TUTORIAL - Sewing Ottobre 2009-04 #14 "Pistachio Chocolate" - Reversible Top

TUTORIAL - Sewing Ottobre 2009-04 #14
"Pistachio Chocolate" - Reversible Top

As promised heres the first of a series of sewing tutorials on how I went about sewing up the sometimes challenging Ottobre patterns.  Although generally Otto's are very easy and straightforward some patterns can be challenging even for seasoned seamstresses like myself!

This reversible raglan top appeared to be easy, and if you made it without making it reversible it would be!  I found there was a knack to getting the two tops together easily without twisting the sleeves and making it impossible to turn inside out and get right.

So I took photos as I went along so I could recreate the top in the future, and of course provide a tutorial on how I went about sewing it.

I had two lovely one-way stretch cottons that I had pre-washed and shrunk.  I had chosen to make a size 116cm tall for my great niece who at that time was only 4 1/2 years old but very tall! I wanted to make her something warmish for Autum/Winter and as I had found these coordinating cotton knits I thought it would make a lovely reversible sweatshirt for her.

Choosing the Fabrics and Cutting Out

So I needed to make sure the fabric was a good weight and wouldn't be too stretchy and I decided on one-way stretch cotton interlock that I pre-washed and put through the dryer on low so that it would also be pre-shrunk.  I do this for ease of use, the young Mum (my niece) who was going to be giving these to her daughter would need to be able to wash and dry them with minimum fuss so I made sure they could at least go through a dryer!
I didn't take any photos of the construction or cutting out as they were all pretty basic and if you follow the instructions for making up the basic two tops separately you should do fine. Its when you get to combining the two tops together that the instructions can be a bit unclear and confusing!

Joining the tops together - the challenging bit

The best way to do everything is to add the pocket to the side you wish, in my case I did it on the patterned side and omitted putting it on the plain side as well.  I then stitched the raglan armhole seams on both tops. Then you sew up the side seams and sleeve side seams as well. I chose to have the same fabric hood as the top which is different from what the pattern suggests, they instead chose to have the solid hood the same side as the striped top.  But I wanted it to be a solid fabric colour one side and the pattern the other side.  So after making both raglan tops up I then proceeded to stitch both hoods together at the centre seam and then placed them inside each other wrong side to wrong side and overlocked the outer edge together and bound with ribbing as suggested by the instructions.

Once the hoods were stitched together its time to put them
into one of the tops I chose to do the hood into the solid coloured top first.  I put the hood into the top right sides together (solid top right side to solid hood right side - see photo) and pinned then using a small zig-zag stitch on my standard sewing machine I sewed them together.

Then turn top inside out with patterned hood facing you

Place hood and top piece inside the patterned top body right sides together and pin.  Stitch these together around the neckline.  (I chose to overlock afterwards)

This photo shows the two tops overlocked together at the neck/hood neckline, with the patterned top inside the solid top.  You now have your two tops joined together at the neck edge.

You now need to separate your two tops so they are no longer 'inside' each other.  As you can see in this photo they are both pulled out to show their right sides and obviously attached at the neckline.

Now you have the fiddly job of pinning and stitching the cuff/sleeve edges together.  You do this by ensuring the sleeves are end to end on each other and not twisted. You can sort of see by my picture how they need to be attached.  I wish I had a good trick for making sure they are not twisted but I managed to do it wrong at least once and I have made these tops 3 times now!  If you eyeball as you go making sure the seamlines match up and that each sleeve seems to be straight with no twists in them you should be Ok.

This picture gives you a better view of how the sleeves need to be attached together.  I overlocked mine which was a bit fiddly and unfortunately I never took a photo of how I stitched them together on the machine.  The best way is to treat it as a 'flat' seam not a circular one.  Just keep flattening out the two fabrics right side to right side as you pull it through the overlocker (or sewing machine on small zig-zag) until you have a completed sewn together edge.

You need to do both sleeves like this before turning the sleeves right side out by threading one sleeve back over the other.

You should then have one top (e.g. the solid one) inside the other wrong sides together and the hemline should still need finishing like in this picture.

I pinned and overlocked the two edges together to make it easier and then just tucked it over to the solid side and stitched it down with a small zig-zag stitch to finish the hemline.  But its up to you how you finish it off.








And that is it! I hope those pictures and my somewhat unclear instructions are helpful in completing this Ottobre Pattern.  It really does make a lovely fitting top.

Stay tuned for more tutorials coming up in the future!

Cheers, Vivien

Tutorial Posts Planned!

Hi All!

I have posted lots of Special Needs Communication posts of late but I am going to start returning to my other love Sewing and Crafting! Therefore I am intending to post some tutorial posts (when I find time to get to them).  They will probably be past Ottobre magazine Kids clothing I have made and how I did them.  Anyone who uses these magazines knows they don't have much instructions, and certainly rarely have photos of HOW to do them so it can often be a bit tricky to work out exactly WHAT is meant by the sentence you have read and re-read a few times! So I will leave you with this taster and hopefully you'll have something to read and view shortly!

Vivien

TUTORIAL - Making a Tiered Version of Ottobre 3/2012-#28 - Hawaii Flowers dress

Hi All, I had some great fabric I brought called 'Savannah' a lovely cotton with printed bands that just screamed to be made into striped tiers on a girls dress.  Feeling inspired I browsed through all my Ottobre magazines looking for THE pattern.  I even trolled Google and Pinterest.  I eventually felt inspired into using a shirred bodice and tiered skirt pieces.  So I chose to modify the Hawaii Flowers Dress from 3/2012.  As you can see in my photos I had two different colourways for the Savannah fabric, a dusky pink and a lovely sage green.  I decided to use each fabric in the dress. This was made in 128cm size for a 7 year old girl. So heres how I went about doing it:

First I created the pattern from the pattern sheet.
I then made a line on each pattern piece about at the waistband level.  It was kind of arbitrary and I thought - about here.

I didn't show too much of this step - but here is the finished bodice piece. I sewed the left side seam

with the overlocker, did a narrow edge on the top of the bodice and overlocked the bottom of the bodice. I then shirred the bodice with my standard sewing machine. I used the method mentioned in the Ottobre magazine, where you fill a bobbin by hand with shirring elastic and stitch evenly spaced rows along the width of the bodice piece turning at each edge and stitching back along the width an even spacing from the previous row.
(Heres a link to Made by Rae's tutorial on how to do shirring in case you want to see a more visual method than the one in the Otto Magazine - http://www.made-by-rae.com/2013/08/tutorial-shirring-with-elastic-thread/)

I then placed a piece of the green fabric under the bodice piece pattern and cut it to the width of the

bottom of the bodice pieces (the second part under the line I drew).  I cut out one of the front on the fold and one of the back on the fold.  I sewed up the side seams & overlocked both long edges. 

I then created another tier from the pink fabric this time just putting the first tier on top of the pink fabric and choosing to cut it about 5cm wider than the previous strip.  Again I stitched it into a circle and overlocked both long edges.

Both strips were basted with long running stitches along one edge.  I chose the smaller stripe on the fabric to be the bottom of each tier.  I first pinned and sewed the green top tier to the bodice but in retrospect I think its better if you create the skirt tiers first and then at the end gather the skirt top and sew it onto the dress bodice. 

I continued to create alternate tiers each time adding about 5cm to the length of the upper tier on each successive strip.  I also continued to sew up each side seam and overlock both upper and lower long edges.  Then basted with long running stitches, gathered each tier and pinned and sewed to each upper tier.  I alternated colours from green or pink as shown in the photos. 

On the last tier I sewed a small hem which I did after completing the final tier.  It turned out to be a bit shorter than anticipated so I ended up unpicking that hem and adding another pink tier to finish the length.  

The bodice was finished off as per the pattern by making two strips of fabric for the shoulder straps.  I chose to use the stripe of the fabric again as the strip in the centre of the strap.  Both long edges were overlocked then a narrow edge sewn with a standard machine.  The pattern calls for 3 evenly spaced shirred lines to be sewn onto each shoulder strap.  Once done you then stitch the straps to the first shirred line of the bodice top at the marks shown on the pattern.  

That was it!  

It was a simple mod of the pattern to create what ended up being a rather beautiful dress if I do say so myself!