UNDERWHELMED.
With no energy or enthusiasm for making anything with it, I decided that I would work on some skill building. Specifically, I would introduce myself to wavy cutting and sewing, constructing half rectangle triangles (HRT's) and no ruler (free motion!) cutting.
I enjoyed working on the wavy cutting and piecing and free motion cutting (e.g. no ruler!). It is important that your fabrics are either both facing up or down. I had initially thought that glue basting the seams would be a great way to join these seams prior to sewing. But as it turns out, I think that R. Appell demonstrated the best method. You can watch his video here.
His technique has two main features. Feature 1 is that you give yourself a bit of straight runway to start your stitching and then introduce curves. Feature 2 is treat the top a bottom fabric as two dynamic pieces where you are actively manipulating both pieces of fabric (hence "dynamic").
This method provides a way to get going (straightish) and then confidently joining the curves. As you are joining the concave and convex areas (which will sometimes be the top, and sometimes the bottom), you do so manipulating the top and bottom fabrics (he used the 'braiding' metaphor, which is quite apt). In researching further, I found additional teachers demonstrating same. I also saw lots of pinning (which led me to think that glue basting might be a fine idea.) Not that a full on curve, such as a half circle, you would want the fully concave piece on the bottom. That way you can gently pull the curve open and flat while stitching the convex piece to it. It has the further advantage of allowing you to ensure that the excess fabric on the concave piece does not get angled and puckered. Oh, old memories of sleeves to bodice from my garment construction days long ago.
After experimenting between glueing and not, I found the "not" to be the easiest. I did use my Appliquick tool to help guide the bottom fabric under the foot. I don't applique much but I find this tool (particularly the one with the forked end) to be invaluable. It stays my sewing machine, and having it there ensures I don't do any unseemly poking of fabric under a moving needle. My index finger thanks.
My wavy seams looked really nice, and I was quite happy with my end result. I want to do more skill building with more dramatic cuves...but for now, that was a good intro and whetted my appetite to want to do more.
I will also note, that I had the bright (idiot) idea that maybe I just sew a wavy line and then cut to it. Nope. That's all I'll say about that! Though having such ideas and trying them out helps build construction knowledge. And working with wavy cuts is very much like setting in shoulder seams (something I've not done in a couple of decades!
My ugly fabric became the substrate for that experimentation. I ended up with a very nice little fabric coaster. I call that a win.
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| Ugly Fabric Cool Coaster |
My post got so long, I split it up. HRT's are in Part 2.
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