Sewing Practice

[flyingpiper]

Well, I thought I'd share my practice efforts leading up to Kilt Kamp. Having never sewn more than a button, I figured I should practice some of what I will have to be doing to assist in turning out a quality product.

Attached is a photo of my pleat-sewing practice. After getting some in-person tips from the Wizard of BC, I was able to better wrap my head around the task at hand. I used white thread for contrast, both to better see what I was doing, and as a challenge to make the contrasting thread disappear. By the end I was coming close! The stitching goes from the narrow red strip on the left to the white strip on he right. The newest pleat is bottom most on the photo.

I need to work a bit more on just barely catching the edge of the pleat, but also getting the stitch just a bit deeper under the edge. Those two things should sort me out.

Cheers, Flying Piper

Sorry, having difficulty attaching the photo from my phone. I've attached a link to it on Flickr instead.

https://flic.kr/p/DWjZ1M

[Mike S]

Here is the image so that it appears in the thread:

[flyingpiper]

Thanks Mike!

[kiltedcontractor]

Your learning curve is impressive. From a button to that in such a short time....well done. Im a button and ripped seam guy myself. Good luck moving foward.

[flyingpiper]

Thanks for he kind words! Given that a large portion of the sewing is in the pleats, and poor workmanship is most likely to be visible there, I thought I should get the most practice with it.

I've re-sewn these few pleats on the scrap of tartan about 4 times so far. The latest effort was my fastest and most consistent.... But I still have to pay more attention to lining up the tartan elements. Plus side is I'm getting faster at both sewing, and pulling stitches out.


I'll post again after I make some more progress....

[kiltedcontractor]

I have found it a trap that speed and quality come quick. My experience is to deliberately slow down and get the muscle memory down pat before bad habits set in. Then the speed will come exponentially. In my case, woodworking/woodturning, not sewing.

[flyingpiper]

Very True. Speed can be a trap that when things seem to be going good, you speed up and all the basics fall apart. Much like piping or any other skill. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I'm not aiming for speed, just working on quality and technique. The speed was purely a byproduct.

[flyingpiper]

Well, I tried with a different piece of tartan scrap, this one long enough to tuck under my leg for proper clamping, and to get a good 8" stitch in. The last one took about 12 minutes, and no, I wasn't going for speed. I still have to work on uniformity, but I'm seeing improvements... Again, white thread on dark tartan. Stitches from yellow stripe on left to yellow pin on right.

[flyingpiper]

Last post on this topic for a bit. I got comfortable that I was having relatively uniform stitches, and fairly uniform pleat sizes, so I switched to matching thread to see how it looked. After looking at the results, I'm tempted to try my hand at a full kilt before Kilt Kamp! 5+ months is an awful long time to wait....

[kiltedcontractor]

Well done. You weren't going for speed......but you timed yourself