Everybody’s Talking

After you’ve been sewing for a while, you find certain notions and fabrics to be ‘the best you’ve ever used - and you won’t use anything else’. Well unless it’s 3 in the morning, nothing is open and you have to finish that thing!

So let’s start this love affair off with sewing machine needles. I feel like I’ve used them all at one time or another, but if you look in my needle drawer, all you’re going to find are Schmetz.

When I was working on that Christening Dress for my newest nephew, they’re all I’d even consider using. I just love them.

Here we go, in no particular favorite order:

• Universal - rounded point, great for wovens and knits, an all around terrific needle.
• Denim or Jeans - reinforced blade and slight ball point, heavy fabrics don’t stand a chance of fighting. The ball point helps prevent damaging your fabric and skipping stitches.
• Stretch - special eye and medium ball point helps prevent skipping stitches and snagging. Great for knits, stretch fabrics and elastic too.
• Ball or Jersey - Ball point primarily for knit fabrics
• Leather - With a cutting point on the end, sewing leather is like cutting through warm butter. My leather version of the Lone Star Vest would not have been possible without this needle.
• Top-Stitch - If you’re doing decorative sewing, this is needle is for you. A very long eye 2mm, means threading and using heavy, fancy threads won’t drive you crazy. Good for using double threads too.
• Microtex - A needle especially for densely woven fabrics, micro fiber and synthetic leathers. It has an especially slim acute point.
• Hemstitch - I used a lot these when creating Heirloom Christening dresses! There’s a wing on each side with creates wonderful open work on light or medium woven fabrics; I used it on delicate cotton batiste with silk and rayon thread.
• Double Eye - Yes it has 2 eyes! Use two different threads at the same time - think of the possible effects. Good for both woven and knit fabrics because it has a univeral point.
• Embroidery - A larger eye and grove means this needle helps to make free-motion embroidery headache free. I do a lot of free-motion stipple work on our wall hangings, sanity matters!
• Metallic - While I will never enjoy sewing with metallic threads (I just sew too fast to really be nice to the thread), this needle helps a bunch. A enlarged grove and bigger eye mean less breakage and throwing things.
• Stretch Twin - Double rows of stitches, perfectly spaced, on knits or stretch fabrics. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 2.5 and 4.0.
• Metallic Twin - Same as for the stretch twin needle, now if I could only sew a bit slower… 2.5 and 3.0.
• Embroidery Twin - Yes we’re on a roll! 2.0 and 3.0.
• Double Hemstitch - Another favorite of mine for heirloom sewing. Has one wing needle and one universal needle - 2.5 mm separates them. Helps create amazing double row stitch designs.
• Universal Twin - Double rows on lots of fabric, think pin-tucks! 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.o, 6.0 and 8.0.
• Universal Triple - Yes I have these too. It’s worth the hassle of threading everything up - again, I use to use these on the Christening dresses with rayon and silk threads. Beautiful results every time.

It seems to be a failing that at one time or another, we’ve all used ‘cheap’ or generic sewing machine needles. While they might have got the job done, it was a struggle with them breaking, thread shredding and other delightful reasons that cause us to consider never sewing again.

It is not worth it.

Next time you’re in your favorite fabric shop, pick up a few packages of Schmetz needles and try them out. I guarantee you won’t be sorry you did.

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It’s not suppose to be this annoying! I’ve read the alteration books, used the techniques, measured, marked, snipped and pinned; then I usually throw something.

The problem with buying a commercial pattern is that they’re drafted on an ‘average’ - in this case it’s a “B” cup bust-wise. I haven’t been a “B” cup since my teen’s.

If you go and use a larger size pattern, the cup size isn’t changing, but everything else is!

The picture here is of a commercial pattern I picked up at a garage sale. I just really liked it and the size-range was doable.

I had some nice rayon that would drape nicely too; this is one of the big advantages to hording fabric - the odds are real good you have something in your stash that’s perfect.

After settling on version 1 - without the second underskirt - I started measuring and marking the pattern.

A general rule of thumb is to spread open your pattern (in the bust area horizontally) about 1/2″ for every size beyond the “B” cup. That means I’d have to add 4″ to my pattern. Yeah, I’m laughing too. I actually tried that once a very long time ago: you could have fit a whole additional set of boobs in there with me. Stop counting - I’m a DDD - between a 36 an a 38 DDD. Terrifying isn’t it!

In this case, I added to the cup size about 1″ and tapered it to nothing at the size. I cut out a test pattern, sewed up front and back and put it on the mannequin. Hmmm not bad - it might be okay. The back seemed a bit too large at the top, but, I needed to sew up up for real and find out.

Well that was fun. Now what! There were issues… lot’s of em.

1. Gaping too much at the arm hole - need to add a bust dart
2. Too big through the upper back - need to add 2 darts from the neck to the mid-back where the waist darts are
3. The bust are is too wide (not too full - too wide) will regather 2 inches tighter each side
4. Need to take in the skirt 2 inches; French seams everywhere though, so a nice 2″ pleat on each side will help.

Here’s the first finished version - I made it work, but will fully alter the pattern to accommodate all the changed I’m making.

What I ended up doing to the pattern was:

• Removing 1″ from the front bust seam on each side to control the width
• Removed 4″ from the upper back! That’s a tremendous amount of unneeded fullness - big bust does NOT necessarily mean big back.
• Lowered the neckline 2″
• Curved the neckline deeper - about 1/2″
• Removed 4″ total from the width of the skirt
• Added side bust darts and redraft the arm hole accordingly

And here’s the second version - I’m much happier with it! Sorry for the only one-view picture, I’ll try to take another few soon.

You can see how much better the bust area fits; and that in turn shows off the waist! The wider neck is more flattering to my shape and the armholes fit well.

I have a workable pattern now that is going to get a lot of use. The next time you have to alter the bust area of your pattern, just send a little sympathy my way and be grateful you’re not fitting the DDD syndrome too.

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