Tricks and tips for sewing knits on a sewing machine

I do feel cross about this post. I'd finished writing it, went to publish it - and whoosh, it vanished, with no retrieval possible. (Thank you, Blogger software.) And I've had to start again from scratch. So it may get updated as I remember things I had included before, that now I can't remember.

Complaint over. My introduction will be much the same though. I have many years sewing experience, and when I started sewing, knit fabrics didn't really exist. So I learnt to sew using woven fabrics, and came to knits rather late in my sewing career. When I started, I fervently hated them. I still prefer using woven fabrics, but I've learnt a few tricks and tips over the years that have enabled me to accept that often my grandchildren want clothes that are best made with knits. And to sew them with pleasure (but did I mention I still prefer sewing with woven fabrics?)

In this post, I'll share what I've learnt to make sewing with knits easier. And I should add that I don't have (and couldn't afford) an overlocker / serger. People say knits are much quicker with an overlocker. But many of my tips are useful even if you have one. Lucky you!

More Movie Night Knit pyjamas

I've already used (and reviewed) the free Movie Night Pyjamas pattern from Sew a Little Seam. So I shan't write a detailed description on the latest set, you can read my full review here. So this post will mainly just be some further pictures of making a set of these knit pyjamas, this time, size 8 for Rose's 6th birthday.

Asymmetric skirts

For one of my Christmas dresses, I wanted to try an asymmetric skirt (shorter on one side than the other) with a full length underskirt. But before I made a mess of the expensive material I'd bought for this, I thought I'd try a toile - ideally a wearable one - I don't like to waste any fabric! This shows more or less what I was aiming for (below is the finally finished dress in the more expensive fabric).

In this post, I'll tell you how I went about designing the skirt by making my wearable toile. I've written another post about the dress pictured.

2020 Christmas dresses Part 1 - The first two, using Simplicity 9379

As in previous years, I made Christmas dresses for all the girls. Sadly, we were not able to spend Christmas together due to lockdown. But at least they had something to wear for our Zoom calls! First, here are the two dresses I made using Simplicity 9379. for Rose (5) and Fleur (7). You can read about the other dresses in this post - the assymetric dress, and in this one, the red A-line dress. 

More towelling wraps

Over the past few years, I've made simple towelling cover-ups for my grand-daughters - just something they can wear over a wet swimming costume to play around the pool. If that's what you want, you might like to check out these other posts for how to make really simple and quick cover-ups. 

New beach cover-ups for hot summer

Summer cover-ups and beach wraps

How to make a summer cover-up

However, you'll note those are all 'summer' cover-ups. When I started this post, two of my grand-daughters had restarted their swimming after lockdown, in an open air pool. But by this time it was winter, down to about 11 degrees centigrade, and with the changing rooms not open, the only choice was to change or wrap up on the pool side in a biting wind.

Something urgently was needed, and I threw together these two new hooded towelling wraps to cover them up, with the idea being that they could get changed underneath them. Here's one cheeky monkey in her towelling robe. It does button up at the neck, but she wanted to play rather than model.

Swim Robes - Pattern review and additional tutorial

Needing some quick swim cover-ups for two of my grand-daughters, I had made some simple ones out of towelling (see this post) . However, they weren't really going to be warm enough for the coldest part of winter, what with having to change outdoors. And in timely fashion, I found a Facebook post from Laura Bolwell of Designed for Daisy, with information about a pattern and tutorial she had designed for a three-layer swim robe. Her pattern was very reasonably priced on Etsy, so I hastened off to buy it, and set about making not just two robes for those two granddaughters, but 4, for all 4 of them.

As a reviewer on Etsy pointed out, this is not a project for complete beginners, but in the course of making 4, I learned some tricks to make it easier, so I'm sharing what I learned here. Note that this review and my tutorial will only help you if you have bought Laura's pattern and tutorial.

Easy Skirts - Part 3 Flared and part circular skirts

 I've already told you about two other types of skirts that are pretty easy to make, without a pattern, i.e. gathered skirts, and circular skirts. This is a fully circular skirt. 

This is a type of flared skirt - it is a smaller fraction of a circle, rather than a complete circle.

There are several reasons why you might opt for a part circle. So in this post, I'll explore those, and show you an easy way to make them.

Easy Skirts - Part 2 - Circular skirts.

In my first post about easy skirts for girls, I wrote about gathered skirts. I think they are the simplest to make, use very little fabric, and don't need a pattern. But there are other types of skirt which are also pretty easy to make, and many of them can loosely come under a heading of circular and flared skirts. The main difference is that gathered skirts are usually made of a simple rectangle of fabric, so that there is as much fabric at the waistline as at the bottom hem. This can sometimes make them seem a bit bulky at the top. In contrast, a fully circular skirt will be a complete circle (often likened to a doughnut) so it has a wide hem and not too much fabric at the top. But you can also make skirts I'm calling 'flared' as a sort of catchall. They are some fraction of a circle, three-quarters, half, or even just a quarter. They will all have more fabric at the hem than at the waistine.

This is a gathered skirt:

This is a fully circular skirt:

And these two are flared skirts. I'll cover flared skirts in part three.

Many such skirts can also be made without an expensive pattern, if you are prepared to make a few measurements and draw a pattern for yourself. But you can also get patterns if that's what you prefer to work with.

Sweatshirt Tunic from Life Sew Savory - a review and a fun idea

 I'd been looking at ways of using up some of the multiple colours of fleece scraps in my stash, and just in time, along came Emily Thompson of Life Sew Savory's with her great Sweatshirt Tunic pattern. I'd had an idea for some time of doing something like a rainbow because I had so many colours, and hence the sunburst was born. I think the Life Sew Savory pattern works really well.

You can find out how to make it here (or anything with a sunburst  design).

Enlarging a pattern - a tutorial

You know how frustrating it is when the pattern you love doesn't quite go up to a big enough size? It is sometimes possible to enlarge it a bit,  though I don't recommend trying to alter a newborn pattern to fit a ten year old, or a 7 year-old pattern to a women's XL. In this post, I'll show you how to make something a size or two larger. 

Easy Skirts - Part 1 - Gathered skirts

 Some skirts are so easy to make, I'm amazed when I see paid-for "patterns" for very basic skirts. In fairness, there are also a lot of people who provide a pattern and tutorial free, as a come-on for their paid-for patterns. I don't have anything to sell, so I'm just going to tell you how to make easy skirts for girls, with no charge! And I'll also suggest a few embellishments to make them fancier, if the basics are just too basic for you. Here are just a few of the many, many skirts that I've made for my grandchildren over the past few years,

This will be a short series of posts on how to make simple skirts, and for this the first, on gathered skirts, read on. (Links to the others at the end.)

How to make paper bag skirts / shorts/ trousers

In my previous post, I talked about my inspiration for making paper bag tops to a pair of trousers (or pants) for a toddler. In this post, I'll talk about the other kids' clothes that followed this idea, skirts and shorts, and give you general tips for making them. You can read about the trousers here.

Paper bag skirt

Paper bag shorts

Another pair of paper bag shorts

More Masks for the Family

I'm on my second round of making face masks for the family (or Fabric Face Coverings, as we are now required to call them). This time, I've included some for the children, even though under 11s will not be obliged ro wear them. I'm now concentrating on the 2 patterns I've found most useful, one for great fit, one for speed. And trying to make them more interesting with my fabric choices.

Find out more about my two 'most useful' patterns (pictured here), including links to the free patterns and tutorials, in the rest of this post. I will also reflect on how we've made them work best for us.

Adding sleeves to an A-line dress (or any dress!)

I make lots of A-line dresses fror my grand-daughters, but there are times I want sleeves. Either it's winter - or the two fair-skinned girls need at least their shoulders covered to protect them from sunburn.

There are several different ways you can add sleeves to an A line dress. However, it will depend on the pattern you use as to how easy this will be. I have found a number of A-line patterns which already have sleeves, but some do not really work, because the pattern author/designer has just added a sleeve to a sleeveless dress pattern without really taking account of the shape of the armscye. Often sleeveless dresses have a more cutaway armhole than you would have in a dress intended to have sleeves. So it's not always straightforward. But it can be done! If you'd like to vary A line dresses so you don't have bare shoulders, read on!

Pattern Review and lengthening tutorial - Little Lizard King Raleigh Top

The Raleigh from Little Lizard King was a new-to me-pattern recently. You can tell I liked it, because I made two the first day I found it! It's really a very quick make. It has nice clear instructions, and comes in sizes 12 months to 14 years. However (as I'm afraid I so often do) I amended it somewhat to suit my granddaughters (and their mothers). But my alterations have been so admired I thought I'd write them up. 

To find out how I did it, read on.

Shirred top or dress with elasticated straps - a tutorial

I've numerous tutorials for shirred dresses and tops (see bottom of post for suggestions). I've even made several in my time. But I know that most of my granddaughters hate tie strap shoulders, and I've never yet# seen a tutorial with anything else. So it was time to make up my own, and here I present: the shirred dress or top with elasticated shoulders.

# See footnote to blog

Quick face masks - Billette's Baubles review.

Because I suddenly had a more urgent need to make a number of masks quickly, I knew my favourite mask pattern from Fleece Fun was not going to cut it. It's the best pattern for fit and comfort, we have found, but quick to make, it is not. 

I found this You Tube video from Billette's Baubles, which was not one I'd tried before. It looked easy and comfortable, and quick to make. So off I went, and the masks were very well received. So I expect to make more.

To read my full review, including how I slightly modified it to improve it for us, and how I speeded up the process of making quite a few, read on. 

Coffee cup covers

As well as all the scraps in my stash that were woven cotton, or jersey knits, from making clothes for the grandchildren, I had a few odd bits of double-sided ready quilted fabric. Then I found this great free pattern for a coffee cozy from See Kate Sew. I had been idly thinking for some time of how to make our re-usable coffee cups more hands-free - we are mostly using them when with the family, and it is very useful to have spare hands.

See Kate Sew's Coffee Cozy is just that - a cozy - and it isn't hands-free in its original design. But the template was perfect. To find out how I adapted it to make hands free coffee cup carriers, read on!

Applique identification for boot bags

Another scrap buster! I do keep some tiny little bits of fabric sometimes, they can be so useful to make little appliqués. 

We got these new boot bags, great for carting our hiking boots around, thus keeping the car clean etc. But after the first few times of opening up both bags, my boots always being in the second one I tried, I thought - I'm going to label these! And what better way than to put an initial on each? (And use up a tiny bit more of the scrap stash.)

I found a couple of little bits of cottton fabric just big enough, about 2" by 3" (5cm x 7.5cm). You can find out a lot more about how to make appliqués in my post here.  But I'll give a quick explanation below.

Bean bags to while away the time

Another lockdown / stash busting project:  - to make bean bags. I first picked up the idea from Peekaboo, whose newsletter I receive regularly. Her article on bean bags is here. While some of her suggested games were not so useful for my daughter in a first floor flat with no outdoor space, the method for making the bags was easy. We could be inventive about games for ourselves. The great advantage of bean bags in a flat, with thin walls and floors, is that they can be thrown without making too much noise on the floor, or risking breaking windows!

(However, to be even-handed, I also made a set for the other family who do have a garden.)

Here's all about making bean bags, and some games for indoors and out.