My favorite old, soft and comfy (store bought) winter night gown was falling apart, so I decided to make a new one, out of a blue cotton jersey I had in stock.
I drew a pattern from the old one and made some adjustments.
(That’s Marc’s hand. He took the pictures.)
I hemmed the neckline with soft jersey bias tape.
When I get out of bed I always put on lightweight grey or black running pants, that have white stripes down the sides, so they make a nice match.
I have just enough fabric left to make a second one. So might do that later.
It looks really nice! It could pass for an oversized sweater. And you are clearly a good seamstress, with all those perfectly straight stitches and all the seams that line up perfectly.
Aw, thanks for the lovely compliments, @Abbeeroad, @LadyLime, @TheMistressT and @Immaculata !
I guess I’m a perfectionist.
(It would be a very, very oversized sweater. Like 4 inches above the knee and very wide.)
Can you tell me, did you use a serger at all for this project? Or just a regular sewing machine? I’m always so scared to try making anything with a jersey fabric. Yours came out so nice!
I used an old mechanical regular sewing machine (Bernina).
I don’t own a serger and have never used one.
I guess the secret to sewing jersey in a tidy way is (at least that’s how I do it): loop, pin, baste, sew, cut and zigzag.
I sewed band into the shoulder seams, so they won’t stretch.
The ‘secret’ to getting the bias tape right is to stretch it while basting it on. Baste the front side first, then the back side, make sure they sit at the same height, and then sew through all layers at once. It was trial and error for me too. I didn’t get it right the first time.
I don’t know how it is called in English… (ETA: tailor’s tacks)
It’s like drawing the lines around your pattern pieces on the fabric, but by stitching a double basting thread through two layers at the same time, leaving big loops, so not pulling the thread tight, and then pull them apart and cut them, so now your pieces of fabric have thread lines (does this make sense?).
I do this all around every pattern piece. That is how I get my accuracy.
Here’s a Dutch article on it (‘lussen’ or ‘doorlussen’) with pictures: https://oogvoorkleurenstijl.nl/kennisbank/doorlussen/
(When I use Google translate on the page, they call it ‘to loop through’. Might be a bad translation though.)
I think they’re called tailor’s tacks in English. I always do that as well, even though it’s time consuming, every time I don’t do it I end up regretting it. Still my sewing is a lot more sloppy than yours!
You did a spectacular & professional looking job, very impressive. I’ll be sewing jersey with a regular machine this week, a first for me. I hope to do such a fine job as you.
