Christmas came for me very early that night.

I finally settled on a 6-yard Georgette fabric piece. Rich golds, reds, deep purple, emerald green with a color-matching embossed pattern. There was also a small design of loose, gold threads scattered over the main fabric piece. It has a crisp, very lightweight feel to it and I knew it was going to be a pain to sew – who cared!

Later I sat on the floor in the middle of the sewing room grinning like a idiot, with yards of fabric wrapped on and over me. What to do, what to do….  I’d been wanting to make another Keshy jacket, and this would be perfect… but…  let’s play!

I decided to modify the lower front of the pattern with only 1 simple change – but the end result was amazing. Here is the journey with step-by-step photos. Some are quite large to show more detail.

Laying out the prepared front pattern piece for the Keshy jacket.

The pattern piece is cut apart at the dividing line, and seam allowances added to both sides. I use 1/2" seam allowances on all main seams.

Divide the lower front section into three equal parts. Mark it only.

Now cut on the dividing lines up to - but not through the edge of the added seam allowance. Spread the pieces as wide as you like.

Place tracing paper, tissue paper, or pattern drafting media under the pattern and tape all open areas together securely.

Decide on the design, and even up your bottom edge. I didn't want a completely curved edge, so it has a bit sharper angles.

Modified pattern piece has been cut out of that gorgeous fabric and I'm apply a decorate double facing to the front, center section.

The decorative facing on the front 'skirting' - I don't know what else to call it, it looks like a skirt to me

And here's a close up of the edge. I took the piece from another section of the Sari fabric. It was perfect for this placement.

Now for the upper front piece and a different decorative facing. Again, a beautiful panel from the Sari fabric that was tailor made for this usage.

Close up view of the band/facing section attached and the second strip cut and ready for the other front panel.

Here is one of the fronts – both top and skirt attached using a French seam. What I didn’t do – because it really was a design choice for me – was not re-true or straighten the front panels before attaching the front facings and/or band pieces.

The original Keshy jacket has a straight line front, this version as you can see, angles back in after the seam join.

It’s strictly a design choice. I could have straightened it when I opened the ’skirt’, I chose not to. You can choose to! 

Upper and 'skirt' sections of Keshy front attached using a French seam.

Here is the piece of fabric I used to center the back of the jacket on. Did I mention that this Sari fabric was gorgeous?

Added the interfaced, neck facing with the help of my assistant Molly. I used a lightweight fusible tricot for any interfacing.

The front and back joined at the shoulders with a French seam, and the facing tacked into place. All seams were French seams - it's a clean, finished look.

A closeup of the finished shoulder seam and facing placement.

Note: I did not sew the sides together until the last step. Because the front bottom has a separate facing/finish and the back bottom a different one, the sides had to be left to the end.

Bias-cut facing for the bottom of the 'skirt' - pinned with lots and lot of pins to hold everything still for sewing. The fabric slid everywhere!

Another view with my able assistant helping.

Closeup of the front bottom facing on its final stage: pin, sew, remove pins, press, turn, press, pin, sew, remove pins, press. Repeat for other side!

After this I did a simple facing/binding on the sleeve area – or lack of sleeve actually – then finished the side seams. It’s gorgeous!

Here's a full front view of the finished Keshy variation jacket. A completely different look!

Closeup of the front - apologies to cropped out model Sally. Yes my mannequin has a name.

The back with the same edging on the bottom as I used for the 'skirt' center facing.

Up close with the sleeve binding. I didn't bother with any real sleeve, a binding was all that I felt it needed.

Tighter detail of the joined fronts; I added two decorate buttons and a hair elastic to hold the fronts closed.

And that’s it! One simple change – and stunning fabric of course – and we have a completely different look for our Keshy jacket. I really, really, really love to play!

PS: I used mono-filament thread for the entire jacket – I need new glasses now, but it was soooo worth it!

[ Back to Wildly Wonderful Wearables ]

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Hi there – about 7-years ago I too, made juggling balls!

The fabric I ended up using was a heavy weight cotton-blend; think of a very heavy  muslin fabric. I made the shape a 4″ x 3″ rectangle, though in hindsight I should have made it 5-inches to allow a bit more room for filling.

My seams were all straight stitched with a very small straight stitch, and zig-zag stitched. I figured over-kill would be better then skimping on those seams as they were going to take a lot of abuse.

To fill the juggling balls I used split peas. The cats has great fun chasing the mess I made all over the kitchen floor. The open-end I filled from was hand slip-stitched closed – and then machine straight stitched too.  I just pinched the seam area and sewed an 1/8″ edge.

You might consider making an inner pouch to fill with your birdseed or split peas out of  tulle – closed securely, and then put into the larger pouch. This way if some of the outside seams do give, the inside should still be okay.

Good luck to your son and his new juggling career.

< Back to Wildly Wonderful Wearables >

Yes I know, that makes no sense – they aren’t hard to do at all. But for some stupid reason (unknown to me of course), I mangled every single attempt. So I decided avoidance was the way to go!

That method of coping as worked successfully for many years… until now. I’m in the middle of a new pattern (you’re going to love it!), and it really does need the nice, neat mitered binding.

The first mitered binding on test sample #1 of the new pattern took years; well it felt like years! I had my favorite sewing book on the counter “Good Housekeeping’s Complete Book of Needlecraft” by Vera P. Guild – © 1959, as a reference.

I’d start, stop, double check, read, start, sew, stop, re-check… I was driving myself crazy. This was a mitered binding – not a hand tailored three-piece suit!

The picture above shows the results of that eternal binding. Simple, clean, and professional looking. So why did I have such a problem doing it? I have no idea.

I’m working on the final test pattern sample now; version 4. With all due boasting, I can now whip out a mitered binding so fast, you’ll get whiplash. Obviously something in my brain finally ‘clicked’.

Why is it the simple techniques give us the most trouble?

Here are some diagrams and simple instructions so you can create a nice mitered binding – just in case you’ve been practicing the ‘avoidance’ technique too.

The Mitered Binding

I cut my binding to the desired width (this example is using a 1/2″ finished binding – so I started with a 2-1/4″ wide piece) and I added an additional 8″ in length. Yes, this is too much, but I would much prefer to have to cut off the extra, then have to add another piece at the end.

Line the binding up with your finished edge and turn under 1/4″ – 1/2″ of the end on the starting point (this will be your finished end). Pin. Measure and mark from the next edge the finished binding width. Huh?

My finished binding will be 1/2″ – so I’m going to mark a point 1/2″ from the next edge at the stitching line. This is where I will STOP sewing.

Make sense? Good! Sew that piece of your binding down.

Clip your threads and remove the pins. Now, you’re going to take the long end of your binding and fold it UP. See how it creates that nice 45 degree angle where you stopped sewing?

Make sure the edge of the binding is lined up with the edge of your fabric.

Carefully fold that binding back down along the fabric edge – keeping the fold lined up with the TOP of the fabric. I use a ruler to help get that fold even with my fabric edge by folding the binding over the ruler and moving the ruler to line up with the fabric.

Because I want to make sure and start sewing at the correct point when I sew the next section, I insert a pin from the back – at the exact stopping point of the first line of stitching – through all the binding to the front. Then I mark that point and remove the pin.

Pin this next section of binding into place and sew down. You already marked the exact starting point – and you know to stop just like you did on the first side.

Do the same thing for all 4 sides. When you come to the ‘beginning’, allow no more then a 1″ overlap – it’ll get too bulky otherwise. Trim any extra binding fabric away and finish machine stitching.

Press and turn the binding the backside. The corners almost seem to fold themselves into place (I was so impressed by that!). Hand or machine stitch the back binding down.

Stand back and admire your gorgeous mitered bound edge. Are you good or what!

< Back to Wearables >

She was very interested in our Pleat N Go, and had a bunch of questions as to whether or not it would work for her, with her drapery and home decor custom sewing. Well to make a very long story short, here are her words and a few pictures.

“You had asked me to send pictures of my finished project using the pleater board. I made 440″ of pleated edging for the valances in this room. It was the most wonderful detail I have ever used! I hope you like it – I enjoyed your product so much and plan to offer this custom detail to many customers!”

A view of the large, triple window with the new draperies.

The top of the drapes and topper – again you can see the very top is pleated.

A great close-up shot of the pleats at the very top and the corded edge.

Terrific results and Cathy is happy! That was a lot of pleating and she discovered an easy way to do it. You can sew for me anytime Cathy

< Back to Wearables >

Because of all the pewter charms and buttons I horde… I mean offer for sale, expanding the line into having those great little 6mm colored bells seemed perfect.

That meant I also found some wonderful Sterling Silver charm bracelets and fishhook earrings, jumprings and split rings to add too. Then I slapped my hands and sternly ordered myself to stop, at least for the moment.

Okay, so I stopped adding… but now I got to play.

My sister Kelly came down to visit for the long Thanksgiving weekend, so besides pretty much losing our voices because of non-stop talking and laughing, we played with the new toys.

These are some pictures of the earrings we made (she and I both made a set of the three styles – we might be sisters but that doesn’t mean we don’t want our own things!).

All they took were:

• A set of the fishhook earwires
• As many jumprings as we decided to use: total of 24 for the bells, 12 for the Christmas lights, and 2 for the holiday charms
• The embellishment of choice: 11 bells for each earring, 5 Christmas light buttons for each earring and 2 holiday charms
• We used 2 sets of thin-nosed pliers to open-and-close the jumprings (saved our fingers)

The first set – the bells – took the longest as we had no idea what we were going to do, about 30 minutes total. After that it went much faster.

Fast, easy and wonderful to keep or give away. Did I mention inexpensive too? My kind-of holiday play time!

< Back to Wearables >

We show you how to use it on and with cottons, polyesters and velvet blends. You can also use it on heavy papers to create one-of-a-kind invitations and announcements.

I filmed this one alone – with one eye firmly on all three fur-kids the entire time. While I’m sure everyone would have loved seeing them ‘help mom’, mom was a bit short on time this go round.

Hmmm maybe next video we can feature the three kids…

Enjoy!

<Back to Wearables>

Here’s what you need:

• Get thread. Lots and lots and lots and lots of thread in your favorite colors. I must have used at least 10 regular size spools of several different threads.
• Bobbins as many as you can spare.
• My threads were: poly/cotton, rayons, metallics, and Sliver. I love Sliver - it’s not the easiest thread to sew with especially free-motion work, but the effects are worth ever minute.
• Ivory colored Illusion bridal veiling. You don’t have to use this as a base, but I like the invisible added stability.
• Several rolls of water soluble stabilizer.
• Pressing sheet(s) – optional for gently fusing together the stabilizer.

The scarf thread base was the poly/cotton thread. On top of which I added rayons then metallics and Sliver. The bobbin thread started with poly/cotton for the base, but for the rayon, metallics, and Sliver I used rayon in the bobbin. As the scarf is double-sided, it only made sense to have the threads match top-and-bottom as much as possible.

Decide on about how big you want this scarf to be; mine ended up about 12″ x 60″ finished size. You need to add 5″ or more all the way around when you mark the shape as it’s going to shrink a great deal.

Purchase your Solvy or which ever brand of water soluble stabilizer you like, by the roll. I used eight layers of Solvy for my scarf. If you’re very careful, you can fuse the layers together with an iron.

To do this be certain to have a good pressing sheet on the top and bottom of the stabilizer and never-ever let the iron touch the stabilizer. If you do, it will melt away and make a really nice mess all over your iron.

Layer your stabilizer 4 sheets on top of the veiling, 4 below – you’re making a sandwich. If you decide not to use the veiling, just use the 8 sheets of stabilizer. Make very certain that you have your sandwich secure – nice long quilters pins worked well for me.

Draw your scarf shape on the stabilizer – give yourself about 1″ extra all the way around to grab onto – with a very thin tipped permanent marker. Remember this extra 1″ is in addition to the 5″ for shrinkage you included. I made my shaw/scarf in black, so my marker was black.

Run 3 or 4 rows of a straight stitch all round your marked line. This works to stabilize everything and allow you to remove some of the outside pins.

Make a grid on the piece – straight stitch – about 2 inches squares. Again the idea here is to stabilize everything and make very certain all sections are connected.

My grid was created on an angle and I went back and used a small satin stitch over those lines. Why on an angle? Because I suffer from a chronic case of making more work for myself!

You can now remove pretty much all of your pins.

Once you’re satisfied with your base thread, change to a rayon thread – don’t forget the bobbin, drop your feed dogs and start free motion work.

Just keep going with different threads until the piece is heavily covered with thread. Even if you use the Illusion veiling, you still need lots of connecting threads as your base.

To finish the thread work on the outside of the scarf, use a very tight, narrow satin stitch on top of those straight stitch lines that define the shape.

Cut away the excess stabilizer and veiling from the outside edge. It’s going to take long enough to soak away this stuff, get rid of what you can!

Run a nice hot bath 3-4 inches deep, and put the finished scarf in. After an hour change the water and repeat.

It took me almost 8 hours of this to fully remove the stabilizer. You’ll know when it’s gone, the thread will not feel sticky or gunked up.

When the stabilizer is finally gone, let the piece air dry. I gathered the short ends up and added tassels to complete the look.

Now remember when people marvel over your scarf and asked you how make it – just smile that Mona Lisa smile…

<Back to Wearables>

Fannie lives in California and is a few years older then I am. We started out laughing about our rhyming names and remembering songs: Fannie, Fannie bo Bannie… (don’t forget that little trick with Nick!) and nick-names like one of mine: Annie Bananie.

What? You wanted us to just dive into sewing stuff?

We have a mutual problem with losing things; you put them down and they mysteriously walk off. She’s still doing some custom sewing while I stopped years ago. The issues haven’t changed though: people wear the wrong foundation garments to fittings; tell you the wrong initial sizings; pick styles that are really not flattering and of course don’t want to pay you when the garment is ready.

I was ready to nominate Fannie for sainthood for her patience alone.

So we finally started talking about the pleater board. She had tried to do pleats without the board and was real frustrated – so the hunt began! After lots of phone calls one turned up – a fair drive from her home and costing $40. That wasn’t going to cut it.

Fannie called a good friend here in Dallas needing a sympathetic shoulder, and the lovely lady told her about our pleater board kit. Six Degrees of Separation anyone?

We talked pleater boards. The how to’s, putting it together, using it, the step-by-step demo we have on the site, the different ways you can use the pleats. We discussed the regular board versus the fan board and the original idea to create it.

I had a blast! When you find you’re laughing together every 5th sentence, it’s just got to be good.

Fannie got the regular board (I wouldn’t sell her the fan board until she was sure she liked the standard one) and promised to call me after it arrived. She did – we talked – and she was heading off to put it together and create pleats.

About four days after that, Fannie called again. That was one happy woman on the phone. She was amazed at how quickly the pleats were created and made me promise to tell Storm (my good friend and the creator of the boards) that she did good!

To understand why she had been so frantic about making the pleats Fannie gave me the pattern name and number to see for myself. Oh boy. I’d have been borderline hysterical myself.

Fannie promised to call again; I hope it’s soon as I could use more of that kind of shared laughter.

<Back to Wearables>

We’re working on a number of short video demonstrations, and with YouTube, it makes it so very easy to do.

Here’s #1 – Our Cutwork-Applique Vest.

<Back to Wearables>

One of my more memorable endeavours involved making a larger then normal pleater board. I wanted to pleat yards of very thin, silky fabric with nice little 1/2″ pleats. At this point we’d created and had been selling our Pleat ‘N Go pleater board kit for several years, and I knew it worked perfectly.

My reasoning (reasoning – is that what you call it?) was that if the base was too small (only a 10″ x 15″) it would take too long to pleat a section, iron it, and move it, then do the next section.

Did I mention I was a lot younger and much more impatient then?

Anyway, I put together a very large base: 18″ x 21-1/2″ and then spent a healthy chunk of money getting enough of the poly-slating we use to create the rows on the base. After at least 2-1/2 hours of cutting and sewing the slats on, I decided maybe it WAS a bit big and cut the size down to only 12-1/2″ deep.

Silly, silly Annie – I still hadn’t a clue…

A few minutes ago I pulled the ‘big-board’ out to take a picture, and Molly decided it was hers – just like everything else around here.

So I finish putting this monster together, grab a big piece of fabric and rush to the ironing board to get started. All told, I’d put in about 5-days making this huge pleater board to make my life easier. Uh-huh.

Have to be careful – this is a ‘big board’; need to get the fabric in those slats evenly. It takes a bit of playing, but I get the hang of the silky fabric and the wide board. Well for the first row or two at least.

You know where I’m going with this don’t you? After about 4 rows the first one would start pulling out… that in turn led to the second sliding out of the slat… and I got to start again. The board was so wide and ackward, it was unmanageable! Add to that this really pretty – but really cranky fabric and I was doomed to failure before I even got started.

All these years later and I’m still beating myself up over it. Dumb, dumb, dumb. There was a reason the Pleat ‘N Go was sized at 10″ x 15″. I keep the ‘big-board’ around for two reasons.

1. Remind myself to really think something through before starting it
2. I wasn’t throwing anything out that cost me that much money!

<Back to Wearables>