My Second Sewing Project

(I had some issues with my camera, so it’s taken me awhile to get my pictures uploaded for my blog)

So after the smashing success of our efforts towards our pillows, we moved on to the second project for our Beginner’s Sewing Class: yoga pants.



Actually, it was yoga pants for the ladies in our class. Being the only guy in our class, our instructor didn’t think that yoga pants would be up my alley. So she gave me some options to choose from: a shirt,



pajama bottoms,



or a pair of dance pants.



Well, I wasn’t interested in making a shirt, and I couldn’t understand, if she thought that yoga pants wouldn’t be appropriate for me, how she figured dance pants would be any better. But I did need a new pair of pajama bottoms anyways so I decided on the second option.

The objective of this particular project was to get us working with a stretch material as it poses challenges that one wouldn’t encounter with regular fabrics; I decided on a dark blue.



Yes, boring, I know; but it’s my favourite colour.

I quickly got through the steps of cutting my pattern to the right size, then pinning it to my fabric and cutting around to get the two legs.



I then sewed the crotches together followed by the side seams to get the basic shape of the pants put together. It was pretty smooth sailing up until this point.



The next step was now to attach the elastic in order to make the waistband.



This was a little tricky as you have to ensure that when you’re sewing the elastic around the circumference of the pant waist that it’s done in an even fashion. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with pants all scrunched up in one part of the waist and smoothed out in others. And nobody wants that.

This meant that, as you sewed on the elastic, you had to stretch the elastic and fabric out to the same length so that the fabric was distributed evenly on to the elastic.

So the trick was to divide the pant waist into quarters, do the same with the elastic, and then line up and pin together the dividing lines. That way, you could stretch out the pant and elastic out in more manageable sections and be assured that you’re stretching the two materials evenly and uniformly around the circumference of the waist.





The elastic was then rolled over, pinned and stitched again to get a clean finish.



Ah, Strongbow, sweet nector of the gods.



So that parted ended up pretty well. But now I had another problem. As was typical with pants that I wear, and one of the motivations behind my taking sewing lessons to begin with, the rise, the distance from the crotch to the waistband, was too long. So if I wore the pants at my waist where they’re supposed to sit, then I ended up with this flap of fabric dangling in my crotch (I looked like a refugee from an MC Hammer music video).



Conversely, if I wore them so that they were at the right crotch height, the waistband ended up around my armpits like a senior citizen.



But, eureka! All was not lost! Since I now had acquired some basic skills from the class, it was simply a matter of me taking the waist apart, cutting off a few inches and then reattaching the waistband as described earlier.

The finished product.



Action shot!



And that concluded the Beginner Sewing Class at A Great Notion. Overall, it was a pretty good introductory class. But I still haven’t really learned how to hem properly; that’s its own class. So I think that’s the next class that I’d like to tackle. Unfortunately, it falls on a Saturday, which is when I have rugby. So I’ll have to wait until the season is over, since I don’t think my teammates would be too understanding if I told them “Sorry guys. I can’t play this weekend because I have a sewing class.” I can’t imagine that going over too well.

My First Sewing Project.

One of the things that often comes up when purchasing new items of clothing is the fit of said items. As a vertically challenged individual, relatively speaking, I pretty much wind up getting most, if not all, of my clothes altered in one way or another. If it’s a pair of pants, they’ll need to be shortened, likewise, the sleeves on my shirts or the length of the body. But after a while, it gets a little tiresome and also can add up to be a not insignificant sum of money.

So one day I decided to take a sewing course, which I finished last month. I know, not really the manliest or coolest hobby to take up. But, heck, my mom’s friends already think I’m gay anyway (and I believe that she’s a little worried as well); so there probably wasn’t anything more that I could really do to improve or diminish my reputation in their eyes.


The first thing I needed, of course, was a sewing machine. As luck would have it, my mom had one that’d been gathering dust in the garage for quite some time. A Baycrest special, this machine is unbelievably heavy, it has to weigh at least 60 lbs. It’s also very likely to be older than me as my mom informed me that she had bought it when I was just a wee baby, and it was used at that. But, what’s great is that they built things to last in those days, so it only needed a little bit of servicing and now works perfectly well.

I signed up for the beginner sewing class at A Great Notion, a sewing supply store in Langley that also conducts sewing classes on premises. Our first project? A pillow!


I picked my fabric a few days before the class as per requirements, a nifty little stripe pattern that I thought would be fun. And it was on sale. That, in and of itself, is no big deal.


What was crazy was that Marie, who was in the same class, on a completely separate day, out of hundreds of fabrics to choose from, bought the exact same fabric. Spooky.

Anyways, the goal of the project was to basically to get us using a sewing machine as well as learning to sew three basic components.


One was the dart, which is basically a fold that’s sewn into the fabric. Common in women’s tops, it’s used to give shape to an item of clothing, giving you that form fitted looked. Coincidentally, I’ve got a couple of dress shirts from Mexx that have darts in them. Gotta show off the manly figure.


The second item was a flat-felt seam, which is a common seam used in pants. If you look at the outside of your pair of jeans, you’ll see it running along the length.


Last, was learning to sew a zipper. This was a part of the project that I had some struggles with. It was after working with this aspect that I suddenly rediscovered the merits of using buttons.


The two sides of the pillow fabric were then sewn together...


and then stuffed with the cushion and...


Voila! The finished product.


I liked how my flat-felt seam turned out; but I have to admit that Marie did a much better job with her zipper.

Next up, pajama bottoms.