Sewing With Nancy

It's all about sewing the perfect Tee during this Sewing with Nancy miniseries. Whether a Tee top or classic Tee Dress, the same fitting, sewing, and designing techniques apply. Pattern designer Pamela Leggett is my guest during this two-part series. We'll show you how to maximize your sewing potential with this wardrobe classic. I'm looking forward to this second episode. Pamela. Thank you, Nancy. We learned how to do the perfect Tee in the first episode, and so taking that to a T-shirt dress is a natural progression. Let's start by giving tips on neckline variations that are ideal for T-shirt dresses. "Sew the 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. During the first episode, Pamela and I detailed the various knit fabrics, how to choose the right size for a Tee top, how to do some simple changes and alterations, and then some stabilizing and sewing techniques. You can review that first segment online at NancyZieman.com or you can watch four seasons of programming and get yourself up to speed on Sew the Perfect Tee Episode 1. One of the things that we detailed, Pamela, some stabilization in the knits. Yes, we added a stay tape in the shoulder that's woven, and a knit stay tape at the neckline. We did some serging, various serger set ups for seams, or sewing machine set ups for simple seams. Stitched the shoulder seam, and then put on a neckline trim, a French trim around the neckline for this V-top, or a round neck top, as well. Now, we're going to show you the dress. Same T-shirt shape, just elongated. It's a dress. It's not a top, which we're both wearing, and you have one here. Yes, and so this neckline is a faced-neckline. This is a boat neck style. Then, on the dress form here, this would be a different style, a squarish-neckline. Also, it's a faced neckline. So, I'd like to show you how to put the facings on. All necklines and knits need to be stabilized in some way. In the first episode, we used the knit stay tape. In this one, we're doing a facing, with a knit interfacing applied to the facing piece of the pattern. It's a fusible. Yes, it's a fusible interfacing. So, we don't need to put the other stay tape around because this will stabilize it as well. So, the interfacing is cut just a little bit smaller, and fused on, and finished off on the edges. Then, this will fit perfectly--right sides together-- to the neckline. When we put on the French Tee, we had on the trim a little bit smaller than the neckline.

This one is a 1

1 ratio. Right. Then, that gets sewn on. With just a 1/4" seam, which is traditional for knit fabrics. Then you do some clipping on this edge. Clip to, not beyond, but to the stitching. Then, you're going to understitch. You want-- Understitching just means that you're stitching the seam allowance to the facing, and I'm using this wonderful three-step zigzag that I learned from Nancy.

Nancy laughs

This one is a 1

Ha! On her show. Here's that stitching. As Pamela mentioned, it's a three-part zigzag. Three stitches in one direction, three stitches in another. It holds the entire seam allowance, not just a straight line, in place. It works well. It does. It embeds right into the fibers, and it makes the facing, the finished facing, turn perfectly, so you'll never have a facing popping out. It has a perfect turn of cloth. So now, we have gotten the top and the dress to the same point. The shoulders seams have been stitched. There's been a neckline that's finished. The next steps will be the same for all. Setting in sleeves, the underarm, and then doing some hem finishes. So, we'll start with setting in the sleeves. Whether you're working with a Tee-top or a Tee classic dress, you're going to set in the sleeves, sew in the underarm seams, and do the finishing, all in the same manner. On Sewing with Nancy, we've done this many times but it certainly bears repeating. Putting the sleeve into the top using the flat construction method. Now, Pamela has marked a top nip of the cap, and all the nips or notches at the back and also the front of the sleeve. We're going to meet right-sides together. Pamela, we really don't have to use a lot of pins. No, I just use three or four pins. One would be at the cap of the sleeve, and then, matching up the side seam. There is a perfect match between the side seam and the notches. Right in here.

A 1

1 ratio. Yeah,

a 1

1 ratio and the curves are all the same. Once you get from the notch to the cap of the sleeve, then you see a difference in the shape of the sleeve versus the armhole. One is convex and one is concave. You just match those edges together. In a well-designed knit pattern, there's very little ease in the pattern so the sleeves go in very easily. You did the same pinning on the opposite side of the sleeve but then on this side we have the seam that's been surged into place, and it goes in so smoothly. No easing needed. It's just pin and surge, or sew. In the first program, we showed you various stitch widths and lengths for the sewing machine, as well as serger. Then, pressing. I like your pressing techniques. When you press it, it really doesn't require a lot of pressing. A lot of times, people do too much pressing in the sleeve and it flattens the sleeve cap. So, as you can see, she's got the cap of the sleeve over the wide part of the hand. You steam it, and then just use your fingers to press the steam into the stitches. Then, you can repeat that, on just either side of the sleeve. You don't have to do any pressing in the area from the notch to the side seam. It looks really easy to do. Now, as we mentioned, you're going to sew the underarm seam, the sleeve underarm seam, and the garment or top underarm seam in one fell swoop. Yes, so to do this, I will match up the hem of the sleeve. Then, I'll match the underarm seams. When I do this, I nest the seams so I put one seam one way, and one the other. If you were doing it on a sewing machine, you could just open up the seam allowances. That way, it distributes the bulk of the seam. Yeah. Now I'll go to the hem. I like to pin the ends of the seam first, and then any markings in between because that way you know that you end up with perfectly smooth, or perfectly matching edges, at the beginning and the end. Now I'm ready to serge this. I'm using a four-thread serge which has plenty of stretch, and a 1/4" seam allowance, which means that I'm just trimming off a tiny little bit as I serge. I'm using a stitch length of 3, which would be a nice average stitch length, what I call my "Go-To" stitch length. If that just folds under, you can just lift up the toe of the foot there. I like to serge from the sleeve to the hem because if I have the dart, it means that the dart will be going down towards the hem easily. As Pamela finishes the seam, she would next do the second fitting, which we'd like to show you how to do, at the table. During the first episode of this series, we had a first fitting after sewing the shoulder seams, pinning the darts. We checked the fit around the neckline, and made any little tweaks to the pattern and to the fabric simultaneously. Now, it's time for the second fitting. You don't have to do this every time you sew, just the first time you make this pattern. Yes, and so to do the second fitting, it's basically getting the side seams to work with your shape. So, you can just start pinning in, any place where it looks like it's a little big, and by doing this, your shaping it around your specific curves, and getting everything to just skim the body. We don't want it to be tight. Just skimming, to give you the most flattering look. Now, remember, we're working with knits. This would not be for woven fabrics. The patterns we're suggesting are specifically for knits. We have tried them on right-side out so that if one high hip on one side is reflected in the pinning and shaping, so you can get it to fit your body perfectly. There's also an optional seam in the back that you can shape so that if you have a sway back, here, you can shape it around that sway back area, and you won't get any wrinkles in here. How nice is it to be able to get a T-shirt dress to fit your top and bottom?

Nancy laughs

a 1

Whether it's a top or a dress, you're going to take it in the same manner and Pamela, we are going to show this on this top. This is going to be tapered in a little bit at the hip line. Yes, just like I showed on the dress, here is the taper. The pins went through both layers, but what I'm going to do is just take the pins out of both layers, and put them through a single layer of the fabric. We'll turn this shirt inside out, and this method of stacking the fabrics in the patterns makes it super easy to get everything trimmed perfectly the first time. Providing that both your sides were symmetrical, you could do it, both sides at the same time. Exactly. Otherwise, you could just work at one at a time. So, the pattern front and back are stacked. I'll give you a second set of hands to hold this. Thank you. You really only have to make sure that this all matches up here. Then, you can mark 1/4" from these pins. Or, you can just cut. Eye-balling that 1/4" seam. Very good! You've done this before. Yeah, a few times. Now you've got your pattern and your fabric all trimmed at the same time, and you're ready to restitch. So, you've pinned right-sides together. Re-serge. Re-stitch that seam. Now you have fine-tuned the fit. Next step, hemlines. Hemming, whether it's a top or a dress. We'll show you those two options. Next, we'd like to show you two hem finishes. First, for the Tee top is to fuse the hem into place, and then do that wobble-stitch, that very little zigzag. But to get a very even, precise stretchable hem, Pam likes to use, and I will like to use in the future, a very lightweight, extra-fine weight web. Paperback fusible web. Yes, you want to make sure that it's very lightweight so that it doesn't add any bulk or change the hand of the fabric. This T-shirt shape is curved at the hemline so in order to make the fusible shape, you've got it. You're just going to do little clips, approximately every inch. Match it to the raw edge of the fabric. It's 1-inch. The pattern we like to use has 1-inch hems. You would have your side seams sewn. We are just working with a small sample to show you how this works. But then, what's nice about it is that the fabric automatically folds right where that fusible web ends. It's really quite magical how that happens. This is like the pinning technique. It's a little warm, but it has stretch built in it. The webbing has stretch. If you were with us during the first program, we did seaming on the sewing machine with a wobble stitch. Here's a close up, with the stitch width at 1 and the length--Pam, you like to use about 2.5? Yes. Just zigzag the hem up into place. Now, we have some contrasting thread colors. Of course, you'd use matching thread. Sometimes, it gets a little out of shape. It wobbles a little bit because we did use a wobble stitch. We can steam the extra wobbling. Maybe it doesn't look that way right now, but maybe if I lay this flat, it isn't lined perfectly flat. We're getting little waves in here. There's a memory. It is. The fusible web has a memory, and when you steam it, it just shrinks right back into place. It is terrific how it gets nice and flat. Now, the blind stitch, blind hem stitch you may want to use on a dress. It's sewn with a sewing machine. But, we're going to use that fusible web once again. Instead of placing the fusible web right at the hem edge we're going to place it 1/2" from the edge so that we have an 1 1/2" hem. So, you can see that we have 1/2" and then the tape. Remove it, and then press up the hem. And, Pam, on your sample, it's already been pressed and you're ready to do the stitching. Yes, one of the things that makes doing a blind hem so difficult is that people have a hard time remembering how to fold the fabric. Well, this takes all the mystery out of it. When you fuse that, you have a 1/2" hem or a 1/2" part of the top of the hem left over, it folds back perfectly. If you want, you can just put a couple of pins in here. But that fusible web stabilizes everything beautifully. Then, you can set your stitch length and on your blind hem switch. Now, the blind hem stitch on the computerized machines often has a very short stitch length. I like to lengthen it up to about 2 1/2 to 3. Then this will just go along and catch. You might have to just play with the width of the stitch. Just a little bit so that it takes the least amount of bite out of the garment. As we look at Pam's finished hem on her dress, you can see the little blind hem stitches, and how even it is, and how easy it is to sew around the hemline. After sewing your first Tee-top, or T-Dress, classic dress, then it's time to make it again, but you don't have to make it just of one fabric. We can show you some color block options which are popular, and how you can personalize these patterns, or patterns that you may have at home. Pamela, on the dress form, you have the asymmetrical color block dress. Yes, so you can just take the front of the pattern piece and make your own color block area here. You'll see that on the back, I just used black fabric. It's very slimming that way. How you go about doing that is you'll first need to take your pattern piece and make one big piece by mirroring the side. So, just at the front you have to make a double. Just trace it on tissue paper and tape it together so you have a complete front. And then you can design away. You have, to make it asymmetrical. I like asymmetrical things, and so, you can measure this wedge in the middle is. I started it just below the bust on one side, and it ends just above the waist on the other side. So, it's a 2-inch decline here of the line. Approximately, yeah. Give or take. Give about 2-inches at the waist. So, this line starts just below the waist and ends at about mid-hip. So, the total wedge, in this particular size is about 10-inches in width. It's cut apart. The pattern pieces, or the tissues, are cut apart at this time and you're going to have to have seam allowances. Yes, so there's seam allowances on each side of the pattern pieces. Mm-hmm. So, it makes it really easy to put it back together again. And as you know, we've been working with 1/4" seam allowances, which is ideal for knits. If you watch us doing the necklines, especially during the T-shift, we did some stabilization of these crosswise seams. So, you use knit stay tape in this center panel so that it will be stabilized when it's attached to both the top and the bottom of the dress. You just sew these together with the... The serger or the sewing machine. 1/4" seam allowances. I'll show you on this side and you have a complete front and it has some fun color-blocking. You're not limited to this asymmetrical design because you have another option. Yes, you can design your own. This one was done symmetrically so we just used the half pattern piece. So, you can see how I split the pieces, added the seam With this particular style, as I think you just mentioned, you can apply the same color blocking to the back piece. Oh, yes. This one has the same front and back, rather than the plain back, as the other had. You would stabilize this middle section adding that stabilizing tape. Well, during this two-part series, during these sewing segments, you've learned to choose fabrics, choose pattern sizes, and make some tweaks of alterations. Do the sewing and, now, we have learned how to adapt the pattern. Pamela, thank you for your great ideas. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure being here. I hope that you'll be able to take these techniques and apply them to your knit patterns, as well. Many decades ago, manufacturing jobs we're outsourced including jobs in industrial sewing. Realizing that this void was hampering their businesses a group of manufacturers took matters into their own hands and began the Makers Coalition. It's a non-profit organization whose goal is to train and rebuild industrial sewing skills, and to create jobs. My guest is Tatjana Hutnyak, a spokesperson for the organization who joins us today from Minneapolis, via Skype. Tatjana, welcome to Sewing with Nancy. Why, thank you so much for having me today, Nancy! You know, industrial sewing and home sewing share many of the same skills. Now, you are training a bunch of people to work in an industry that.... you haven't been able to fill that need before. Tell us about the Makers Coalition. Well, that's correct. The Makers Coalition really came together several years ago based on the needs of local employers. So, we have a lot of companies that are producing, and demand has increased. They weren't able to meet that demand because we, traditionally, are missing a whole generation of industrial sewing. As you may know, manufacturing has went overseas back in the late '70s and the '80s. Now, with the on-shoring trend, manufacturing is really increasing production domestically. We have a shortage of workers. So, we also learned that a lot of companies did not grow their business to meet the demand. So, we partnered with non-profits in work. First of all, it meant that the leaders that a number of companies, as well as the training institution. That's kind of how the Makers Coalition was born. Because we started an official training so that people who have interest in sewing and background in sewing can actually get industrial sewing production skills, and enter the workforce, and once again, make that a career choice. This is quite a-- you know, I've seen the circle come full-circle. And now, you're training every six months. Explain to our viewers how many people you'll train and, the good news, the job placement. Yes, so the exciting part has been this training, we partnered with the Dunwoody College of Technology here in Minneapolis. The exciting part was that the training was really manufacturer driven, if you will, employer-driven. So, when the curriculum was developed, it was developed specifically with the industry round-table really making it hands-on training. We were able to create a training setting in which the ideal setting is really to have anywhere between 12 to 24 students so that everybody has enough lab time and practice time with the machines. So the training is six months for individuals who want to do the training part-time in the evenings if they hold another job. Otherwise, the speed-up training full-time can be completed in two to three months. So, the job placement has been 90% plus, within a month of graduation. So, we're really, really proud of that. The demand is there, and the jobs are there. So, with the students that choose to do this training the placement rate is really high. Not much difference in the sewing process, working with industrial sewing machines as opposed to home sewing machines, but, of course, the equipment is a little bit more powerful to say the least. I love looking at your large cutting systems and tables. Everything is just magnified. It's kind of nice for those of us who work on a smaller machine to see the other side of the fence. Yes, for sure, I mean, you know, I always like to compare it a little bit to having a driver license and driving your private vehicle versus maybe holding the commercial license, and handling something like that. The principles are the same. A lot of the skills can apply, but with the industrial machine, there is a certain speed in the repetition. So, just having those lab hours, and either training people who haven't sewn before. Because we actually have quite a number of students who've never sewn before so this is their first experience with the sewing machine. But, we also have a lot of people who have a lot of experience sewing on the home machine and so the lab hours and the training really allows them to kind of make that adjustment, and adjust to some of those faster speeds, and also understanding how the industrial sewing machine works and also some of the troubleshooting. Well, Tatjana, I want to thank you for being our guest. I look forward to hearing more about the Makers Coalition how you advance in the years to come to bring jobs on-shore. Thank you for joining us. Nancy, thank you so much for having the Makers Coalition as guest today. We really appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome! For those of you watching at home, if you'd like to re-watch this show, or watch another interview on Sewing with Nancy or Nancy's Corner, go to nancyzieman.com where you can find four seasons of streaming video online. Special thanks to my guest, Pamela Leggett, who joined us for this two-part series on Sewing the Perfect Tee. I hope you'll enjoy making one for yourself. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now. Pamela Leggett has created a pattern that serves as a reference for the T-shirt dress techniques featured on this program. The pattern is $13.99 + shipping and handling. To order this pattern, call 1-800-336-8373 or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/2906 Order item PAM116. "Classic T-Shirt Dress 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 nancyzieman.com 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.