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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

GBD - Sewing Plastic

Over the years I have read many blog posts about sewing. Many of them were about topics I had not yet tackled, but this information found a home in my brain and at the right time, I've been able to use it.
Sewing with plastic is essentially the same as sewing with leather, albeit a little less luxurious. I relied heavily  on some awesome blog posts, in particular on these done by Sallie Oh, and Lindsay T Sews.

I do not have a teflon foot, but I have a roll of painters tape and a box of binder clips.

Outside, taped and ready for basting stitches.

Ultimately, I was working with three layers. I had my lining layer, my main fabric and the plastic layer. I ended up placing the felt gumballs, and laying the plastic bodice over top, trapping them between. I then basted these two together to treat as one unit for the remainder of construction.

Inside of the main fabric, taped and ready for basting stitches.
There are some very tricky curves and these two layers absolutely HAD to be pinned or otherwise kept together. I ended up using scotch tape to keep them aligned. I sewed right over the tape and pulled it up after stitching. This worked very well. I use scotch tape for many things such as holding buttons in place while I'm machine stitching them, holding zippers in place and pattern alterations. It's an invaluable tool in the sewing room!


Painter's tape faux teflon foot to the rescue!

The teflon/painter's tape foot comes into play when sewing the plastic and main fabric layers together. I didn't want the feed dogs roughing up the plastic, so I had to sew plastic side up.


Faux teflon foot in use.

At first, I didn't realize it wouldn't run smoothly under the normal foot. As soon as it started sticking, I just grabbed the painters tape and covered the foot. It was a super easy fix that worked like a charm.

After sewing, prior to pulling up the scotch tape.
After sewing, prior to pulling up the scotch tape.

Once I had the main bodice unit put together, I then stitched lining and main fabric right sides together. I installed the boning (I'm working on a tutorial to show you guys how I did it) and used binder clips to "press" the upper seam. I left it clipped over several days and as I was working on installing the midriff.

"pressing"

fitting!



2 comments:

  1. This is gonna be awesome! So creative :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. The painters tape tip is brilliant!!! I wish that I had done this last night when sewing (fake) leather.

    ReplyDelete

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