Machine embroidery using rayon thread makes for a very pretty make up case

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I showed you how to make a journal cover with thread painting using WonderFil  Rayon threads. All week I've been playing with these threads to do thread painting and machine embroidery. Today I'm sharing a tutorial for an easy zippered cosmetic bag.

There are times when we hunt for a little gift to give to a friend, so it's always nice to find a quick and easy pattern to make yourself. These great little bags can be made any size and with any fabric to meet your needs. Make some ahead of time and you'll be ready for any special occasion!

I used the samples that I machine embroidered with WonderFil's rayon threads earlier in the week to sew these lovely bags.

WonderFil rayon embroidery threads

Here are the supplies needed to make one bag:

materials

• Two fat quarters of coordinating fabrics
• Zipper to match - 9" (23cm) or longer
• Thread to match
• Low loft batting - I always save my batting scraps for projects just like this

Prepare the pattern

These bags can be made in any size for a wide variety of uses. I like this size the best because it will fit inside most purses and can still hold a lot of bits and pieces. Use the diagram below to draw out your own pattern.

Zipper bag pattern

Using your pattern cut one front and one back from each of the following: main fabric for the bag, lining and batting. I like to use a bit of spray basting to hold the main fabric and the batting together. I can then treat the main fabric and batting as one piece.

Cut pattern pieces

Sewing the zipper 

Sandwich the zipper tape between the top edges of the bag/batting and the lining fabrics of the front of the bag. Pin in place. Make sure the right side of the zipper faces the main fabric of the bag. Sew through all layers. A zipper foot really helps to get close to the zipper.

Sandwich the zipper tape between the bag layers.

Fold the zipper tape towards the lining fabric and stitch a narrow zigzag or straight stitch along the fold line. This is called "understitching" and keeps the lining from getting caught in the zipper.

Understitch lining to zipper tape

Repeat these steps with the pieces of the back of the bag.

Pull the zipper tab to the middle of the bag. Use a short zigzag stitch to secure the side of one end of the zipper tape together. Repeat with the other end of the zipper and trim even with the bag sides.

Stitch across the end of the zipper

Sewing the side and bottom seams

Fold the bag with right sides facing and the bottom edges matching. One side (the back) will be longer than the other. Sew the bottom edges of front and back main bag together. I used the width of my sewing foot. Line up the bottom edges of the lining with right sides together and sew them together leaving an opening along the bottom edge of the lining fabric.

Sew across the bottom edges of the bag and the lining.

The top of the bag layers will naturally fold along one edge of the zipper when all of the bag layers are smoothed together. Stitch across the side of the bag through all layers from one edge of the zipper tape to the other.

Stitch across zipper

Sew the side seams of the outer bag and the lining separately, stopping at the end of the previous stitching.

Sew the side seams

Clip the corners then turn the bag right side out through the opening in the lining and press. Sew the opening in the lining closed with hand stitches or a straight stitch on your machine.

Clip the corners

Enjoy your little zippered bags or share them with your friends.

Little zipper bags

Thanks for joining me this week on QUILTsocial! I've really enjoyed experimenting with the rayon threads from WonderFil and hope that you've enjoyed the little projects that I've shared with you. Have fun stitching!

6 best tips ever for sewing with vinyl

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I showed you how to use the sideways stitching feature on the NQ900 to sew handles onto our selvage project bag and today we're going to finish that bag by adding vinyl pockets. Don't worry if you've previously struggled with sewing materials like this, because today I've got 6 useful tips for sewing with vinyl.

The NQ900

Vinyl Tip 1

It's easier to cut and sew with vinyl if it is FLAT. If you're like me and sometimes shove things into a cupboard without thinking about it, you may end up with wrinkled vinyl like this:

The wrinkled vinyl

You can't iron your vinyl flat, so put it on top of your cutting board and use a hairdryer to heat it up - it will flatten out nicely!

A hairdryer removes the wrinkles

Vinyl Tip 2

Vinyl is SLIPPERY. Especially when you're trying to cut it on your cutting board. In order to keep it from moving, roll up a couple pieces of LOW TACK tape (like painter's tape) and put it under two corners of the vinyl. Take it from me - DON'T use packing tape or scotch tape as they will leave a sticky residue on your vinyl that is impossible to remove!

For this project, use the markings on the cutting mat and cut the vinyl into a rectangle that is 13" x 22".

A piece of painter's tape keeps the vinyl from sliding.

Vinyl Tip 3

Cover any edges that won't be encased in a seam, with a trim of fabric. This will reinforce the edges AND make them less sharp to your hands. For this project I cut two pieces of fabric 2" x 14" and double folded them lengthwise (and pressed) so that the raw edges were folded into the middle of the strip.

Double folding the trim for the pockets

I then slipped these fabric strips over the short edges of my vinyl rectangle and top stitched them using the "J" foot of my NQ900 sewing machine.

Top stitching the trim on the vinyl

Vinyl Tip 4

Use clips to keep everything together when sewing! You can't pin the vinyl, unless you do it right in the seam allowance, because it leaves holes in the material. Clever Clips from Unique work really well for holding everything in place securely!

Using clips to keep everything together

Vinyl Tip 5

Use painter's tape to mark where your sewing lines will go. You can sew right along the edge and then easily remove the tape.

For this project I measured in 13" from one of the ends to find the center of the bag and marked the line with painter's tape.

Marking the center of the vinyl

Vinyl Tip 6

Use a NON STICK foot on your sewing machine. Who knew that these even existed??? The NQ900 non stick foot is a plastic foot with a special coating on the bottom that can be used with leathers or vinyl fabrics.

The back of the non stick foot

I couldn't believe how wonderfully this foot worked for sewing the vinyl on this project! I've tried in the past to sew vinyl with my old sewing machine and found it so frustrating!! This foot didn't stick at all.

I sewed a straight line across the center of the vinyl to divide it into two separate pockets and then removed the painter's tape.

Sewing across the vinyl with the non stick foot

Our bag is almost finished!! 

Sew the binding to the inside of the bag along all four sides. If you would like more information about sewing on binding, check out Elaine's QUILTsocial post from April 2015 where she walks you through step by step instructions.

Now, fold the binding to the OUTSIDE of the bag and use your pins or clips to hold it in place.

Now here's another one of my favorite features of the NQ900. I discovered this by accident this month when I made six baby quilts and many tablerunners and placemats and had miles of binding to sew on.

I decided to do all of the stitching by machine instead of doing any of it by hand and decided to use the "P" group of stitches - the ones that are used for piecing. You can alternate between stitch 29 (which gives you a ¼" seam) and stitch 30 (which stitches in the center of the foot) without having to switch the foot.

The greatest thing though is that when you use the "J" foot with stitch 30 to top stitch the binding on the front of the quilt, the needle is in the center of the foot BUT the open part of the foot is off to the left side (so the folded edge of your binding doesn't get caught in it) AND the clear plastic part of the foot makes it incredibly easy to see what you're stitching!!

Top stitching the binding on the front of the bag

Continue stitching all the way around the bag.

Close up of top stitched binding

Your bag is now finished!!

You can slip all of your hand stitching (or punchneedle) supplies into the large clear vinyl pockets.

The open bag

Fold the bag in half and secure the turn clasp and you're ready to go wherever your travels take you!

The finished selvage bag

I've had so much fun this week making this selvage project tote with my NQ900 sewing machine and I hope you've enjoyed seeing how I did it. As you've seen, the NQ900 from Brother has so many great features that make sewing and quilting easy and enjoyable! Join me again next month when I'll make another project with my new sewing machine.

How thread painting with rayon threads enhances an image on fabric

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I showed you some of the machine embroidery stitch outs that I did using three of WonderFil's rayon threads. So far it's been a great week stitching with and writing about my favorite rayon threads from WonderFil Specialty Threads!

A journal cover is a great opportunity to show off new stitching skills and to sew something practical. I often have a number of these covered journals on hand to give as gifts.

WonderFil rayon threads

materials

• a book to be covered. For your first project start with something small.
• a photograph printed onto fabric. Note: There are a number of ways to do this using a variety of chemical liquids or specialty paper but I don't bother with any of these methods if I don't plan to wash the project. I find that printing directly onto plain white fabric with my ink jet printer and then heat setting the ink is sufficient for my purposes. To prepare my fabric for printing I do the following: I cut a piece of fabric and a piece of freezer paper that are each slightly larger than 8½ x 11". Using a hot, dry iron I fuse the fabric to the shiny side of the freezer paper, and then trim the prepared fabric to 8¼" x 11".
• medium to low loft batting
• a selection of WonderFil's Rayon threads in different weights
• coordinating fabric (approximately a fat-quarter or half yard) for the rest of the journal cover and the inside of the book.

 

Make the paper pattern

To make the paper pattern for your selected book wrap a tape measure around the closed journal and then add 1" to 1½" extra to this measurement. This allows for ease.

Measuring the journal

Now measure the width of the front cover and subtract 2". This measurement will be used for the flaps of the cover. 

Measure the front cover width

Measure the height from top to bottom of the closed journal. Add 1" to the height of the cover measurement for seam allowance and ease.

Measure the height of the journal

Draw a rectangle on a large piece of paper using your measurements. My measurements are in brackets. The total width of the book plus 1" for ease [12¾" + 1" = 13¾"]. The width of the book cover less 2" [6" - 2" = 4"] and the height of the book plus 1" for seam allowance [8" + 1" = 9"]. So the total width of my paper pattern is 13¾" + 4" + 4" wide and 9" high.

Journal cover pattern

Now we need to make a pattern piece for the spine lining. Fold the flap pieces in, measure the distance between the folded flap edges and add 1". Draw a rectangle on paper that is this width and the same height of the pattern piece for the outside of the cover. You can see that in the image below, the space between the folded flap edges measures 6". I add an inch to make my paper pattern 7" wide and 9" high.

Fold the flaps and measure the space

Stitch the photograph

Remove the freezer paper backing and layer the fabric image with a low loft batting. I find a bit of fusible basting spray holds things together nicely.

Set your machine up for free motion stitching. Drop the feed dogs and select a straight stitch. You'll be controlling the stitch length so that doesn't need to be adjusted. You might want to lower your thread tension to prevent the bobbin thread from showing on top. I always stitch with WonderFil's DecoBob thread in the bobbin. It's an 80wt cottonized polyester that's perfect to use when you don't want to see your bobbin thread.

Start stitching. Have fun playing with different colors and weights of the WonderFil rayon threads.

Thread painting the image

Making the journal cover

Once the stitching is complete, trim the stitched photograph fabric square. Add fabric borders to the top and bottom of the image if needed to make it larger than the height of the paper pattern.

Add fabric to the top and bottom

Add fabric borders to the sides of the stitched piece to make it fit the pattern. I laid my stitched photograph in position on the pattern and then cut fabric to fit generously.

Add fabric to fit the paper pattern

Place the paper pattern on top of the pieced journal cover, making sure that the thread painted image is square on the front cover. Cut the excess fabric from the sides of the paper pattern.

Trim the fabric to the size of the pattern.

Use the paper spine pattern to cut the fabric for the spine lining.

Cut the spine lining

Fold a ¼" hem on the ends of the flaps pieces and finish the hem with either a straight stitch or decorative stitch. Transfer the flap fold markings on the pattern to the journal cover fabric.

Fold the flaps in along the fold marking with right sides facing. Place the spine lining, right sides facing in the center of the journal cover. Pin across the edges. Sew across the top and bottom edges.

Fold flaps over, cover with spine lining and sew.

Hemmed flap edges covered by spine lining

Clip the corners of the seams.

Clip the corners

Turn the journal cover right side out and press. Slip the book front and back covers inside the flaps.

Slip journal covers into flaps

Enjoy your beautiful journal cover! Wouldn't this make a wonderful gift for a friend?

The finished journal cover

As you can see, the WonderFil threads really enhanced the photo on this journal cover!

Join me tomorrow when I'll show you how to make some lovely little bags with the machine embroidered stitch outs that we made yesterday.

1 easy way to sew handles to a tote bag

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I showed you how awesome the sideways stitching feature is on the NQ900 sewing machine from Brother. We added the two separate parts of a rectangular turn clasp to the selvage panel we made on Tuesday and our project bag is starting to take shape!

Today we're going to add handles and make the binding for the bag.

The NQ900

I've got some lovely Micro Fibre handles from Unique to use for the bag, but each of them has a ring at both ends, so we need something to attach those rings to the outside of the bag.

 

Micro fibre handles

I found some 1" black strapping, so I cut four pieces that were each 3" long. In order to hide the raw ends of the strapping, I threaded it through the ring of the handle and then folded it so that one side was longer than the other. I then tucked that longer end over the shorter end as shown in the picture below.

The tabs will be sewn to the front of the bag so that the little folded end is at the back of the tab and hidden by the stitching.

Folding the strapping

I did this same thing to both ends of the handle and then used one of my rotary cutting rulers to line them up evenly on one end of the bag. I then pinned the tabs in place so that I could move the bag to the sewing machine without them moving out of position.

Placement of the handle tabs

I then set up the NQ900 sewing machine the same as yesterday so that I could use the sideways stitching feature. I selected one of the sideways stitching stitches (93) and put on the "N" foot as indicated by the LCD screen.

Sideways stitching settings

Here's the 'N' foot on the machine. You can see how the handle tab is folded so that, once stitched, the raw ends will be hidden at the back. 

Sewing the handle tabs

I used the sideways stitches to sew a square on the end of the tab that doesn't have the ring and then went over the square one more time to reinforce the stitching.

I then repeated this whole procedure to sew the remaining three tabs so that one handle was sewn at each end of the panel.

Making the binding

After we add the vinyl pockets tomorrow we'll put binding around the outside edge of the bag. I figured that we might as well make the binding today so that it's all ready to go tomorrow!

Cut two strips of a coordinating fabric that are 2½" x 42" (the width of fabric). Sew these two strips together with a mitered join and then fold in half lengthwise and press with wrong sides together.

If you aren't sure how to make the binding, check out my QUILTsocial blog post from October 2014 where I walk you through step-by-step instructions!

Sewing with vinyl

Have you ever tried (and struggled with) sewing vinyl into your projects? Well, tomorrow I've got lots of great tips for you and we're going to use my NQ900 sewing machine to finish making our awesome selvage project bag. See you tomorrow!!

Comparing 3 weights of rayon threads in machine embroidery

Yesterday on QUILTSocial I showed you how wonderfully WonderFil rayon threads look when thread painting on photographs printed on fabric. Today I'm going to show you how nice they work for machine embroidery. 

I recently had the opportunity to use a couple of different embroidery machines to experiment with these rayon threads.

When I visited with my first friend, we spent some time playing with her new embroidery machine. We chose 3 simple designs and combined them into a lovely floral arrangement which I knew would give the rayon threads an opportunity to shine. For the different samples, I tried to choose thread colors as similar as possible in each of the three weights of thread.

My second visit was to a friend with a PFAFF Creative 4.5. Again, we had fun choosing a simple design that would show the thread well so that we could easily compare them.

Machine embroidery on a PFAFF Creative 4.5

Working with 40wt rayon thread

I started with WonderFil's Splendor. The 40wt rayon thread is available in three sizes and with over 300 colors, there's a great variety to choose from. WonderFil has a number of theme packs of ten spools of thread. I chose to use the Retro pack as I just loved the colors. The solid colors of the threads show up in the design quite nicely.

Retro pack of rayon thread

Here are a few of the samples that were stitched with the Splendor Retro Pack of thread.

Machine embroidery with Splendor rayon

Machine embroidery with Splendor rayon thread

Working with 30wt Rayon Thread

My next stitch out was with Mirage. Mirage is the 30wt thread and is available in random dyed variegated colors. I love how the colors change and how every color segment is a different length as this adds lovely texture to the embroidery. Because the thread is a bit thicker, the design stands out from the fabric a bit more than with the Splendor.

Machine embroidery with Mirage rayon thread

Machine embroidery with Mirage rayon thread

Working with 12wt Rayon Thread

The final embroidery stitch out was with Accent. Accent is a 12wt thread and is available in solid as well as random dyed variegated colors. For my samples I combined both of the solid and variegated threads.

Machine embroidery with Accent rayon thread

Machine embroidery with Accent rayon thread

What's the bottom line?

The bottom line for machine embroidery is to use the weight of thread that you like the most! I love the 40wt Splendor thread for most of my machine embroidery. It gives a lovely satin stitch and with the huge number of different colors that WonderFil has in their line of Splendor thread it's easy to do some lovely shading!

I've always liked using the great colors of 30wt Mirage thread for my machine stitching. I think for embroidery though, that I would choose designs carefully to make sure that I liked how the variegation stitched out.

Despite being a very thick thread, the 12wt Accent thread still looks great as an embroidery. I'd use it when I want the embroidery to really stand out. Again, I would pay special attention to where the color changes occur. I love that I can combine solid and variegated colors for even greater effects! Using a wide satin stitch looks fantastic!

I've had so much fun experimenting with these wonderful threads to do machine embroidery! Be sure to check out my post on Friday where I'll show you how to turn these lovely stitch outs into great little cosmetic bags.