How many mistakes is it possible to make in one sewing session?

Quite a few judging by the number made between us at the social sewing session on 6 December.  Here are some of them so you can remember to avoid them in your sewing.
1. Putting pins in the wrong place for machining the seam.  By this I mean not thinking about on which side of the fabric and in which direction you will be sewing the seam when you are putting your pins in. Thus you find that the pins are either (or both)  on the underside as you sew or not pointing in the right direction for easy removal before the the presser foot arrives at that spot.

2.  The iron not being hot enough for fusing fusible interfacing to the fabric.  Remember always to do a test first on a piece of spare fabric with a scrap of interfacing.  This way you can find out how hot your iron needs to be.. Always press, not use an ironing motion, and you must make sure that your fabric and interfacing are perfectly smooth and flat before you start or you could create permanent wrinkles in your garment .  Once fused then leave the piece to cool before picking it up and using it.

3. Forgetting that you should add a seam allowance before cutting out your fabric.  Some patterns, such as Burda magazine patterns or patterns that you have drafted to your own measurements, need seam allowances adding to them before the pattern is is used to cut out the fabric- Don't forget to add them! 

4. Not sewing in the right direction on a seam when you are matching up a fabric pattern, such as stripes, checks etc.  Always machine away from the point where you have matched the design otherwise your fabric might slip and no longer match when it reaches that point.  Consider tacking (basting) rather than pinning and/or using a walking presser foot on your machine if you have one.

5.  Finding that you cannot hand crank your sewing machine.  I'm not sure that this is valid for all machines but one sewer was trying to lower the needle by turning the handle of the machine by hand but it would not work.  She found it would not lower the needle when the bobbin winder spindle was pushed to the right to wind the bobbin.

6.  Sewing with no upper or lower thread.  Don't forget to check that your needle is threaded and your bobbin has not run out, or about to do so, before starting to sew again after a pause.

7.  Stitching down darts or seams without checking that they are lying the right way.  Pattern instructions usually tell you which direction  to press darts or seams once you have sewn them.  Make sure that when you come to stitch across them, for example when applying a waistband to a skirt, that they will be sewn in the correct position and not the wrong way around.

8.  Sewing in a zip with the zip slider pointing down instead of up.  When sewing in zips by certain methods you can get around the difficult bit of sewing by the head of the zip by moving the head of the zip past the needle- see the previous post for an example.  However you can only do this if you can grab the the zip slider which is easier to do if the zip slider is pointing towards the top of the zip.

9.Not concentrating all the time.  Be warned, don't think that, just because you have managed to do a difficult bit of machining successfully, you can relax.  That's when your lovely straight line starts to wobble.

10.  Getting the wrong bit of cloth caught into your stitching.  Always make sure that you are only stitching together what you intend to.  It's easy to catch up some fabric unintentionally, especially when dealing with gathered fabric or curved stitching.

11.  Sewing with a zipper foot in the wrong position.  Zipper feet are designed to enable you to stitch as close to the zip teeth as possible.  In order to do this, depending on the design of your machine, you need to move either the needle or the zipper foot to the correct position  in relation to the side of the zip you are going to stitch.  If you don't then you could find yourself either sewing on the teeth of the zip or too far away from the teeth.

I'm trying to think if there is anything I have sewn without making a mistake at all and I can't think of one.  What is your most frequent or your worst mistake and how did you deal with it?

Can I make a Dress in a Day? Part 1- Tracing a pattern from Burda Style Magazine

Of course, I am addicted to reading Dressmaking Blogs and am always amazed when the blogger says how little time it took to make a garment.  I was prompted to try and make a dress in a day after reading of a top with interesting seaming and a peplum that took only 40 minutes to make.  I had a whole day when I thought I had nothing to do so decided to give it a go.
There was a dress that I wanted to make that appeared to be straight-forward with only 4 pieces - Back, front, sleeves and a facing strip.  It was designed for stretch fabric and needed no closures or fastenings.  It was a pattern in a Burda Style Magazines.  If you are not familiar with these magazines, issued monthly, they appear to offer Dressmaker's Heaven, that is a large number of patterns for a small monetary outlay: for example 17 patterns for £4.75.  However, you might not like all the patterns in an issue plus you have to trace the individual pattern from sheets inside the magazine.  This is when Heaven may turn into Hell so I am going to show how I do it.
Each garment is given a number (106 in my case).  On turning to the instruction in the magazine for that particular number you will see a box that tells you which Pattern sheet you want  and what colour the outline of the pieces will be.  It also shows you the pieces and the number that they are allocated on the sheet .  Below you see the information for my chosen garment (plus some pencil notes of simple lengthening amendments I intended to make to the pattern).

So I need to locate pattern sheet B, with a red pattern line, pieces 21 to 23 for style 106 with the type of line marking used for size 36.  Below is the confusion with which you will be faced (this is sheet B and the pieces shaded completely in pink are the ones for a featured garment in the magazine, unfortunately not the one I chose).
But persevere.  Once the pieces have been located I use highlighter to go over the lines of the size that I want and to highlight any pattern markings, such as grainline, notches etc.  You can see the outline of the first piece for my dress highlighted in pink  across the bottom of sheet B.

Here in the picture below  the pattern markings are highlighted.  You can see I am highlighting piece 22.  Should you decide to make another garment using the same pattern sheet make sure you use a different colour highlighter to highlight that pattern.

I highlight each piece one at a time and then trace it before going on to highlight the next piece.  To trace I use ordinary greaseproof paper, cheap and easily obtainable from supermarkets.  The drawback is the limited width but you can always tape a bit on if  the width is insufficient.  When tracing I find it useful to put something solid on which I can rest my tracing hand, this both helps to stop my hand from shifting the paper and provides an extra weight to keep the paper and pattern in place.  My grader's set square is ideal for this, see the picture below.

Below is the traced pattern on which I have marked details such as fold line, gathering points etc. and size, model number and which issue of the magazine it came from as I shall add it to my file of traced patterns in case I wish to use it again.

Patterns in the Burda Style magazine do not have seam allowances included so you have to add them yourself where necessary.  This does mean that you can choose the seam allowance you want, narrower or wider than the standard 1.5 cm for seams and the depth of hem allowance you require.  I use the grader's set square to mark the seam allowance for any straight lines and a seam gauge,as below, to mark the allowance on curves.

Then, at last, I have my pattern pieces complete and ready to cut out with paper scissors before laying on my fabric.  All this took one and three quarter hours, although that does include stopping to take even more photographs of the process than you see here.  And then I went for a tea break, as I am about to do now.  Part 2 to follow later.