Yuki Clothing

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Monthly Archives: February 2014


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Bedspread – a work in progress

My latest project is actually a recycling project where I’ve used 25 pair of old jeans and cut them into squares. Since I didn’t have this many old jeans myself, a bunch of friends came to my rescue and donated trousers that were either ragged or too small (a huge thanks guys!). When I first got this brilliant idea, I never stopped to think about just how many squares I needed to cut and sew together. I only knew that I wanted them to be around 10x10cm. Later on, when I had cut out around 50 squares and wanted to know how many I actually needed, I finally did the maths… I wanted a 2,5×2,5m bedspread which resulted in a staggering 625 squares! But since I don’t like giving up, I just kept on cutting and finally ended up with this.

Yay, now it looks like mini fabric skyscrapers! :D

Yay, now it looks like mini fabric skyscrapers! :D

When it was time to actually start sewing I decided to sort all the different jeans into one stack each. That way it would be easier to distribute them evenly across the bedspread. That tactic worked well and an hour later, I had 25 stacks on my table with each stack containing 25 squares.

All 25 pair of jeans, neatly sorted.

All 25 pair of jeans, neatly sorted.

My first approach to sewing everything together was to sew one row at a time and then sew the rows together. The only problem with that idea was that I had a hard time lining up the seams perfectly. This prompted me to try a new approach that focused more on the fact that it’s squares I’m stitching together. Two squares on the first row are sewn together and then two on the second row. The those four squares are then sewn together. Hopefully the picture explains it a bit better. I have absolutely no idea if that’s how quilters does it or if there’s a better way but it’s working out alright for me.

I had hoped that I would’ve been able to show you a finished project by now, but that’s not the case. Never in my life would I have guessed that making this bedspread would take this much time. Clearly I’ve underestimated my opponent. Not only have my patience and sanity taken a toll during this tiresome project, but two  needles have lost their lives in tragic accidents.

A victim of the bedspread!

A victim of the bedspread!

And this is all I’ve got to show you today. Not many squares left to put together, which is good because I’m running out of thread! :O


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The trick to watching the Great British Sewing Bee outside the UK

<Update> Since MediaHint now wants to charge people for their service, I recommend that you use Hola instead. It might even be better than MediaHint since you can pretend that you currently reside in pretty much any country. For instance, we used it a lot in Japan to watch some Swedish tv.

Hola is available for Chrome, Firefox and Explorer and you’ll find it here:

http://hola.org/

Do you want to watch the latest season of the Great British Sewing Bee, but the BBC iPlayer won’t let you? By using MediaHint, you can bypass this silly Geo-restriction. All you need to do is install it and then you never need to think about it again. It doesn’t work for all sites with geo-restrictions, but so far I’ve found that it works great with BBC and Netflix.
The MediaHint addon is available for the following browsers:
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-hint/

Chrome: https://mediahint.com/install_chrome.html

When you’re done with the installation, all you need to do is start watching! BBC iPlayer – The Great British Sewing Bee (Season 2)

Good luck and have fun!


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Finally, my bobbin winder is back in business!

After months of waiting, I finally got my hands on the missing rubber ring that’s needed for my bobbin winder to work. Gone are the months of having to, annoyingly slow, wind the bobbins on my old Janome machine. It took me 6 months of fiddling, but my wonderful Singer 20U-53 is now complete! I know this is a pure “sewing machine porn” post but I just can’t help myself. Don’t you just love it when you get more presser feet/needles/sewing machines/other gadgets to further fuel that hobby of yours? :)

For my Swedish readers, I can highly recommend Indukta. With very reasonable prices and great service, these are your go-to-guys when you need more needles or your sewing machine is acting up. So far they’ve managed to answer all my questions and get me all the spare parts I’ve needed.

And of course, here’s a link to their home page: http://www.indukta.se/

Will it fit?
Oh yes it did! Ah yeah!
So far, so good…
This is what I call great success!


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Tamoto Dress – finished!

I finally got around to finishing the Tamoto dress and I’m totally in love with it! It’s so comfy I don’t ever want to take it off. The best thing about it could be the elastic waistband. You get to look gorgeous and at the same time don’t have to worry about eating too much of that delightful dinner, all because the waistline just expands. How awesome is that?

The back side of the dress

The back side of the dress

I’m sorry there’s no pictures of me wearing the dress this time but that’s because I had eye surgery this week (not the eye itself but the soft tissue on the lower eyelid). I’m pretty alright by now. The bleeding has stopped and it doesn’t hurt as much but my eye still needs a lot of rest and I can’t wear any make-up. Right after the surgery I looked like a drunken pirate, with eye patch and all, still a bit groggy from the drugs they gave me :D Anyway, you’ll need to wait a bit longer for some better picture. I just can’t help feeling a bit vain :)


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Rolled hem presser foot

I got a very pleasant surprise when I got home today. I had completely forgotten about this little beauty that I ordered for my Singer 20U-53 just before Christmas! What you see is a presser foot that produces a 5.6mm rolled hem as it goes along. The curve in the middle of the foot guides the fabric around and the needle stitches it all in place with a straight stitch. At least that’s the theory. I’m telling you, rolled hems can be quite tricky and I find that pretty much all the fabrics I throw at it behaves differently. Before ever attacking a garment with this, you need to try it out on some fabric scraps.

So far I’ve never used a rolled hem presser foot on stretch jersey but I was thinking now would be a good time to start. After all, I need to finish the hem on the Tamoto dress. First I tried it out on the super-stretchy side and oh well, it looked like s**t before it’s encounter with the iron. Perhaps the problem was that the pressure from the presser foot was too strong. Maybe if I tuned it down a bit, the fabric would flow better and I wouldn’t end up with a wonky mess?

Flipping the fabric around and trying another side (still stretchy but not super-duper) gave me a better result but there’s still room for improvement. The foot works just fine on some good ‘ol cotton so I’m finding this a tad bit annoying. Has anyone got any experience with using such a foot on stretch jersey? Any ideas you’ve got are more than welcome!

The presser foot in action on some light-medium cotton.
All wonky before ironing :(
After ironing. Not perfect but we’re getting there.