Stretch fabric fail

Well, I have another failed top to add to the scrap heap. I didn't bother photographing or blogging my first failed two tops!

I'm still quite new to sewing and recently encountered a poly stretch fabric that my needles just couldn't seem to pierce consistently. Not the best project to break a 5 month sewing hiatus with! I started off with a ballpoint needle, triple zig zag stitch and a normal straight stitch foot.

I tried different stitch widths, lengths and reducing the foot pressure. Nothing improved. Then I found some stretch needles I had forgotten I'd bought, with my walking foot still on reduced foot pressure and it was better, but it was not much better.

It's been consigned to the scrap heap now as I just couldn't wear it, all the fabric gathered up while sewing and I had to stretch out the fabric to ease it out. I forgot once to leave the thread tails super long and had to resew half the seam! Stretching the seams also meant that sometimes the thread ripped. At other points it acted like a drawstring and I had to feed the thread back through and even out the gathers from the stitches. It was just really frustrating.

I might go back another day once I've played around a lot more. There's nothing wrong with the pattern, it's just that I don't know how to handle the fabric and I'm too inexperienced to help my machine out more.

On the plus side though, I sewed my first ever set in sleeves! That feels like a pretty big win!!

Things I liked:
First time sewing set in sleeves - the finish looks a lot cleaner than I'd hoped for considering it's a 3 step zig zag stitch and I really struggled to pin the fabric together.

Things I disliked:
The fabric - it's a mystery content 'stretch poly' fabric from eBay, but it acts completely different to the viscose elastane grey fabric I've used before. This fabric feels almost like it's elasticated. The machine really didn't get on with it ad the needle kept bouncing off.
The fit - it's very clingy in all the wrong places and makes me feel a stone heavier. I guess I prefer less negative ease on my clothes, at least with this fabric.

Making Plans

I can be fairly organised in life. Mainly in certain aspects which are important to me, the rest can go to hell. Our wedding is mostly organised for example with most being done in 6 weeks despite there being 9 months to go. I put aside most of my hobbies to get that done.

Now that I've organised the majority of the wedding I've been in a bit of a general slump, but I know that I need to get back to making and being creative again, as physically producing things makes me feel good.    

So... I'm going to start with jumping on the bandwagon and sew up a Pheobe from Colette! In a red and yellow tartan flannel, just for giggles. I've never tried sewing with flannel or pattern matching so I'm not 100% convinced this will be matching either, but I'll never know till I try! I'm hoping for a warm, snuggly dress that I can wear with my 3/4 sleeve black t shirt, black leggings and boots.   

Post Organiser

Howdy,

Thought I'd share my first ever tutorial!

I got the idea for a post box/post organiser when I saw that another blogger had made one. Hers was black with some blue polka ribbon around the top, and even though I've spent hours looking through the blogs to try and find the link I can't find it anywhere. I'm sure I'm not going mad, so if you see it, please let me know so I can link it!

So to begin with I needed a box. Seeing as I'd just bought these I decided that it would be a good enough size, and relatively sturdy too.

(Oh, and if you haven't tried them, try them).

To begin with I cut the side off the box. That way it wouldn't be too high and more likely to topple over. And it can hold bigger sized envelopes. I stuck the end I'd opened closed using double sided tape.

This is what it looked like. I tidied up some of the edges to make it neater.

I had some acrylic paint left over from a paint-your-own canvas pack I picked up last year. I hoped the white would be thick enough to cover the box seeing as it's a pretty thick consistency.

As it was it still looked like this after 2 coats. It was a little better after the third, but not much. I used up all my paint and it still looked crap. Not good.

I ate one while I tried to think about what to do next.

In the end I found some white paper I had already. I used double sided tape to attach it all the way around the box, and folded the underneath like wrapping a present. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the box once it was done, but it looked a lot whiter.

It was a little on the thin side so I went and bought some patterned tissue paper in WHSmith (which I didn't realise they did). Two of my friends gave me presents wrapped in a similar patterned paper for my birthday, but I couldn't track it down anywhere. This was the closest I could find.

I wrapped the whole box in the tissue paper, and attached it using double sided tape again.

The insides aren't amazingly neat as I didn't want to trim the paper. It's pretty thin, and awkward to get your scissors and hands inside the box.

And here's the finished box :)

I'm pleased with it. It didn't show any sign of toppling over which was my main worry. So that's a good thing. And it fits in with the room well. The table it sits on is normally covered in post (downside of living in a shared house) so now it's a lot neater, and the room looks better.

It also goes pretty well with the paint decor, which as you can see is a pretty strong colour and hard to match to! (Please excuse the sloppy photoshop work!)

Hope that's easy enough to follow, I kinda made it up as I went along!

xx

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