish motifs, which I cut out and satin-stitched onto a solid pocket:

As part of the completed project, the little applique coordinated the whole thing:

Sometimes I just cut out a more geometric outline around the motif and top-stitch the whole thing on. 

Applique is also very useful for patching holes in garments, so the next time you have rips in the knees of your kids' jeans, and a large stash of print fabric you can't stand the sight of, you'll know what to do.

10 Interpret
Sometimes I want to coordinate a solid with a print by showcasing a motif but I am not lucky enough to have the actual motifs (like that fish example above). Suppose I liked this tiny bird on the print fabric that I was using as lining, and wanted to feature it on the (solid) exterior of the project,

I might do an applique like this:

to make a coordinated final product.

11 Frame

Literally -

in which case you could enjoy it without having to sew it! Yay.

What- you say that's cheating? 

Spoilsports. Fine - we'll sew it - see:

12 Frame - Reverse Applique
Enter reverse applique. It is like framing the print fabric

and it can be done in simple geometric shapes like the oval above, or more interesting outline-hugging ones like this:

this

and this. 

Often, reverse applique is done on fabric that doesn't fray, like felt or knit, so you can cut out windows and simply lay them over the print you want to display. But this can also be done in wovens - which do fray - if you face the openings. Here's how:


Step 1

Lay something transparent/translucent over the motif and trace around it, leaving a border. This will be the size of the "window". I used a plastic bag that was lying around.

Step 2

Cut around the outline you traced. This is your pattern for the window.

Flip it over so it is now in its mirror image, lay it in position on the wrong side of the outer fabric, and trace around it.

Step 3

Find a piece of lightweight, coordinating fabric that is a little bigger than your window. This is your facing piece.

Step 4

Lay the facing piece on the right side of the fabric, directly under your traced outline. Using a short stitch length (better for corners and pointy bits) and sew directly over your traced outline, through both layers. If you remember the free-floating inset pocket tutorial from last year, it's the same thing.

This is the back (i.e. the right side of the fabric):

Step 5

Cut out the window, leaving a seam allowance. Snip this seam allowance carefully, paying attention to the corners and pointy bits.

Step 6

Turn the facing out to the wrong side of the fabric, through the window hole you cut out.

Press and baste (I used a long basting stitch on the sewing machine) around the window to hold the facing in place. Try your best to keep the facing fabric from rolling forward and peeking out. Do not baste too close to the actual opening, to leave room for your hand-sewn embroidery stitches.

Step 7

Cut out your motif, remembering to leave enough allowance all around it for sewing. If it is very thin (i.e. quilting cotton), reinforce it with interfacing on its wrong side. I used a fusible interfacing. Position it behind the window and either baste it in place or use some kind of heat-and-bond applique aid, if you need to.

Step 8

Stitch around the entire outline to attach the motif fabric to the outer fabric. I used contrasting-colored embroidery floss and did a running stitch by hand. Depending on the look you want to achieve, you might use up to all six strands. 

Step 9

Remove the basting stitches. All done!

And here is how it looks as part of the finished project.

So there you are: 12 reasons to continue buying print fabric without actually having to go blind using it in a project. Less is more with print!