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If it's been a while since you stitched a jacket or perhaps you never have, learn how to take an easy approach to create a swing-style version made from comfy, fashionable knits. I'm returning to my sewing roots to show you time-saving as well as trending sewing tips and techniques. This jacket is flattering, and you can personalize it with options. The fabric of choice is a Ponte knit, a fabric that stitches like a woven but is carefree as the knit it is. "Sew

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A Three Season Jacket," that's what's coming up next on Sewing With Nancy.

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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 90 years. Fuller Brush Vacuums, dedicated to keeping homes clean. Amazing Designs and Klass Needles. Let's take a look at the swing-style jackets, and I'll point out some of the features and the simple breakdown of the sewing processes that you can do while creating the fashions. We'll start with the red fashion that has the higher collar that has a slight gathering around the collar. You'll see it's a casing that I'll show you how to put in, but the front is fairly simple. It has a front piece and a side front, so there's a nice little shaping. Simple set-in sleeves, and then the back, to give it the flare and swing, has a yoke and then a center back piece and two side back pieces. I should say, there are two center back pieces, one on each side, so the panels give it some flow and length. The cuff at the very end of the sleeve, of course, can either be made 3/4 or full-length, and, whoop, we'll just shake hands here. There you can see the cuff, and you'll see that on my jacket as well. Perhaps you don't want such a high collar, and if that's the case, you can simply wear the collar open. The extra length is cut shorter on this version, version B, and the sleeves are also much shorter on this one, 3/4 length with just a simple little V cuff area. May seem like a lot of details, but, really, we're gonna break it down step-by-step, section by section. You're not gonna make the whole thing at once, just piece by piece. When you're working with a pattern, you check the pattern envelope for a variety of things. You'll determine what view you're going to make,

but then the back has the most information for you

the type of fabric you're going to work with, and, when it's a knit, giving you the amount of stretch that you need in the fabric. Now, look at a knit fabric-- this is the fabric that I'm wearing-- and you'll find that the cut edges, the way it's cut from the bolt, that's the cross grain; it has the most stretch. The fabric along the selvage-- and you can see we have a little section cut out here, leftover fabric-- that's the straightest. It has-- or the most stable. Greatest stretch around the body. Most stable the length of the body. Makes a lot of sense. And there always will be a gauge, if it's designed for knits, that you take about 4" of fabric and you place it between the arrows that are on here, from here to here, and it must stretch to at least the arrow at the end or beyond, but it cannot fall in the middle. Otherwise, it'll be just a little bit too snug. The type of fabric-- it'll give you the type of fabric to purchase, and it will say a Ponte knit, a double knit, a medium weight. You can just kind of touch and feel. From those of us who have been sewing for a while, it's old double knit, but now it's called Ponte. Medium to heavy weight works great. The pattern will be multiple sized. Sizes extra-small to extra-large. That's the way most patterns are these days, and if you're like Kate, who's on the Sewing With Nancy crew and staff, you'll copy these off with every detail, but to tell you the truth, I just usually do the cut edges and the straight of grain, but Kate so nicely did this for me that I to show off all her details. And when you lay these out on the fabric, you'll be given specific guidelines of how to lay them out. And lay it out with a little guide sheet. Tells you to fold the fabric in half and where to position the pieces. You pin them down and cut them out. You'll be cutting two out at the same time, and, presto, you have it cut out. It does take me almost-- I think, the longest time to get it laid out. Use a Ping-Pong table, your dining room table, whatever you'd like to get this big-- all these fabrics cut out. Now, interfacing. We're using knit interfacing, knit fabric, and this is a knit tricot interfacing, and it tells you where to cut it, and place it on the wrong side of the fabric. It's partially fused, pressed into place, but it's very drapey, and that's just what you need. Using a rotary cutter ruler and mat, you can cut 3/4" wide strips, and I like to fuse those into the shoulder seams and also into the pocket area. The pocket area is going to have some wear and tear when you're taking-- putting your tissues or keys inside your pocket. And there's a diagram exactly where to fuse that. The interfacing does the work for you. Gives it a little additional stability-- it's like the foundation of a house, the bones of the project-- and gets things stabilized. So you've chosen your fabric, cut it out, added interfacing, and now it's time for seaming.

I like to break down my sewing into components

putting in the pockets, setting in the sleeve, putting on the collar. Don't think about all at once, just section by section. This section is on putting on the pocket because that happens almost in the beginning of the process. It's part of this seam for the front pieces. It's a nice, deep pocket, and when you flip to the inside, you'll see-- you won't see red for lining, but a very lightweight pocket fabric so that you don't have a lot of heavy weight in this area. It's a knit fabric, so it's not going to ravel, just like a double knit or a Ponte knit, and you're going to cut out the two layers, and you can see, a sheer, they'll hold whatever you put in your pocket but yet will not add bulk to your fabric. Now, I'm working with some smaller samples or a portion of the jacket front, and I have already stitched a pocket to each side of the front, wherever it ever belongs, and then pressed the seam allowances toward the pocket. Now, I did not explain what seams I use, so we'll do that next, and I'm just matching or pinning the fabric. I have some marks with chalk on here to tell me where to stop and start sewing. There would be a longer seam than I have, but you'll get the general idea. Now, the seam that I'm going to use, because the fabric has stretch, is a slight zigzag stitch. I have the machine brought up at the traditional zigzag, but it's way too wide. It certainly would not have a seam... look like a seam when I'm done. I have a 0.5 width, and the length, I'm going to bump up to 2 1/2 millimeters. So it's just-- it wobbles. It slightly wiggles. It's not a straight stitch, but you don't need that. It'll give you stretch, but it will also... looks like a straight stitch when you're done. You'll need a new needle, a ballpoint or a stretch needle, either one will work. Make sure you put in a new one. Not trying to promote needles, but you'll get a better result with those ballpoint or stretch needles. The fabric will not-- you'll not have skipping of stitches. So I like to sew from the lower edge to the top. So I have a 5/8" seam allowance. And I'll just guide this down and start to do the stitching, and I'll just do a little reverse here to get that going, and then there's a notch-- or a marking, not a notch, I should say, at which to stop. And then I will just pivot and stitch around the pocket. And this looks just like a straight stitch when you're done, and you can see, when I'm sewing on the pocket fabric, it's lightweight, but it doesn't stretch out of shape. Now, working with a Ponte or a double knit, you don't need to finish the edges because it doesn't ravel. This fabric has a little fraying because it's textured, and the texture is coming through, but it will never ravel out, so you don't want to work too hard on this. Just sew simple. Now, it's a knit, and you may think, "Well, with a knit, aren't you going to use a serger?" And I'm gonna show you at the pressing station that I prefer not to use a serged seam on this heavier weight fabric. If we look at this, you'll see that here's the serged seam, and when you press with it... It is-- stands up, and it may leave a ridge on the front. So rather than that happening, I'm going to recommend that you just use this wobble stitch for the construction of a double knit, and press the seam flat, which I didn't do. Let's do that. Let's press that seam flat. Just set it, and then press it open. Now, when we work with the stitch, that's-- that's it. It's not very difficult at all. And what I would like to do next is to show you the sample of the seam already stitched, everything complete, and the pocket is pressed to the jacket front, but the seam allowance, I need-- I have clipped it so it will lie flat above the pocket and below the pocket. And then stitch from all around what you just stitched right now to hold it to the jacket. So it's just-- as you can see from this section, in black thread, you can possibly see the stitching, but when I did the stitching, I just did it from the wrong side, sewing from the seam all the way around to the seam. Simple stitching. You put in pockets in your jacket in about 15 minutes. After doing some basic seaming of the back and front and putting the shoulder seams together, it's time to attach the collar. Whether it has a little elastic and a higher stand or a lower profile, the sewing is interesting. It's got a little technique because of the elastic added around. On my collar pattern pieces, I have fused interfacing to the full size of the finished fabric with that lightweight fusible interfacing and pre-pressed under 1/2" of the inside seam. This is going to be in the finished jacket area, so that's kind of giving it a memory so I know exactly where it should be. I have some marks on the fabric, just some little blue marks, that's transferred from the pattern piece that you have. It will tell you, now, to stitch where you're going to have a casing, where you're going to have the elastic, so I've marked that on the fabric. And on both ends of the collar, you're going to do some stitching. You're gonna stop for a minute or two. But you can see that this seam has been sewn, left an opening for the casing, and then continued to stitch. I've already angle-cut that corner off to eliminate some of the bulk, and I can press this flat and then press it open over a dowel, over a pressing tool. This was sensitive-- is not sensitive to heat, so that I can get in there and press very easily. Nice to use in those confined corners. And when I turn this right side out, you can see that this is starting to look like a collar. Now, I have topstitched on my sample following the lines on my guide sheet-- or my pattern piece. There's the opening. You can see the opening of the seam. And then I topstitched on both sides, and here's a close-up. I'm just using my seam guide to topstitch the distance that my pattern tells me to stitch. Just take it step-by-step. Now, that little elastic, that's kind of an interesting thing. When I was working on this pattern to figure out how to design it, I thought, "Okay, we'll just make it like a casing for a pair of pants or lounging wear," and the elastic that you need is 19" long, and instead of cutting it 19", I started about an inch or so from the edge, made a mark, measured 19", and then made another mark. We'll cut it but not-- not at this point. Then using your favorite tool, thread this through the opening. It'll take a little time to get this started, but thread it through the opening, and thread it through that opening whether you have it as a little ruffle at the top or, as in this instance, as the blue version, as the little elastic goes through the top of the collar. Now, you don't want this elastic showing, so you need to secure it down. This end has been stitched down. You can maybe see that blue marking is right at this edge, but then to get rid of the extra elastic, you stretch it. Stretch, and I'm gonna stretch this and cut it close, and then it sneaks right back into the casing, and no one will be the wiser that it's there. On the other end, you stretch the elastic to meet the 19" mark. I would stitch along this edge. And then do the same, after stitching, pulling, and then you would have the elastic along that edge giving you that nice little detail. The collar and cuffs are put on in the same manner. With right sides together, you would stitch, on my short little sample, the collar to the neckline. And just use the traditional 5/8" seam allowance and sew around. And let me just show you the magic of it, because you pre-press that inside edge after some grading and trimming, trimming the inside fabric seam allowance shorter... And all the way around, and then maybe getting rid of some of the bulk on the outside, and I'm doing a shortcut of trimming. You just overlap the collar to meet the neckline seam. On this end, it's pinned, and you can hand-stitch or topstitch this into place, and you would have an interesting collar accent in just a few steps. I'd like to show you one more thing on that collar on the finished jacket. When I was sewing the collar to the jacket, the final stitching, I stitched from the right side, stitched in the ditch, in the well of the seam, that 1/2" seam allowance was pressed under, and you can see that it caught part of it, so it's all done by machine-- you could do it by hand if you'd like-- and then the collar's in. What I'd like to do next is set in the sleeve without sewing the underarm seam of the sleeve or the underarm seam of the jacket. That will come later, but we'll get this set in first. The sleeve is always larger around that cap than the jacket, and that's not a concern because the machine will ease it in for you. On this smaller sample, half of this sleeve has been stitched, and you can kind of see how that sleeve is waving in there a little bit, but yet it looks straight from the front. It doesn't have that wave. And the reason that it has that extra fabric is to give your sleeve comfort, and when you have a longer area, you always put that toward the feed dogs, toward the bed of the machine, and the feed dogs will bite that fabric, as I like to use the analogy. They ease it into place so that you can do this step without having to do extra stitching to ease that extra fabric. Some of you may know that on a woven fabric, you would have to do some gathering or slight easing stitches. Here I'll just guide the fabric along the area, and it will lie flat. It's kind of magical that way. I'll align these edges, kind of guide the fabric, and enjoy the process. Knits are so forgiving. They hide a multitude of little snafus, so it's a great project for your first jacket or a jacket that you haven't sewn in a long time. And after I clip the threads, and even though I haven't pressed this, just look how this drapes. It eased into place and-- ready to go. With right sides together, you'd sew the underarm seam, sleeve, and the jacket all in one seam. The cuff is put on much like the collar, almost the same techniques, except you don't have the little gathering in there. Now, I'm not gonna be able to show you every single step of the way, but I'd like to talk about buttonholes, because buttonholes on knits, it's important to do some testing. On a scrap of fabric, including the interfacing-- add a little interfacing in your scrap-- stitch some buttonholes, both vertically and horizontally. And I have two types here. If you can possibly see that the one on your left is much more dense of thread than the one on the right. The buttonholes in the vertical position don't have a lot of issue, but look what happens to the buttonholes in the horizontal. With a lot of thread, it stretches out of shape, so I like to use a stretch buttonhole for knits. It makes a lot of sense. If you look at what the traditional buttonhole looks like, it has a very dense filled-in area. The stretch stitch, you can see immediately that it's much more open, so I'll snap off this foot, snap on my other foot, get all the settings set up, and with a scrap of fabric and a scrap of interfacing, do a test buttonhole. For the-- check out the length as well as checking out the direction that you're gonna put this in. And try to stitch the buttonhole in the same direction you plan on doing it with your regular jacket. So it stitches back and then forward. It's gonna do another backstitch. Kind of like swimming. Can go a forward stitch or a backstitch, but it really does stitch by itself, so that's a really nice thing. Now, even though that this is a sample, we would cut open the buttonhole and check to make sure that the button fit in, but look at the ease of which that's put in, and it has a little give to it, and there you go. You would use matching thread to the fabric, of course, and then stitch them. I like to put vertical buttonholes in. It does have one horizontal buttonhole at the top, but it's simple as that. There are some little hemming techniques you'll have to do, but all in all, you've learned so far, to work with Ponte knit, add a little bit of interfacing for stability, put on a collar and pocket, set in a sleeve using the feed dog of the machine, and within a couple evenings of sewing, you have some style. Volunteer sewing groups often have interesting beginnings. Learn how the giving heart of a chemotherapy patient who made care packages for others inspired the medical staff to take efforts a step further. Please welcome Carrie O'Connor and Nicole Cerda to Sewing With Nancy. They're part of Operation Chemo Comfort. Glad you're here. Thank you so much for having us on. We truly appreciate it. Well, this is an inspiring story. Great projects to help others, and, Carrie, tell us how this all started. Well, we do have an interesting story. It began with a Stage IV pancreatic cancer patient. And she was so sick, and yet despite being sick, she was always thinking of other people. And she would bring in these huge tote bags filled with comfort items for patients, and we would watch this and go, "Oh, my gosh, a patient is doing this, "a patient, you know, and if she's so sick, we definitely have to do something too." So we started last spring, and it just organically sprang from there. And you're in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. Yes. - At the Froedtert Hospital. But this could happen in any area. And, Nicole, you joined this great group at a sew-a-thon. Yeah, absolutely, so when I heard about the sew-a-thon, I was really excited because I hadn't had the opportunity to sew for a purpose in a while. It was a great pattern, really achievable for almost any skill level, and I got to meet some really interesting people that were just as passionate about a cause as I am. And, "Sew for a purpose," I think that is the key principle that we're-- many of us who sew and make things for others strive to do, and here's a scarf, a reversible scarf, that... I think that anybody who could just think about sewing a straight seam could work on. Yes. - Absolutely. And very little waste, as you mentioned, and we'll look at the bandana or scarf on your form, but ties on the back, soft and covers-- great, great thing. But you don't have to just have woven fabrics. No, not at all. In fact, we tell people we have no restriction on pattern, fabric, or color, because we love it when people use their creativity. They just come up with so many interesting things. And here's a fleece hat that you've-- someone has made nice and cozy and warm, and I think what-- you know what I like to suggest to people is that they use the best fabric they can, not odds and ends, but things that are attractive and pretty, because at that time, patient needs is really paramount. Absolutely. - Yeah. Now, your sew-a-thons, in the first year, you made a remarkable number of caps and head coverings. Yes, we had more than 2,000, if you can believe it, by the end of the year, and, you know, that was just with very little effort, you know, in terms of getting the word out at all. So we are having a sew-a-thon in a few weeks, and we have a quilt store owner who-- I love it-- she's very driven, and she's like, "We'll say we're gonna make 500, but I really think we could do 1,000."

laughter

I like to break down my sewing into components

And it's not a quick event. It's 12-- - 12 hours. But everybody can sign up for an hour shift, two-hour shift; you don't have to commit to the whole time, and any skill level can be involved, so whether you want to iron, cut patterns, you know, turn inside out, there's really something for everyone to do. And, Nicole, you-- or Carrie mentioned that the tote bags that go along with these are your passion. Yeah, absolutely, so what I love about the story of Operation Chemo Comfort is that anybody, whether you're a crafter or whether you just, you know, are at Target and want to donate something easy like Kleenex, we can put them together in these beautiful tote bags to lift the spirits of somebody going through treatment, and that can include, you know, hard candies, water bottles, electrolyte drinks; anything like that can be collected by almost anybody and donated. And it's really-- for your hospital grouping, area-- you have people from different areas of the hospital coming together to work on this project. Yes, absolutely, but we've also had people from outside Wisconsin. Last year, we had people mail us things from 25 different states... Ah. - And Puerto Rico. So it's pretty amazing. Well, I hope that you get many more donations or encourage people from other areas to do the same, have a sew-a-thon, do the same type of thing. I thank you so much for being with us and I look forward to hearing other good things that you're doing. - Thank you so much. Thanks so much for everything. - You're welcome. I hope that you've enjoyed this interview as well as our program on "Sew

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A Three Season Jacket," and we'll try sewing the jacket as well as perhaps some comfort caps for Operation Comfort-- Chemo Comfort. If you'd like to re-watch this segment or a variety of shows of Sewing With Nancy online, you can go to NancyZieman.com and click on a variety of different programs to watch. Also join us on our blog, Facebook, and other social media platforms. As I like to end each show, thanks for joining us. Bye for now.

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See how easy you can make this sleek three-season jacket as Nancy demonstrates tips and tricks to simplify and speed your sewing. To order this pattern in size 4 to 22 and DVD combination, call 800-336-8373 or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/3110.

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A Three Season Jacket," for $11.99 plus shipping and handling. Credit card orders only. 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,

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