Batch Sewing to save Time.

 I am really enjoying my Tilly and the Buttons books. In Make It Simple, Tilly Walnes mentions speed sewing and batch sewing. Considering that I have a full-time job and I only really have the weekends to do my sewing and to potter about in the garden.

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I have three similar projects on the go. Two 'Tabitha' t-shirts from the Make It Simple book and a dress for my daughter that will be constructed in the same way. 

As long as you pay attention to the steps, and don't sew in the wrong order and then need to unpick something - yes ALL three times. It really is a time saver.

 

I only have a few thread colours for my overlocker, as four large cones are quite expensive and I didn't expect to sew lots of red fabric. So I am using what I have. As long as it's on the inside and neat, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. 

By the way, each of these garments only uses one metre of fabric of 60 inch wide fabric. I even made the t-shirt sleeves a bit longer, so I can choose the best length later. 

Notice that I fed blue ribbon and elastic into the overlocker when I sewed the shoulder seams, without trimming the ribbon. This is to stop the shoulders stretching out of shape.

 

By the way - I wouldn't recommend the elastic - it grips on the foot of the overlocker and is not easy. Ribbon is much better as it is not overly bulky and slips nicely under the foot.

In Tilly's book, she shows the sleeves attached to the bodice before the side seams are sewn.

I have a very old McCall's book on sewing and it has a really good section on garment construction and the order of construction. After looking through it, I think that for me, the best order of construction is one which will allow me to finish the garment neatly and also the possibility of making adjustments to the fit. If the whole bodice and skirt on a dress are sewn and then they are joined, it makes taking the dress in a bit more complicated than if the side seams were sewn after the waist. Really worth considering if you may want to alter the garment if you were to lose some weight, for example. 

The Make it Simple book is really easy to follow and there are photos showing what each stage should look like. I really want to make more of her (Tilly Walnes) patterns. 

By the way, I love my new Fiskars Scissors. And my Janome Overlocker.

Here I have pinned all the sleeves to the bodices, starting at the top of the shoulder, matching the pattern notches, taking care that the underarm seam is lined up with the bodice seam - see the pin at the top of the picture. This helps to match the underarm seams at the next stage.

For the dress, I paused from the batch sewing and added the skirt front to the front bodice and the skirt back to the back bodice. This allows the last seam down the underarm and side seam to be sewn in one go. Prepping the dress in this way allows the whole batch to move along faster.

AS you can see in this step, all three are ready to have the underarm and side seams sewn. I have used all white thread on my overlocker, but I think I will definitely invest in red thread and light blue thread - as they are colours I like to wear and I would like to sew more colours.

I don't have a coverstitch machine, so I used twin needles on my normal sewing machine to sew the hems.

Here are the results!

Jessica loves her dress and insisted on wearing it straight away.

I bought this lovely fabric on Ebay and you can buy it here.

This turned out far prettier than I expected and, being scuba, will give me a great deal of wear.

This shirt turned out much better, too. I am now wishing I had used red overlocker thread, but I don't think it will show on the outside. I was careful to use my twin needle for the neckline top stitching and the hems. Here you can see the stitching on the dress before I pressed the seams. Once pressed, the stitch right next to the fold almost disappears. You can see the zigzag effect of the bobbin thread used with the twin needle.

Just a word of warning, I suggest you hand wind the wheel when you topstitch the neck seam. I managed to snap a needle and send bits flying. Thankfully I wasn't sewing too quickly.

I bought this lovely fabric at A & M Textiles in High Wycombe. I have also seen it at John Lewis in their large London branch near Oxford Street.

If you don't live in London or High Wycombe, you can get this fabric from Minerva Crafts.

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