Sewing With Nancy

Fit, fashion,

knits

those words describe this Sewing with Nancy series. Here to share her fitting techniques that flatter real figures, and to show knit sewing techniques is designer Pamela Leggett. Welcome, Pamela, to Sewing With Nancy. Hi, Nancy. It's a pleasure to be here! I'm real excited to share my knit tips for sewing a perfect T-shirt. We'll work with the flattering Tee style that gives the option of several neckline shapes. Most importantly, I'll share tips for fitting problems that are shared by many shapes and sizes. "Sew a perfect T-shirt." That's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman is made possible by Baby Lock, a complete line of sewing, quilting and embroidery machines and sergers. Baby Lock, for the love of sewing. Madeira, specializing in embroidery, quilting and special-effect threads because creativity is never black and white. Koala Studios fine sewing furniture custom-built in America. Clover, making a difference in sewing, quilting, crafting, and needle arts for over 30 years. Amazing Designs and Klass needles. To make the perfect Tee, you need some great fabric. We're going to start by showing you the good and the bad of fabric. You want to make sure that a knit fabric is worthy of the time that you put into sewing it. This fabric, when I stretch it does not go back to its original shape. This is definitely one I wouldn't use. Fabrics that have a little bit of Spandex will pop back to their original shape. This is a Ponte knit which is very popular for T-shirts. It's a heavier weight. This one would be a lighter weight. It's called and I-T-Y, and their usually either a poly and Spandex or rayon and Spandex. Now, I-T-Y is kind of the new term for jersey knits or single knits. As my son would say, "That would be so '90s!" if we called it single knits. So, I-T-Y, that's where you go. Yes, and then also there's some beautiful sweater knit selections in a variety of weights. And they all have that tension so you're going to stretch the crosswise grain. You're going to have a pattern piece.

Pattern pieces are only three

front, back, and sleeve. Plus, we'll show you how to do a great binding technique around the neckline. Now, we have to first start with getting the right size. Choosing too large a pattern is a very common mistake. Yes, so, you take one measurement. And instead of measuring the bust area, measure the high bust under the shoulder blades up against the armhole and above the bust. This is going to measure your bone structure and not the fluff. Then, we will measure the full bust, which would be around the fullest part here. If there is more than a 3" difference, you can opt to use a front pattern piece that already has the dart in it. You can see here that this one has holes coming in from the armhole which just says that this pattern is asking for a dart. It's begging for one! We have two fronts that showcase exactly what Pamela is talking about. When you show the difference, I like this explanation or this demonstration. What happens when you have a dart added? You actually are adding more width, but also more length to go around and over the bust line. When you have a new pattern that has been made with a dart, you don't have so many options. Right. Or you don't have as many issues. You want to show them what happens? Yes, so this is another T-shirt that already has the bust adjustment built in. There we go! You can see now that this right here now doesn't have that pleat right here in the armhole because it's fitting better. This dart is a little bit low, and we're going to show you how to take care of that. Sure. Very good! We'll have a couple of fittings during this first go-around so then you can use your pattern over and over again. But you may also have some little tweakings to work with. One of the common ones is the length or the depth of the armhole. Yes. So, for that, you can draw two lines right above the notch area. This would be in the front, the back, and the sleeve area. You would be adjusting all three of them. You would cut along the bottom line. and move it to the top line. And the reason, just explain this one more time, the reason for shortening this depth. Well, if you have an armhole that comes up close to your body then you have a lot more range of motion. Sure. And it feels a lot more comfortable. Otherwise, you're kind of... you can't-- Move your arms up and down.

Here we have all three pieces

front, back, and sleeve. And they have that tuck, taking out that length. Because knits are a little forgiving, too. You wouldn't do that same amount on wovens. No, you wouldn't. This is for the perfect Tee, right? Yes. As we look at the front and back, through the armhole-area, it doesn't line up exactly. Yeah, so you have a little bit of a jog there. You can use a nice curved ruler. Line it up in the curve area, and then just move it over. There we go. I'm lining it up at the under-arm, at the shoulder and then, cut that off. Another two quick alterations would be to change the waist. Now, I like this pattern shape. because it has what Pamela calls "essence of waist." So, it has a little shape in the middle. rather than going straight up and down. But, if you need width in that area, easy to change. Yes, if you are fuller through the waist area, you can just straighten it out from hem to armhole and that will give you almost an extra 4 inches through the waist area. Do the same on the back piece. Then this shows, if you would like just a little extra in the the hip-line. We've added about one inch on each side. You'd add this to the front and back. Pin it to your pattern. And you'd have some easy modifications. So, we've chosen fabric the right-size pattern, plus a few easy pattern changes. The next step is to mark your fabric and also add stabilization. Marking is pretty simple because there are only very few areas to mark. Yes, so, marking a dart if you're using the darted front, would mean just clipping the dart legs right here. Then, the point of the dart you could mark with either a pin or some chalk. Done on the wrong side of the fabric, it's so simple, fast. Now, next is stabilization. Stabilizers, fusibles-- you don't think about that when you're making a knit top, but there's a reason. Yes, the fabrics today are much thinner than they used to be. The fashion industry is trying to convince us that this is fashionable, and that we all want these thin knits, but it is very hard to work with the sewing. Especially when you're putting a binding on or a finish around the neckline. You can get kind of a wavy effect, so we're borrowing tips from "Ready To Wear" and using stabilizers, a stay tape. This is woven. It's very light weight. Fusible on one side. This you use for the shoulders. Yes. Then, the knit fusible tape is used around the neckline in both front and back. Now, we have one cut for the shoulder. Your just going to put a stabilization in the shoulder of just one piece. Either the back or the front. Obviously, we have the front piece here. So, you would just want to fuse this down close to the edge because these are 1/4" seam allowances for this pattern. Then, the neck one will bend, so you can just take the tip of your iron and bend this around. Then, when you get it on most of the way, you'll be able to take a press cloth, lay it over, and press it so it will fuse all the way. So, the first tip is to work with the tip of the iron and then give it a firm press with a press cloth. Here, you can see the shaping. So, on the back piece, you would add the shaping around the neckline. Then, you're ready to do the sewing. The actual sewing couldn't be easier when working with a T-top. We'll show you two options. Serging, or using your sewing machine. Pam, serging is really the fastest way. Yes, and makes a beautiful seam on knits. You want to first start with a high-quality polyester cone thread, or you could use a high-quality regular thread, as well. I have the machine set for a 1/4" stitch. On this machine, the 'M' on the dial indicates a nice 1/4" seam. The stitch length, I have at 3, which is a great go-to stitch length for a 1/4" seam allowance. On the side here, is a differential feed. I'm going to start by just having it at normal so that you can see what it would look like just set in its default position. Now, you're using four-thread overlock stitch which is what we recommend. Yes, most four-thread stitches now have a great deal of stretch. When I sew a 1/4" seam I actually want to trim just a little bit off as I go.

machine sewing

Here we have all three pieces

Just to make sure that I've caught all of the fabric......and trimmed-off any whiskers. What you'll see is a lot of times the knits will stretch out of shape, causing elongated seams. I really don't need any more scallops on my side, so I want to get rid of that. That would be done by increasing the differential feed to a higher number. As you increase to a higher number, what it does is it speeds up the front feed dogs so that the fabric will be feeding faster into the back feed dogs. It makes a dramatic difference. So, we have to do a little testing from a scrap of fabric. On most sergers today, differential feed is standard. Whereas, years ago, it was an option. You can see how much smoother and flatter that seam is. Now, pressing is next. We like to look at pressing as if you would happen to have the seam kind of waver a little bit, have some waviness to it, on the crosswise stretch of the fabric, if you steam it, you will kind of have-- the fabric will retract, and you'll get rid of some of that wavering, so... make sure that you give it a nice steam. You can pat the seam open, which we'll show a little bit later in the series, but steam and knits are friends. If you have a traditional sewing machine, we like a wobble stitch, which we've used so often on Sewing with Nancy. A 1-width and a 2.5 length. and it gives built-in stretch. It's just a great stitch to use. With a 1/4" seam, you'll see that I tend to in working with knits, pin parallel to the seam so that I can just sew right along. This would be a long seam in this top. Not the shoulder seams, but when I get this done, you'll see that it goes pretty fast. It has a lot of great stretch to it. Now on your sewing machine, you may find a knit stitch. I'd like to call this now a decorative stitch. It's too much thread in a seam. This is kind of one of those you want to use for decoration but for actual seaming on knits the wobble stitch is your best choice. Pamela and I just showed you a lot of serging and sewing but you just do a little bit of serging or sewing before you do the first fitting. Yes, so the first fitting you would serge the shoulder seams or sew them. Just pin in the darts, and then you would try this on. I'm going to try it on this dress form that has been padded to look more like a real woman's figure. With all the fluffs and scallops. So, you put this on. Line up the shoulders. Two things that we want to check here. We want to see how the shoulder is lining up. We want the seam to come right at the end of the shoulder bone. So, if it extends more than 1/4", you would be trimming off just that little amount there. Then, the other thing that we want to do is to check the placement of the dart and see if it is pointing right to the apex. And if it's not, we can move this in the fabric for the first one and change the pattern for the second one. Pamela's idea to make your master pattern, doing these first and second fittings so that you have the same change made on your pattern as your going to do on your top, comes next. Yes, so, you take your pattern, line up the front and back right together. It only has to match from the shoulder down to about the notch-area. You don't have to worry about the rest of the pattern matching because it won't. So, I have the front and back pinned together at these points. And then... Pamela is going to fold the fabric to look like the pattern. Fold it in half, then fold it again. Quartering it, and then lining it up. This is pretty fascinating to me. I've never thought of doing this in the process. This is so that you can get the adjustment made in the fabric and the pattern all at the same time, and everything is super-accurate. So, just like the pattern was lined up, I lined up just this area of the shirt with the pattern underneath. Because I'm going to move this, Pamela. I'm doing a little pinning, so that you can see how this is lined up along this edge. Then you're going to use a straight edge. You don't have to worry about anything that's down here. Just from the notch up. I like to use this ruler here, and I'm going to just say we're taking 1/4" off of this shoulder line. You keep it the same at the notch here, and move it in the amount you need. Then, I would just use a rotary cutter, and trim just that area down to the notch. You can see you've trimmed your fabric and your pattern all at once. At the same time-- great idea! Now if you have to raise or lower the dart, you can change the dart point and re-pin it. But for future reference just kind of mark a box around the dart-- and we were using this small size--so we'll continue to cut this out, and then, if you'd like to lower it by 1/2", you do so at this point. Lower it, and then you'll have to pin it into place and straighten out the side seams. Your adjustments are recorded. There are three common shapes for Tees, around the neckline. There's the standard jewel, as you see in this sweater knit Tee-Top, as well as a scoop neck, which I'm wearing and also that you see here with the red top. Then, the third is a V-neck, very attractive framing of the face-type of neckline. On your pattern piece often there are different shapes that you can choose from. This shows the jewel. Here you can see the scoop neck. And then, here is the V-neck, with stay stitching to reinforce that V of the neck. On the sample, Pamela and I are going to show you how to add trim, French trim around the neckline. Pamela has stay stitched in this area. Pam, we make sure that we clip to that stay stitching line. Right there. Yes, don't be a "chicken clipper!" Yes, I like your little saying there! You've got to clip right to that stitching. Now, the French trim that we have around the edge the dimensions. The band is cut across the stretch on the crosswise grain. 2 1/2" by about 1 1/2" less than the finished neckline. This is a generous 2 1/2 inches, right here. Yes. 2 1/2 inches and then the circumference is 1 1/2" to 2" less. Then, we have quartered, after sewing the band into a circle, we've divided into four parts. Put pins at each quarter mark, and did the same with the neckline. Here we have three of the four quarters lined up. I'll just match the last quarter. When you're sewing the V-neck, Pamela will show you that you stretch open the V-neckline so that you'll be able to sew continuously around the neckline. And you have a sample of that. Yes, so here you can see where the V-neck has been stretched. It just sews like any circle or any straight edge when you straighten it. No problem. Now when you stitch this, and we're working with a stretch needle versus a ballpoint needle it will work a little bit better you can have different widths of seams. Yes, and the width of the seam that you choose for stitching on the binding is going to determine the finished width of the binding because the seam allowance gets pushed towards the binding, and then wrapped, snuggly, around this area, pinning it in the ditch. When you do this around the V-neck......like this, it will just straighten out, just like when you're sewing it. You want to make sure that there is no airspace in between the top of the seam allowance and the fold of the binding. So, you make it snug. Make it real snug. While Pamela is finishing doing the pinning, I'm going to show you a foot that we like to use for the next step. It's an edge-joining edge-stitching foot. You may have something that looks like this on your sewing machine, so that the guideline guide of the foot can go right down the center. Pamela is going to do stitching in the ditch, that invisible seaming. So, that flange will fit right down into the well of the seam. It will put the stitching right next to it. So, you're stitching in the ditch. Right now, I'm going right along that V-neck, which just straightens out beautifully. Nancy's going to show you how to form the V-neck. After sewing all around the edges, you can trim off the excess fabric that you have at the neckline close to the stitching. The fabric at the center front has been folded. You can see this little extra extension, just a tiny little extension. You sew just within that fold. When we go over to the finished shirt, you'll see the little tuck and a perfect finish to the neck line. When my guest left her career in Operations Management several years ago, she knew that the corporate world wasn't for her. Looking for a next chapter in life, she took time for soul-searching and time to sew. The result of her downtime was a plan to open a creative place for people to reconnect. Welcome, Sara Meyer owner of the Sewcial Lounge. Sara, thank you for joining us on Sewing with Nancy. Thank you for having me. You know, you're a young career woman who had a masters degree, in the corporate world, and now you have a sewing shop. Fabrics, sewing machines and you specialize in teaching young women to sew. We do. What led you this path? I think that this is a fascinating change of going off the beaten path. I had always sewn, and been creative, and loved doing crafty projects when I was a kid. When I was in graduate school, and I was also working fulltime, I really, really got back into sewing. It was a way for me to not be stressed out, enjoy something fun, and be creative at the same time, which I really wasn't getting through school and work. So, I got back into it. I thought, "This is great!" I would love to have a shop that really helps beginners get started. Now,

when Sara works with beginners

you're not working with a lot of beginners. Right. That's what I think is interesting about your Sewcial Lounge, S-E-W Lounge, because you work with four at a time. We do. All of our classes have a maximum of four students in them. Some of our clubs, we do six. In general, you'll find four people in each class. Why do people your age and younger and older mainly come to your store? I think just for the ease of knowing that it is a fun inviting environment. We really want to make sure that people enjoy what they're doing. We focus more on having fun and getting our projects done. Speaking of getting projects done you just brought two of your simple projects that you have them create in a three-hour class. This is. This is our simple tote bag class. It's one of our most popular. We complete the bag in three hours. You mentioned that if they don't complete it then... they probably never will. Yeah. We do try to help them along, and make sure that they're able to get their project done. They come back time after time? They do. We have customers who have taken our classes sometimes more than once. It's a good reason to come back and get a project done in an afternoon. You were telling me when we were getting ready for this interview that today one of your jobs is to develop a new class. What criteria do you look for? We really take customer feedback. We want to find out what the customers are interested in doing. Most of what we're doing is asking them what kind of classes they would like to see. You mentioned that you have some friendship-building that goes on at your Sew-cial Lounge. We do. Yes. We have some individuals that have become friends just from coming to classes together, and then they plan them. This is another quick project. People of all ages make these. It's interesting that this is what works for you. Yes. The zipper pouches are also one of our most popular classes. People are really intimidated by zippers and so we just help them make two little zipper pouches in one class. You know, zippers.... I think it's the name. It is. It's just straight stitching, right? You don't have to be intimidated by that. So, you made a business out of starting a store from scratch, and you work full--you're the only employee? I am. Yes. Wow! Is it a challenge? It is a challenge. I do have two instructors that work for me, also. But, yes, I do own and operate the store by myself. It's definitely a challenge, but one I love. Well, thanks for stepping up to the plate and striking out on a business of your own. I wish you continued success, Sara. Thank you! Thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us on this first program of Sew the Perfect Tee. Pamela Leggett will be back with us next time to show us how to finish that Tee, make some changes to a dress-- a classic Tee dress, as well. If you'd like to see this program again, see the interview again, with Sara, you can go to NancyZieman.com. There are four seasons of TV shows that you can stream online. Also, connect with us on social media. Thanks for joining us. Bye for now. Pamela Leggett has created a pattern that serves as a reference for the T-shirt techniques featured on this program. The pattern is $13.99 plus shipping and handling. To order this pattern, call 1-800-336-8373 or visit our website at SewingwithNancy.com/2905. Order item PAM104. "Perfect T-Shirt Pattern". Credit card orders only. To pay by check or money order, call the number on the screen for details. Visit Nancy's website at

www.nancyzieman.com

when Sara works with beginners

to see additional episodes, Nancy's blog, and more. Sewing with Nancy, TV's longest airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman has been brought to you by Baby Lock Madeira Threads Koala Studios Clover Amazing Designs and Klass Needles. Closed captioning funding provided by Pellon. Sewing with Nancy is a co-production of Nancy Zieman Productions and Wisconsin Public Television.