Duffle Quilting Plan

In answer to a question over at Craftsy.This is how I quilt the duffles because I make a lot of them and I wanted to quilt them just enough to hold the fabrics together and have it be fast and easy. My duffles are not about the quilting. I have seen some amazing duffles by quilters who really put themselves into it and it shows in the stitching. I have seen 1" horizontal stripes of quilting - that looks awesome. I have seen diamonds, vertical stripes, and squares.  If you look at my favorites on Flickr, you can see a variety of duffles made from my pattern with different quilting.
 Also, as you can see from my apron sew along, "tomorrow," means "next time." Or maybe even "the time after." Obviously, Christmas got in the way this month and lots of orders for tablet cases and aprons and duffles. All of which I am very happy about and grateful for. I appreciate you and I hope you can be patient as I am not ready to commit to blogging everyday. In fact I am looking at unplugging more and trying out real life for a change in 2013.

Apron Sew Along Part 2 Peter Pan with Lace

Adding lace or piping to the Peter Pan collar is a great way to personalize your apron. The red Christmas fabric I found had a lace motif, so naturally I wanted to play on that. If you choose flat lace like I did, you will have to add ease to it. I ran it though the machine with a long stitch and pulled it a bit to slightly gather it. I stitched it to the right side of the upper collar with the lace edge on the inside - it will turn to the outside later and it is then you will need the ease to go around the curves. It is stitched on the 3/8" seam allowance. The lightweight interfacing is also stitched in here on the wrong side of the collar.

The next step is to stitch the under collar rights sides together with this piece. I pin it in place on top of this, then I turn everything over and stitch from the interfacing side, so I can stitch over the top of the previous stitching. I lifted up the upper collar so you can see the layers in the photo above.

When everything is stitched together, grade and clip the seam. Grading is simply cutting off half of the seam allowance from one of the fabrics so that the seam allowance is not bulky. Clipping is cutting triangle shaped pieces with the point coming close to the seam. This reduces the bulk in any curved seam.

Understitching will help the collar lay right. From the right side of the under collar, I stitch close to the seam, stitching the seam allowance to the undercollar. I press with my fingers as I go. Getting a presser foot into the curve of the collar is a trick. You need to use your smallest presser foot. I used my freemotion embroidery foot. Not ideal because I have to feed the fabric myself, but it is the smallest foot I have and I can get into the curve with it. Better than stitching by hand for me.

After the understitching, I press the collar. If you are making the Peter Pan collar without lace, you still do all of these steps, just without the lace. If you are doing the collar with piping, don't worry about gathering, the piping will stretch around the curves. I would empty the cord out of the ends of the piping, so the first 3/8" of piping and the last 3/8" of piping are empty of cording. If you use cording, grade the cording during the grading step.
Press the seam allowance under the neck edge of the collar and the under collar as shown here:

I hope this post is helpful to you. Let me know if you have questions!  Next up will be the reversible collar.

 

 

Apron Sew Along Part 1

Here are the 2 aprons I am making for the sew along:

They each take one yard of main fabric. A half yard of contrast collar fabric. One yard of lining fabric (both of these are lined with a nice white cotton I found on sale at Hancock.) and 13 inches of lightweight interfacing. The apron on top could be reversible, but I would never want to turn it around because I love Cori's fabric, so I just made it lined.

It's late, so I am going to post the easiest parts first. I like to do them first too.
Making the apron strings is easy. I like about a 1 inch wide apron string. I prefer to tie mine in the back, so I only make them about 26 inches long. You will want to make yours longer if you like to tie them in the front. The apron pattern is written for long strings - about 40 inches each. Play with your measuring tape to see what length you want. For the 1 inch width, I cut my strings 3 inches wide.
I press the long edges in about half an inch.  I also press one end in about half an inch. Then I press the long folded edges together. I stitch this closed about 1/8th of an inch from the folded edges.

After pressing the apron strings I like to press my 10" bit of bias tape for the key hole in the neckline. Cutting on the bias means cutting at a 45 degree angle from the grain of the fabric. If you had a square of fabric that was cut on the fabric grain, that would mean cutting diagonally from one corner to another. A quilters ruler will have 45 degrees marked to make it easy to cut bias strips.

Making the edges off set, will help you later when you apply the bias tape. You have the narrower part on top and the wider one underneath. That way when you stitch from the top, you are sure to catch the under part too.

I am off to bed now. Tuesday nights are pretty hectic around here, so I will plan on posting how the collars come together on Wednesday.
I hope you will join me for this sew along. You will love your new apron. The pattern for both of these is in one PDF, you can pick if up at Craftsy or on Etsy.

Christmas Apron for Sew Along

Christmas Apron for Sew Along
Originally uploaded by studiocherie

I will be showing details like how to add lace to the Peter Pan collar, and how to make the loop for the button and loop closure. I am working on another version today that has piping for a pop of color in the collar - will show that too. Tune in here next week!

Apron Sew Along Part 1, Printing

I brought 2 aprons with me to Seattle for Thanksgiving and had to leave them behind for my mom and my sister. I think the women on your gift list will love having an apron from you too.

The first of my apron patterns is out and available on Craftsy. It includes the Peter Pan Collar apron and the reversible apron. The format is new, so there are special instructions for printing it. This is what the printing dialog will look like for printing the pattern pieces: (page 1 is the printing instructions and pages 8-14 are the pattern pieces)

and below is the dialog for the pattern booklet.  It is a little complicated to print this way rather than just clicking the printer icon, but I think you will like the pattern format. It will make the pattern nice to use and to keep.  If you want it to look like a professionally printed pattern, you can print page 2 on glossy cover stock (page 3 is intentionally blank) and pages 4-7 on nicer copy paper. After stapling into a booklet format, trim around the top and right sides of the cover photo. Let me know if you have printing questions or comments.

 I am working on the other apron pattern this week - the one with the pointed collar, Edwardian collar and standing collar options. Next week, the week of December 3rd, I will get into the actual sew along for this first pattern with detailed photos. All you have to do to be part of this sew along is get the pattern on Craftsy and follow along here. You  have time to get your fabrics and pre shrink them now.  If there is enough interest, I will start a Flickr group so everyone can post photos of their aprons. After this sew along, I will do another sew along for the other pattern.

Apron with Peter Pan Collar

Apron with Peter Pan Collar
Originally uploaded by studiocherie

This pattern will have 2 versions - the Peter Pan collar as shown, and a reversible version with a different collar. My inspiration for doing these aprons with collars? Dan Bennett's fabric line, Wild Garden. When I saw the blue print, I wanted to make a shirt for myself. Then I thought, how much would I really wear it? As I was reaching for my old apron around dinner time, I thought - I need a new apron. Then, bam! the 2 ideas collided and produced 2 new sewing patterns. I have to go sew up the reversible version now. I will show the blue fabric on that one.

The pattern cover mock up photo shows the other pattern, that one has 3 collar options and one of them may be reversible, we will see. These are fun! You can see some of the other collar options on Flickr by clicking on the photo of the white and colorful apron.

My Favorite Duffle Fabrics

I get the question from time to time about what fabrics to use for sewing up the duffle pattern. As I was typing out my response to the question over at Craftsy, I realized it would be better as a blog post with links.
Thanks for asking! There are 3 types of fabric I use in this pattern. The main exterior fabric I like best is home decor weight cotton. If you like Waverly fabrics, there are a lot of good choices at JoAnns. The rose fabric I use is Waverly Norfolk Rose. Also any of the 45" wide home decor fabrics on bolts at JoAnns work well. That is where I found the black and white houndstooth - and I bought all I could find in Washington and North Idaho. The fabrics in my main photo on Craftsy are all Amy Butler Fabrics. At Westminster fabrics you can find modern designers like Joel Dewberry, Ty Pennington, and Amy Butler. They all have home decor weight cottons that work well in a variety of prints. The great thing about using those designer fabrics is they have coordinating/contrasting fabrics in quilting weight to use for the strap fabric. You can use quilting weight for the main fabric as well, but I do like the home decor weight better for it's durability. The bag shown above has Amy Butler home decor fabric from her Lark collection paired with Kaffe Fassett's paisley jungle in tangerine.
When I quilt the main fabric, I like to use a premium quality muslin for the back. That becomes the inside of the bag. I don't use fashion fabric for that because you don't really see it. You need a high quality fabric there though because it is getting used as you load and unload the bag. My favorite for this is Kona premium muslin. I have linked to the 44 inch wide, but it does come wider if you are making more than one duffle.  A lot of my links take you to fabric.com. One of the things I like about ordering from them is free shipping on orders over $35. If you ordered all 3 fabrics together, it comes to about $50, so your shipping is free.
I get my jute webbing at JoAnns. I like the quality they carry. I have ordered it elsewhere, but I did not like it as well.
JoAnns is also where I go for the batting I use. They don't have the one I use online, but it looks like this one. The one I use is Soft n Crafty batting in the 8 ounce. The one online is 10 ounce which would be too hard for you to work with. I get a lot of questions about the batting. Yes, you can use any batting you like. I suggest if you are using black fabric that you use black batting.  I use the 8 ounce (and after making hundreds of duffles I still like it the best) because it makes the bag stand up on its own while it is empty. I need that for photographing the duffles. If you would rather fold your duffle and put it in the linen closet when you are not using it, you can use something like warm and natural for the batting. The very first duffle I made was with warm and natural and I still use the bag. It is holding up perfectly well to tons of use. It is easier to sew with the thinner batting. If ease is a factor and you don't need photos, use the lighter batting. JoAnns has loads of coupon and sales. I never pay full price there. Usually, the prices I pay at JoAnns are lower than I could get wholesale.
I hope this helps you! Please feel free to ask questions.
Here is the post with the quilting plan I use:
Quilting the duffle fabric