Yesterday I made a round tablecloth and today I will show you how to add some appliqued details.

Sticking with the 4th of July theme, I’ll be adding some fireworks using the natural canvas we printed the Outside Oslo line on.

You’ll need a chunk of fabric and a chunk of Wunder Under big enough to draw all of your images.

Wunder Under is a fusible product that has a peel-away paper layer so you can sandwich the glue between 2 layers of fabric.

1. I like to fuse the WU to the uncut chunk of fabric first. Make sure to turn off steam for this – you want a dry iron. Fuse for 5-8 seconds on each spot across fabric.

2. Trace or draw your image straight onto the paper side of the WU. If you’re doing letters, you’d need to draw the mirror image.

I just free handed these, but there are tons of printable clip art type images online.

3. Cut out images.

4. Peel off paper and place glue side down onto fabric and fuse with dry iron.

5. To applique on, use a short zig zag stitch. I used 1 for length and 3 for width on my machine, but be sure to check settings and practice on scrap.

6. You’ll zag just past the edge of your image and pivot at each corner. For these crazy stars I had to manually lower the needle and adjust every time I started a new side, so I didn’t end up stitching way off my image fabric.

7. Overlap where you started a little and trim threads close. You can add a dab of Fray Check if you’re worried about stitches coming loose.

You can buy this tablecloth and all of our other samples from our new retail wall!

Happy 4th everyone!

I don’t think Jess had the 4th of July in mind when she designed this fabric, but when I went hunting for a holiday theme this one took on a dynamite feel. I used the natural canvas used for printing Outside Osle for the accents. Find both here.

I’ll be listing out the instructions today for putting together a round tablecloth and tomorrow will add some applique techniques.

1. Measure across the center of the table and add the amount you want for the “drop”. This term refers to any fabric covering that hangs off the side of something, including bedspreads, bedskirts, etc.

My table is a pretty standard 40″ and my fabric was 55″ wide, so I just used what I had for the drop. If you have a bigger table or narrower fabric, you’ll need to add strips of fabric to the sides. Sewing selvedge edges together will save you having to finish any raw edges.

I measured 55″ down the length and ripped across.

2. Pull on the bias to square any angles and fold the fabric into quarters – wrong side facing out.

3. Measure from folded corner point to bottom curve to mark. Move a few inches at a time to create a broken line. Make sure to measure from exact corner each time.

I measured to 29″, the biggest I could get.

4. Throwing a few pins in along bottom curve will help while cutting. Cut through all layers along broken line.

Clean up edge as needed, if you have some wonkyness to your cut.

5. Baste a line around circle 1″ from raw edge. This will give you an easy way to fold up hem.

6. Fold hem in along basted line and press with steam. It helps if you pick up and put down iron as you go, as opposed to sliding around too much.

8. At sewing machine, open fold and roll raw edge in toward baste line. Fold again on crease and finger press as you go. Edge stitch near inside edge.

I don’t pin too much when the hem is this small, but feel free if your hem is rolling around. This is what I call a “burrito hem”.

9. Remove basting stitch, press and steam again when finished.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on how to add applique details!

I’m not sure why this occurred to me today when it’s really dark at 9am (because of the weather), but I thought I’d show off one of the more attention grabbing pieces in my apartment.

This is the longest wall in my dining room.

I’ve been hanging pictures of the musicians I love for as long as I can remember and have had some version of this mixed up display in every one of my apartments. It wasn’t hard to get my bf in on the game and here is our current collection.

Loving the same musicians is something we love about each other, but we’ve made a few concessions, uh uhm, They Might Be Giants . . .

As you can see, I’ll take any kind of frame. These are culled from thrift stores, garage sales, Michael’s, Ikea – the more mixed up, the better.

That whole laying out pieces of paper on the floor thing is a great idea, but I’m just too impatient for that. I just go by feel . . . well, and I have lots of practice.

So, if you have a hobby, passion or maybe even obsession (sure, I’ll own that), pick a little spot and try this out. I promise it will make you smile every time you walk by.

And, the most popular game in our house . . . “Who’s That?!”

We just received some new oilcloths in the shop, which always leads to questions about what to do with it! Shop them here.

In addition to the obvious table cloths, oilcloth is actually pretty versatile. It’s not too hard to sew – I use a size 11 needle and a longer stitch, so I don’t perforate it.

It’s a great wall covering, shelf liner, tote bags, placemats, rainwear . . . I even used it to wrap around our check-out counter and it’s held up great!

Wipe it clean with a damp cloth or sponge. Can be folded or rolled and will flatten out with warmth. You can even steam it – just don’t iron it!

I love these adorable old-school idea charts!

So, I fell down the internet rabbit hole last night and ended up on this Flickr page (made private since post) discussing how we rip our fabric at the shop. I’ve always meant to put a sign on our door about it, but today is the day!

I’m starting to wonder if this is a quilt / non-quilt division? I’m not a quilter, so I’d love for you guys to weigh in.

In my sewing career the grain has always mattered so a ‘cut’ fabric has always meant lopping off the raw edges first thing. I can see why this would be the opposite of what a quilter would do.

I’ve been ripping fabric for as long as I can remember, but when I really couldn’t have lived with out it was while I made interiors for a living. Window treatments for example require some long straight grains. When fabric hangs, it hangs in the direction of the threads. If the threads are going at an angle so will your fabric. It became crucial that I find some way to get to one exact thread and ripping is by far the fastest/easiest.

Ever made a ruffled bed skirt? You’ll need a mile of evenly cut long panels. For me, time saved meant rent paid.

Mood (Project Runway) rips their fabric, but most quilt stores don’t. When searching for stores to sell our new fabric line to, I found that quilt stores dominate the country, so that’s likely what most fabric buyers have gotten used to.

The ladies on the flickr page point out that they lose something to fraying threads. While I agree it’s a shame to waste even a sliver of an Echino fabric, when you ask for a yard, we always cut 1 yard + 2-3″ to account for anything weird that might happen at the edge. That way, even when you get rid of the edges you still have the amount you bought or more. I really believe it is the most generous option.

Bottom line is, I love fabric (hence the whole owning a fabric store thing :)) and want the same thing you guys want – tons of beautiful fabric! I hope this post helps in understanding my intentions. I know I can’t make everyone happy, but dang, I wish I could.

We had a great time making bibs and burp cloths at our last sewcial for the women involved in the Heartland Alliance Refugee Health Program. Hannah, one of our students, is heading up the program and we were thrilled to help out.

There wasn’t a lot of expertise going around as to the sizes of ‘baby necks’, but we did our best and hopefully they’ll come in handy.

Check out our Flickr page to see all the action.

This ‘bible’ of sewing tips (shop on Etsy) could likely take a lifetime to read, but it just might be worth it. Every time I open it I find something new and interesting. Just goes to show – you can never know everything about sewing!

Examples (slightly edited by me):

#22. I find that a wide, flat rubber band placed on the free arm of my machine creates a good seam allowance guideline. The raised edge helps guide the fabric, especially if it’s wiggly, and I can adjust the band to whatever seam allowance width I prefer. – Jennifer Shaw

#813. If you are making piping and hate that sometimes the basting you use on the piping shows in the finished project, here’s a solution. Place the piping cover fabric wrong side up then place a fusible web along one long edge. Lay the cording in the middle, fold the plain edge over to match the other one and press with iron.

“This book contains the best hands-on insider sewing tips from the popular sewing website PatternReview.com, a community of more than 170,000 members. The entries are collected from the website’s enormous database of members’ shared comments and advice, rated by by hits and reviews. “

We recently made a bunch of little girl dresses for Dress a Girl Around the World at our monthly Friday Night Sewcial and I soooo wish I had thought of this idea earlier! I find this method to be quick, cheap and oh-so-cute. Give it a try if you have little girls in your life or want to donate to this fantastic organization.

I found these 5 tees in a matter of minutes at the thrift store. There were rows and rows of them, but it was easy to find ones that would work well as a dress instead of a tee. They cost 40 to 80 cents each!

I chalked a line just under the collar to get rid of the shoulders and sleeves.

Make sure your tee is laying super flat and even and cut through both front and back. You can cut the rest of the sleeve off at seams, but you might need to trim more than that later on.

Once I made the cuts, I carefully folded the tee in half to make sure the sides were symmetrical. As you can see, I needed to clean it up a bit.

Here’s what it looked like when everything was nice and even. Make sure not to cut your arm holes too big.

The big key to this project is FOE – Fold Over Elastic. You can find a billion online tutorials on the subject, but it was perfect for this project. It comes in a ton of colors and can be used as elastic (at neck) or just trim (at armholes).

Here, I folded it over the raw edge of the neck line and stretched it as much as possible while sewing to gather the tee.

Just use a long piece to start, because there is no good way of guessing exactly how much you need. If you pull the FOE as tight as possible you’ll get a nice amount of gather. But, you gotta PULL! I used a zig zag stitch to make it easier/faster, but you could use a straight stitch too. You need to pull a little from the back side, to keep it moving.

Lookin’ good so far.

I estimated 25″ of FOE or so for each armhole. You want enough overhang to tie into adjustable straps. Cut 2 even pieces and pin at starting points.

I zig zag’d from the ends, without pulling this time, then continued onto the joint and just went all the way around. You can backstitch at intersections and ends for security.

Just knot or tie in bows at shoulders. Pretty stinkin’ cute if you ask me.

Anyone else collect chairs? I’ve gotten pretty picky, but still some days I just can’t resist. I’ve had this chair floating around my house – unsittable – for at least a year or so. I kept thinking I would use something interesting to re-cane it, but it still wouldn’t match anything.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the house, I have this one plant that for whatever reason I wanted it to sit up higher, closer to the window.  I kept stacking things under it. Random games, weird step stools, etc.

Finally, the chair got close enough to the plant and they jumped together! Can’t get much more “random idea” than this, but I love it every time I walk into the room! Kitty likes it too.

I’ve been working on ideas to play with for our new serger class and knew I wanted to upcycle some thrifted sweaters. I love thrifted sweaters.

My first venture was this hat. It was super easy. Just cut, fit and serge. I’m sure you could do this with a regular machine and stay tape, but the serger was great! I’ll post pics from our classes to give you guys more ideas.

The waist band on this sweater seemed an obvious choice and I didn’t have to make any hems!

I fit it wrong side out straight onto Chris’ head and pinned around. I made a paper pattern after so I wouldn’t need him every time.

As I kept fitting this, I ended up making this less curved and more cone shaped. It kept the seam from being bumpy. I moved the differential feed all the way up because the sweater was so stretchy, but this will vary from serger to serger.

Obviously, take pins out as you go, but if it makes you nervous hand baste the line real quick before serging.

I also sewed a little perpendicular line at the very top. It worked!

Cuteness.