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Bishop Construction, New Pattern, Pleating, Smocking

New Pattern Test- Baby Bishop Diaper Set

 

 

 

 

My new pattern is all ready for testing.  It’s a little smocked bishop diaper set with a front closing.  There are options for a self folded over placket or a contrasting fabric placket.  The diaper cover has front snaps for easy changing.

An easy smocking plate is included with the pattern that requires basic knowledge of cable and trellis stitches.

The size range is newborn to 12 months.

Recommended fabrics are lightweight cottons and blends such as batiste, lawn, voile or linen.  Broadcloth can also be used as well as cotton interlock.  The diaper cover can be made from heavier fabric such as broadcloth, or chambray, or it can match the bishop top.

The testing will run from September 1-30, 2019 and I will notify all testers by September 1, 2019.

Here’s the link to apply:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScYzA_RMSm2CW547RpUsiLPfVaDzp96-QC99jbeW8bYEo50iQ/viewform?usp=pp_url

Or go to my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/littleheirloomangels if the above link doesn’t work.

Please join us!

Bishop Construction, Classic Style, Construction, Forever Classic, Sewing Techniques

New Feature- Tutorials!

I’m finishing up my first pattern testing and it has been an amazing experience.  I’ve gotten some valuable feedback and I had the opportunity to work with some talented testers.  Thank you all for joining!  I’ll be posting the photos very soon, after I’ve finished all the revisions to the pattern.

One of the best suggestions I received was to post tutorials on the blog here for beginners who might not be familiar with heirloom sewing techniques.  I thought it was a great idea.  Thank you Pam!  I have a Tutorials page now with a link at the top of the Home page.

My first tutorial shows how to make piping for heirloom garments.  Click here.  It’s a basic feature for smocked dresses and classic children’s clothing.   It supports the smocking on yoke dresses and inserts.  It can be used as trim on a cuff, or around a peter pan collar.  But’s it’s also a lesson that isn’t taught in most basic sewing classes.  It’s simple, doesn’t cost a lot of money and adds such an elegant touch.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting other tutorials on topics such as an easy way to make a continuous bound placket and binding a neckline.  More topics will be posted as I cover different techniques in future patterns.

 

I hope you enjoy them!

Bishop Construction, Construction, Pleating, SAGA, Smocking, Uncategorized

More Pleating Part 3

The next challenge in my pleating adventures is to tackle a method of bishop pleating that requires the pieces to be pleated before stitching the underarm seams.  I like to call it the Release and Rethread method.  It takes longer and requires a lot of concentration but it is a no fail method to totally hide seams.  Your bishop dress will appear totally seamless and smooth.  No ugly bumps that are created when the seams are caught up in the pleat during the typical pleating method.

The first step is to carefully lay your pieces in order.  Pleaters vary in the way the needles pierce the fabric in the rollers.  Some pleat with the longer stitches on top and other pleat with the longer stitches on bottom.  “Long is wrong” is the cardinal rule for pleating so it’s important that you understand how your pleater works.  The dress pieces should be laid out according to how your pleater pleats: right side up or wrong side up.

Pleat the first piece and clear it from the needles and unthread them.  With the right side of the fabric facing you, remove the threads and pull them out of the seam allowances, usually 1/2″ on each side of the pattern piece.  Make sure the pleating threads are coming out of the right side of the fabric.  You want to make sure your seam allowances will be falling to the wrong side of the garment.

Next, start pleating the sleeve, making sure the you have the correct sleeve piece.  For a back opening bishop, you will need the back of the sleeve to go through first so that it matches the back armhole of the first pleated piece.  The opposite would apply for a front opening bishop.  In that case, you have pleated one front already and need the front sleeve seam to go through the pleater first to match up with the front of the dress.  When the pleats start to build up on the needles, CAREFULLY pull off the seam allowance and flip it either up or down.  If you are pleating right side up, flip the seam allowance down.  If you are pleating wrong side up, flip it UP.  Be careful to have all your seam allowances on the wrong side of the dress.

 

Clearing the seam allowance from the pleater needles

 

Now that the seam allowance is free, carefully rethread the pleater with the same threads that are coming out of the first pleated piece.

 

Rethreading the needles for bumpless bishops

 

Make sure the pieces are all facing the same way and the pleating threads don’t get crossed as you rethread.  Continue pleating the sleeve and pull it completely off the needles just like you did for the first piece.  Clear the threads from the seam allowance, making sure the seam allowance will fall to the wrong side and continue the steps until the whole bishop has been pleated.

  1. Pleat
  2. Remove threads and clear seam allowance
  3. Pleat
  4. Pull seam allowance off needles and rethread
  5. Go to step 1 and repeat

When you are finished you should have no crossed threads, all the seam allowances on the wrong side and all the pieces in the proper order.

 

Bishop pleating without stitching the seams

 

Now it’s time to sew.  Basting is a crucial first step to sewing up the seam and making sure the pleating threads stay aligned.  Fold the seam so that the right sides are together and hand baste.  What I did to insure perfect alignment is to use the same needle holes of the pleating threads. I didn’t get a picture of just the basting but you can see it in the next steps.  Come up through the same holes in one row, go down through the same holes in the next row.  Then you machine stitch 1/16 of and inch from that basting line to form your valley.

 

Creating a valley for the bumpless bishop

 

 

 

I think you can see the basting line best in this picture.  Right where the pleating threads end, you can see a basting stitch between the two rows in white thread.

There are several options to finish the seams.  You can serge them, but if you are making an heirloom style garment you probably want to use on of the other methods.

Here I’ve done a Faux French seam by turning under the raw edges and stitching along the fold.

 

Faux French Seam

 

Here I’ve done a simple overcast edge.  The stitches are very tiny and hard to see but I think you can get the general idea.

 

Overcast Stitch on Pleated Seam

 

I’ve never worked with this method before but now that I’ve tried it, I plan to use it more often.  It’s definitely less stressful than pleating French seams and holding your breath as they go through the rollers.  You just have to concentrate and remember all the steps in order.  And even if you forget, you only have to go back and repleat one piece, not the whole dress! I call that a win right there.

My next lesson is double pleating.  As my daughter’s got older I had to figure out that technique all by myself.  This was almost 30 years ago and limited resources were available!  I  muddled through and got the dresses made but now maybe I can learn a few new tricks to make it easier!  Stay tuned.

Bishop Construction, Construction, Pleating, Smocking

More Pleating Homework- Part 2

By | On August 14,18 | 0 Comment

The next chapter in my adventures with the pleating course concentrated on pleating seams for bishop style dresses.  This has become a concern lately because so many of us have pleaters that are no longer manufactured and therefore, the original needles are no longer available.  There are generic needles on the market but they bend and break at the slightest turn of the crank.  Plus they are very expensive!  My solution is try to bend the pleating rules (better than the needles!) a bit and think of a new plan.  In the previous post on this topic, read here, I described how to get a VERY tiny french seam.  Now to talk about getting that little seam through those rollers.

First, I rolled the fabric on the dowel, keeping each seam parallel to the dowel.

 

 

Next, I made sure the fabric was started through the rollers on grain.  My method is to turn the crank until there is a tiny opening between the teeth of the rollers.  Then I hold the fabric edge at the top and bottom of the pleating area and slide it into the rollers, keeping the  inserted edge taut.  I wiggle it in until I see that the grain is parallel to the rollers.  Then, with my left hand I spread my fingers and hold the fabric against the bottom roller to make sure it doesn’t slip out of place as I turn the crank.  If your opening is small enough, you should only have to turn it a little bit before the teeth grab the fabric and it is secure.  Make sure everything is on grain and start pleating.

Pleat slowly and stay on grain.  You might have to make small adjustments on each side of the fabric as it goes through the rollers and pull the pleats off the needles often.  Just turn one crank at a time, tug and pull as necessary to keep the grain parallel.   As the seam comes off the dowel and approaches the rollers it must be parallel or you will hear that dreaded crunch!

 

 

Push the seam into a groove on the top roller just before it goes through the pleater with a screwdriver.

 

 

If you work slowly, have patience, and stay on grain, the seams should come out of the pleater free from the pleater threads.  Your bishop will be bump free from the right side and the smocking will be continuous and GORGEOUS!

 

Mini French Seam

 

In Part 3 I will talk about pleating before seaming – what I like to call the release and re-thread method.  It is suitable for heavier fabrics and it guarantees no needle breaks!  It takes more time but in the end you will have a beautiful no bump bishop to show off all your beautiful smocking!

 

Bishop Construction, Construction, SAGA, Smocking, Uncategorized

More Pleating Homework

Mini French Seam for Pleating
By | On August 04,18 | 2 Comments

My next assignment for the pleating class from SAGA was focused on pleating over seams.  I had to pleat two samples using two different techniques.  One was pleating over tiny French seams. The second involved pleating the pieces in a continuous manner without stitching seams first.  These two methods are used to pleat bishop style dresses.

I had trouble with the French seams which is a direct result of the pleater needles.  I have seen several complaints about the pleater needles being sold on the market today and I have to agree with them.  I never broke this many needles when I was pleating for my daughters 25 years ago.  That being said, I decided to think outside the box in order to save my needles.  This meant that I had to disregard the conventional pleating wisdom of using a tiny 1/8″ French seam.  I went smaller if you can believe that.

I had to get creative in order to do this and I decided my goal would be to create a French seam closer to 1/16″.  Such a tiny seam is basically like stitching over piping when you consider the bulk of the enclosed seam allowance and stitching so close to the edge.  The bulk would slip out of the bottom of the presser foot while stitching and this would create precise stitching.  It would be impossible to get an accurate seam. Also, this would only apply to lightweight fabrics such as batiste or lawn.  Anything heavier would just not work for this technique.  I realized I should treat this tiny seam just like piping and I searched through my presser feet to find one with a tiny groove that would hold the enclosed seam allowance in place as it traveled under the presser foot.  The regular piping foot had a channel that was way too big.  The closest I could find was my manual buttonhole foot and a pintuck foot.

After stitching the first seam, I trimmed VERY closely to the stitching; less than a 1/16″.  Remember: we want to reduce bulk as much as possible to make this seam fit into the tiny groove of the pleater gear.  This line of stitching doesn’t take any stress in wearing, it sits at the top of the seam allowance when the garment is finished.  It’s only purpose is to keep the raw edges of the fabric turned under, so trimming that closely will not cause any problems.  It is the second row of stitching that takes the stress because it is directly in the seam line of the garment.

To stitch the second part of this seam, I experimented with the two presser feet and the pintuck foot was the winner.  It has the tiny groove to hold the little bump of the enclosed seam allowance and the needle position can be easily adjusted for a 1/16″ final seam allowance.

 

Mini French Seam for Pleating

It’s a little wider than 1/16″ but it’s pretty darn close. and it went through the pleater with no broken needles.  I was able to pop the seams so that when the fabric came off the needles, the seam was standing upright.

 

Mini French Seam

 

Next time I’ll post about the second technique for pleating a bishop before the seams are stitched.  That was Assignment #2 from this lesson.

Bishop Construction, Pleating, Smocking

Bishop Pleating Revisited

I’m always trying to come up with foolproof methods for the construction techniques used in Heirloom Sewing.  Working with very malleable pleated fabric and laces can be a challenge and not taught in conventional sewing lessons.  You want that piping to be perfectly parallel to the first cable row on an insert.  The bias band on a bishop has to be stitched the same distance from the first pleating row all the way around the neck.  The seams on a bishop should be invisible and the tension has to be adjusted on the outer rows. Back in the day, before the internet and all I had was a copy of Sew Beautiful or Creative Needle, I would find that some of the instructions just didn’t work for me.  So I came up with my own way of doing things.  Not conventional, but I got the job done (usually at 3 am on Easter or Christmas lol).

In the spirit of “going rogue”, I have an update on that new pleating method I mentioned in a previous post.  Sometimes we want to pleat cottons, or poly cotton broadcloth but still want French seams, which can be very tricky to pleat.  Batiste, being so lightweight, is usually not a problem.  But cottons and broadcloth are a little heavier and create a bulkier French seam.  If that seam is not fine enough, or your pleater is very fussy, then you could end up with a lot of bent and broken needles.  This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if you have a Read pleater because they are still being manufactured.  However, if you have one of the others that are no longer manufactured, such as Sally Stanley or Amanda Jane, then you have to track down needles that will work in your machine.  Not an easy task considering some of the generic needles are just not the same quality as the original needles made for your specific machine.

Of course you could do a mock French seam, but that involves a lot of hand sewing for four armscye seams.  So what I decided to try was to split the French seam process.  First, I stitched the wrong sides together, 1/8th inch seam and pressed.  I trimmed the seam and ran it through the pleater.

 

Stitch 1/4″ seam wrong sides together, then pleat.

 

Now, here is the new step.  After blocking into the desired size and tying off my threads, I finished the French seam process.  Carefully lift up the bishop one section at a time being careful not to redistribute the pleats.  Locate the first seam and push the pleats flat, but only enough to give you space to stitch a ¼ inch seam.  Make sure the pleating thread is not too tight and bunching up your seam allowance.  Everything must be nice and flat.  Once you have a nice flat seam, pin it in place and carefully roll back the bishop to the next seam.

 

Push the pleats out of the seam area and complete the French seam.

 

Once all the seams are pinned this way, stitch the second pass of your French seam.  You will find that your seams are anchored in place and your bishop stays blocked.  You will have a much easier time trying to keep the right tension on the outer rows and you won’t end up with a turtleneck.

 

This is what it looks like on the right side.

 

Now depending on how straight your seams were pleated you might end up with some pleats that are not perfect around the seams and this is where we can fudge our stitches a bit.  As you smock and approach that first seam, just stop and take a look.  Look at all the rows and choose the side where most of the pleats fall.  If they are not perfectly parallel to the seam then just adjust the amount of fabric you take up with your stitch.  But stay consistent.   Always stitch on the same side of the seam.  It will disappear into the valley and never be seen.  If your seams have stitched over half a pleat on the other side, skip it and stitch over to the next full pleat. That little half a pleat will never be seen.  This is the only tricky part of the process.  Here are some examples:

 

Here is an example of the pleater threads not being joined evenly at the seams. Just place your needle in between to create a smooth line of stitching.
Here is an example of pleats varying in size. One the last row, where the needle is pointing, you would take up a tiny bit of fabric with your stitch.

 

When you are finished smocking and blocking your piece, snip the pleating threads in each seam allowance and  remove, section by section.

Snip the pleating threads in the seam line and remove by section.

 

It takes a little more time but you have beautiful French seams and a perfectly shaped bishop that drapes beautifully around a child’s shoulders.

Now I have to get back to my homework.  Lesson 2 of my SAGA correspondence course arrived.  I’m terrified…it’s all about pleating stripes, gingham and plaid! Oh my!