Mending and Repairs, Family, Work and Sewing (why can't I use pins and thread to fix them?)

 

This year is throwing the entire trash can of trouble at me. I am not fond of sharing my personal life on this sewing blog, but it's rocky. Work has sucked a lot of my attention, it's not going well, and I have counted on work to distract me from my personal life. There is a high likelihood I will lose my job, or that my job will disappear. 

No, sewing is not a job. Not one that I can make enough money at.

(redacted gripe about how the standard response to something I've made is: you could sell that. No. Stop it. Not everything can or should be monetized)

Meanwhile, I made mittens. And then remade them because they were not warm enough. More often than not, when I sew a thing to fill a need, the act of creation eliminates the need. I'm sick of icy streets and sidewalks; make new mittens.

Voila! Winter, begone!

I know I made a mitten pattern or two, but I know I did not like the results so started over from available materials and first principles.  I have a fleece glove that fits just perfectly.

So I traced it off.

I have a lot of  fleece chunks and scrap from a project I did for SewBaby back last century (at least I haven't had to move so haven't had to ditch the useful stash).

I ended up handsewing them while I watched Svengoolie. It's a quick sew, it's repetitive in a soothing way, I could keep an even and very small seam allowance.

A little tailoring to fit

I wore them outside and rapidly realized they would need some lining to keep the wind out. 

Found some Spoonflower lycra scrap and put it on the interior non-thumb side.

Trusty hand model led to silly video at the start of this post.

In the same vein, I repaired the welts on my Orange "I am my own traffic cone" parka. 
I did not do as tidy or invisible a job, because I apparently alternate between doing a good job and an adequate one.

I am working on a pair of jeans, in moleskin, that I realized will need lining. This realization came pretty far into the process, so we're going to end up with a 'lining your jeans' focused post. Meanwhile, I am going to spend today working on the duties spreadsheet my boss has requested for our meeting tomorrow. 

Don't get comfortable.

PS: a new to me fix for a broken jacket zipper bottom tab on this video link (will start at the fix I am referencing). Low temp hot glue stick and a plastic straw!

https://youtu.be/xox768Pcwtg?si=MndJm4pxB4qPEBH3&t=45

Pocket Zippers Need Tabs. They Just Do

 I've done this before, but let's see the new ones I made and didn't use!

This is one of the interior pocket zippers. They're the plastic toothed ones.

Interior pockets need tabs. For grabbing, for not snagging on your sweater, to keep the assembly from disassembling.  I like to put the novelty ribbons to work on this, but this ribbon is getting some use in other parts of the coat so let's use it like a grace note and repeat it just enough.

I do most of this by hand, because zippers are squirrely and like to scramble away from the presser foot.

There was a zipper pull emergency once, and someone had to give up their pull.

I have replacement ones now, I can make a quick one with Sugru (or a two part epoxy, or a big glob of hot glue) wrapped around a paperclip) when I finally use this one.

Gets a little machine sewing. It makes tinier stitches than I can.

Mark it to match the first one for length.

I am pointing to where I did not sew through the teeth. That does not work.

I cut out the teeth and glued the stub

and this shows you how the tape goes past the teeth on the wrapping tape

GLUE

Hello Twins (fraternal not identical)

Hand basting into the pocket opening

Ready for my closeup

Okay, there is puckering (at the top)

All this and - I switched the exterior fabric up and did't use them!

Winter Coat wrap up: Can be seen from space

 Finishing the coat took a long time. I just didn't have any extended period of time to sit with it and get it all done, so sewing in five minute chunks would have to do

the quilting was too big for the exterior, so I trimmed it down

I open up the pins and hang them on the edge. As this went on, I hung them with the heavier bits on the inside of the bowl.

Yes, it's huge, even without hood or cuffs or hem. It's all held together with safety pins

This is the time when the coat is just dragging itself off the table and trying to break free.

I need to set up on the big work table when I do this stuff, and I just.... don't. 

I like the checkered flag tape. 

My zipper is weird: at the bottom, the insert pin is on the right (my left) and the retaining box is on the left (my right). I am used to inserting the pin with my right hand, and this is backwards and I can see a day where I rip this zipper out because of it. My brain is not happy with this.

https://www.ykkfastening.com/products/zipper/s_zipper.html  What a zipper is supposed to be

I made cuffs for the previous version remodel out of socks and it worked really well. I'm only using the part above the heel, folded in on itself, and not using the cuff.

This part, where I sew the sock ribbing to the end of the sleeve, took a ridiculous number of tries to get it right. And I unpicked it all every time I redid it. Picking black thread out of a black sock is really hard on the eyes, but really good for the profanity.

Added the end piece of fabric (also a lot of undoing and redoing)

Flipped up

It's over stretched but it keeps out the wind well enough

It sinks way in there

I had to pull it over a 2 by 6 piece of wood to get the basting properly done

I also had to remove the hood and redo it so that the collar is wider - it's still more snug than I would like, and I need to put something on the inside of the top of the placket to keep it from poking me in the neck.

Oh, you can see me coming alright

Homemade bias trim from rayon lining to cover neck seam

Cuffs need a something: this will wear out the fastest but is easily replaced

It wants to be free; the rest of the coat is crawling away

I wore it out today; the prequilted lining is really stiff and this is noisy and I am mammoth in it. 

The zips in the outside pockets are annoying, so I will unpick the single welt and either add a wider flap or just remove the zippers.

Clearly I am not staying on top of my blogging, but I am going to continue. I do post on instagram when they aren't blocking me from posting (there's a couple other faux Ernie accounts and I could put a stop to it if I paid for my account and got a blue star).

Also, fyi: this coat is not THAT fluorescent in person. I did get some OH MY comments from strangers today, but there are so many construction workers in Seattle I kinda fit in.

I will add a photo of me standing on my front steps (the fluorescent green ones) to complete my  story.

A few zipper suggestions

I feel like such a crank when I watch Seamwork tutorials, I honestly do pass some of them up because I just feel like that guy yelling at kids to get off the lawn. And I do have the same arguement most of the time: use fabric with a contrast between wrong side and right side, so we can easily see the inside/outside tasks and see how things line up.

but this!

NO

https://youtu.be/oGPfxaYYeR0

Of course, now you have to watch this video to follow along here.
It's not my content and it does not hurt to add to their views. They are trying to do a lot and I wish them all the best. I get trying to do too much.

Once again, I'd like to say that I have made all these mistakes, and I don't want you to.

I'm good with the first five minutes of this video, except putting a coil zipper in a pair of jeans is a temporary move, as the pull will pull the coil apart if you put the least amount of stress on it when you take your pants off or pull them on. Coils are good, but they don't take repeated lateral stress well, especially at the same stress point. This is going to happen when you put on and take off your pants. You will unconsciously unzip them to the same point, which is not at the bottom of the zipper.

I replace a lot of jeans zippers.

Trust me on this.

Metal toothed zips will last longer, but will eventually fail for the same reason.
So unzip your pants the entire way every time. You will thank you.

Moving along.

Sewing the zipper/fly guard is where the wavy thing happens - that seam is off grain, or got mishandled when it was pinned in.  I'd stop there and unpick and redo it. This wavy fabric isn't going away until you do that.

Where I started pointing at the screen and sputtering was when we unzip the zipper partway through the application.

I don't care if you measure the teeth from the top of the fabric, you should not unzip the zipper when you sew it down permanently. It's going to be uneven.

At the base of the zipper, the side pulled out is curved, and the tape is distorting already farther up the zip. This zipper tape isn't heavy enough to not twist and you're sewing that twist into the tape.

Why is the other zipper end pinned up?  We are not told to do this, or have it explained to us. There might be a really good reason, but I don't know what it might be.

And the finale

The zipper is twisting in the left seam.

This is with the zipper zipped all the way up.

The puckering at the bottom in the blue circle will probably iron out. The wavy part with the red line will not. That extra fabric isn't going away.

You can really save a lot of time by basting in a zipper by hand. It seems wrongheaded, but the zipper will lie flat, it won't bubble and buckle (see my raincoat makes if you want to see some wack zipper installations) and even if it's a 32 inch raincoat zipper, the less you handle that zipper, the better it's going to look.

Example one:

First pass I put pins in the zipper tape and it's all wiggly and awful. I took them out, pressed the zipper and let it rest under a block overnight.

Next day I used Wonder clips and hand basting. 

It's not perfect, but it's a whole lot better

Second coat was nothing but hand basting and laundry clips. I used a water resistant plastic coil zipper, as that was what I replaced, but in a jacket like this, the failure point is going to be where you join the zipper in the base unit as you prepare to zip it up: the tape is going to fail at the edge of that plastic point on the bottom. The zipper may fail along the path if it catches something in it at the same point over time, but generally this is a good use for this zipper type.

Zippers are not as good as they used to be. It is what is is. 

I'm pretty pleased. I might get better at this yet. There was some pucker on the underside facing at one point; it got over handled in removing the original zipper.

At no point did I separate the zippers to sew them. Yes, it's a pain, but unpicking a 32 inch zipper is a bigger pain.

Feel free to argue in the comments.