I have finished the Vogue 2984 skirt and am wearing it today. The photos taken this morning are a bit dodgy so will re shoot when I get home. (I am posting at the office after work as we have exceeded out broadband for the month and it is on go slow).I thought I would share my Hong Kong finish on my hem. I am sure a lot of you are familiar with this technique, but it maybe useful to someone. First, cut some bias strips from your lining fabric and sew them to the bottom of your skirt - right sides together. Press
Then turn the bias strip over and stitch in the ditch. Press again
Turn up the hem to length wanted. Baste close to the bottom edge (I just used pins for this). Hand catch stitch the hem. If you are careful with the stitching it will be invisible from both the outside and inside. When doing your final press make sure you only press the bottom edge and not go over the top edge of the hem. This will prevent any ridges showing.
Now doesn't this look good?
And here is the finished skirt front and back.
Now a question if I may....how do you finish your seams when you have to clip them for a curve? Do you serge after the seam is sewn, clipped and pressed? Or do you serge before construction and then just clip through the serging? And if you were going to bind the seam, how does that work with a curve? With this skirt I serged after sewing and clipping the seams. But I am not a fan of serging afterwards as it can pull the seam a bit. Love to hear from you!
5 comments:
Very pretty skirt! The HK finish looks great on the hem.
I do love that hem finish!
Well, there are a couple of things that you do for those curves. Something else to do is to stay stitch the pieces with a 1/2" s.a., then stitch the seam and clip only to the staystitching. With two rows of stitching, it shouldn't ravel. If an item is lined, I worry less about finishing the seams anyway. If I were to serge, I'd finish the edges with the serger before sewing the seam, then clip and press.
To bind a curve, you'll have to use a bias strip and pre-shape it to the curve using and iron and steam.
One thing to note is that the narrower the seam allowances, the less clipping you'll have to do, so you may want to trim off some of the s.a., bind each side with a very narrow binding and then sew the seam and press. This would take some experimenting to get the widths just right.
That should be enough to think about for the moment. Tany might come up with the something I didn't think of.
Your skirt looks fabulous and the french seams look very professional and well made! I think Summerset said it all so I have nothing to add to her comment.
Vicki, the skirt looks lovely.
On curved seams I always use 1cm seam allowances so clipping isn't necessary. I almost always use 1cms as 1.5cms really aren't necessary unless it's a lined jacket where the edges aren't finished or something like a bias garment, some evening wear, etc.
To be honest I believe (and this is my own personal opinion) 1.5cm seams are a pain and give unprofessional results, especially where curved seams, including collars, cuffs, armholes, etc. are involved. HTH
Lovely skirt and great-looking Hong Kong seams!
I clip after serging too and use a drop of Fray Check on the clip.
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