Hello Hive
Weekends are for creative projects, and I am here putting together all the ideas I know and continually learning to bring out beautiful and attractive sewing projects to blow your minds.
Sewing isn't just about cutting fabrics and stitching them together. There are important tricks and secrets you should know that often bring out the best of your creativity.
There are different types of stitches that give your work a neat finish, and coupled with learning skills, we need to learn more tips on our own that often serve as the unique features that make our clothes stand out.
You have to learn about the following:
Fabric types
Types of stitches
Proper methods of fabric combination
Best color combinations
Stitching tips
For today I had deployed the last two categories to make this stunning outfit. I had this beautiful dress that was due to be thrown away since I was tired of the dress, but instead of throwing it away, I decided to recycle it into a new design using these tips I have learned, and the end result is so beautiful that I feel like I have bought myself a hundred-dollar outfit.
To make the lower part of this outfit
I got the seam lines ripped out of the old dress and have the lower parts here for what they used to be.
- Color combination tips used here
The best color to combine this with is the lace fabric I bought for $1 here.
Choosing red-colored lace would make the design extremely bright in a manner you won't appreciate its comeliness. That's why it's good to learn about color combinations as a designer.
I made a slanted cut on the skirt measuring 8" from the left side of the fabric down to the hem of the right side.
This I had cut out and replaced with the white laces.
- Fabric combination tips
In order to have a proper fabric combination, we have to make use of rule number 3. A plain-colored fabric wouldn't have given me a good result like this lace has done, and since I am sewing this together with an African print fabric, the lace is a better choice.
For some other outfits, you can choose to use a plain white fabric as opposed to the lace.
Note that it is equally important to use the right color-matching lining for the lace. I had used a cream-colored lace and lining. While sewing this, I had used a white lining as opposed to cream, and it gave a terrible color combination effect, which made me lose the stitch and replace the lining. This caused me double work, time, and stress.
- Stitching tips
Next was the stitching of the dress.
I started by creating the dart legs in the waist and then stitched the lace to the main fabrics.
The linings were joined separately before I used them to turn the skirts inward. It is a must to create darts on the linings if we create darts on the main clothes.
One sewing tip we shouldn't ignore is that our patterns must align accordingly.
That is a sample of what I mean. The joining of the lace for the front and back skirt block must align to give our outfit a professional look.
The lace isn't aligning here and this must be as a result of mistakes while cutting the fabrics. A wrong measurement from cutting and stitching caused this.
The linings must equally not be puffing out from underneath our skirts.
There are a whole lot of tips to learn, and I equally get exposed to these sewing secrets the more I sew daily. I hope that someone finds this helpful.
The pain of unstitching, recutting, and reworking this skirt was really demanding. I spent 5 hours on this after making a series of mistakes and working with the guidelines above to make a better outfit. I guess it is worth it in the end, and I will still enjoy wearing these clothes one more time before they get trashed.