My Sewing Blog

I worked on this today. It's the first garment I've sewn in ages! I've been working with tiny things lately so I wasn't used to the bulk of a full sized item of clothing. I'm not finished yet but I'm really not happy with it. Firstly, I've messed up with the stripes. They don't match up. I remember cutting it out and making sure that the stripes on the front and back would match but I don't remember what I did with the sleeves. I thought maybe it was something to do with the raglan sleeves. I'm not a fan of raglan sleeves normally. One seam seems to match up pretty well but the others are completely off. It's disappointing and I don't have any more of this fabric left to try and recut them. I had a bit of trouble getting the pieces to match but I think it might have been my cutting since I'm using a knit fabric. I had huge trouble with the under arm seams. They don't match at all. I could have matched them if started pinnin

I thought I'd make a new post for this since the last post had got quite long. There will be more crappy phone pics here, sorry. I've spent most of the day working on some Opulent Monsters AIOs. They are HARD. I knew from reading the instructions that attaching the inner sections together was going to be difficult and I wasn't looking forward to giving it a go. The first one I basted in was tricky but I thought it looked okay, no tucks or folds or anything. Once it's basted you're supposed to overlock it. That ruined it. It's really hard to see what's going on with my overlocker so it ended up with loads of tucks and looked terrible. I ended up unpicking all the overlocking and starting again. This time I decided that after basting it, I'd stitch a line of permanent stitching at 1/4 of an inch and then overlock. It looked okay after I did the line of stitching but I chickened out with the overlocking. I did a zigzag over it instead, because who is going

Earlier this week I said that if I'd had no sales by Sunday I'd call it quits. It's Sunday night and I haven't sold anything. Most of the 12 nappies I uploaded don't even have a single view, so it seems that this isn't working. I have a pretty big problem though. After floundering around at the start trying to make things with very little money, I decided to see if I could get a credit card. Even though I don't have a proper job or income, one of the banks gave me a credit card. So I bought a bunch of PUL, flannel for some new cloth pads and other bits and bobs. All the time I was ordering this I was calculating how much profit I could make etc and everything seemed like it would work out fine. But if no one is going to buy anything I've made, how am I going to pay the money back to my credit card? At this point, even though I've made loads of items, I don't think I've made enough of them to cover the credit card bill, even if people were buy

I think last time I updated I'd completed 33 items. Over the last couple of days I've finished 29 more cloth pads, which takes the total to 62 items made this month! I did say I was going to make some fitted nappies, AIOs and other stuff but I haven't got round to that yet. Most of the stuff is cut out for them so I might make a start on them. I think I might sew up the pocket nappies I embroidered recently though. I really need to stop making pocket nappies because I've hardly sold any. They're obviously not very popular items. The last pocket nappies I put in my shop (the robots and dog ones) have hardly had any views, and almost none of the new ones I uploaded have had any views yet. Views and visits are picking up a bit though, but still no sales yet. I need to pay my credit card bill for this month... Luckily I had a bit of cash set aside for that. I'll add some new photos here tomorrow once the new cloth pads are washed and dried. Maybe I'll have fin

A bit of a late update... Total for week three was a measly 11 cloth pads. It feels like it should be more. There are about 30 pads in a half finished state but I actually only completed 11. So I'm on 33 out of 50 items now. I spent the last few days taking photos and uploading them. My cloth pad photos look horrible for some reason. I think I want to retake them. My shop now has 32 items in it, which is the most it's ever had. I feel very disillusioned though. I've been working constantly for around three weeks and all I have to show for it is 33 items. There's about £400 worth of stock in my shop now. Minus roughly 10% for all the fees, so that's about £360. That won't even cover what I put on my credit card to buy all the materials I've bought recently. Once I complete another batch of items then maybe I'll start to make a profit, but it's not very motivating. It doesn't feel worth it. Just to make it even less motivating, I woke up th

It's been really slow going over the last few days. Probably because I cut out far too many items. I said I'd make 7 of everything and ended up making 12 nappies. This time I have around 40 cloth pads. Ever so slightly more than 7! Sewing on the line rather than following a seam allowance seems to be what slowed things down. I think it's worth doing though. My hands are killing me from snipping notches and trimming pretty thick seam allowances. This is what I've achieved over the last couple of days. Today I top stitched around the wing sections, which didn't take all that long compared to how long it took me to actually sew the wing parts together. Now I just need to cut the Zorb and stuff it inside the toppers, top stitch and then stitch the topper to the wing part. I'll need to order more Zorb because I definitely don't have enough for 40+ pads. I am taking a break for the rest of the evening although I feel strange about it. I've been worki

This is what I've made so far. 12 pocket nappies (I still need to cut the threads though) and three patchwork covers.  Some cloth pads with jersey and Windpro backing (except the one with purple wings. It's a flannel pantyliner). I don't really like the way they turned out. These are jersey too. There's brown with llamas and some left over monster print that I cut some nappies from. They're both paired with black jersey. Jersey pads are a bit harder to sew than the flannel ones. I still have to cut the threads on these too. These are two embroidered nappy cuts. I wasn't planning on making any more nappies but then I saw these designs and I had to make them. These are made from some flannel scraps I had left over from another project. They just need stitched onto some backers now.  These are some new flannel prints.  Even more flannel prints. The monsters are going to be paired with grey flannel I think. Even more flannel pads. I bou

Things seemed a bit more productive this week. Total: 12 pocket nappies 8 cloth pads So 20 items this week plus 2 covers from last week, so that's 22 items out of 50. Next week I should hopefully have finished a bunch more cloth pads. Yesterday was a bit of a disaster though. There was a power cut, well, not a proper one, just some problem with our house where the power to the sockets upstairs went out. For some reason that took out the power to my workshop outside. The power went out while I was in the middle of stitching out an embroidery design too. I was also prewashing some fabric and tumble drying another batch. I managed to get power back to my workshop in the evening but my embroidery design was screwed up. The power is still out upstairs today. An electrician is coming tomorrow. I managed to finish my washing by running an extension cord from a downstairs socket. I even ironed it! Normally I'm allergic to ironing. It's some new flannel that I'm looki

Total items made this week is: 2 covers And that's it. It doesn't sound like much. I did spend a whole day putting snaps on. My arm was killing me... I spent another whole day cutting out all the inners, pocket pieces and backings for the embroideries. I then spent a day hemming the pockets and the wicking fabric. It was going quite well until I came to hemming the black wicking fabric. The black looks exactly the same as the white and other colours, and the black thread is made by the same company that makes the white thread so I have no idea why I couldn't hem them. The tension was all messed up and it either ended up tangled or too tight. It took me hours to figure it out. In the end I changed to the smallest needle I had (out of desperation really!) and that somehow magically worked. Next week should be much more productive since everything is cut out ready to sew. I've sewn together all the pocket nappies I had cut out (there's 12 altogether rath