Inuyasha Costume: The Final Chapter

When I last worked on the tunic for the Inuyasha costume, I had pretty much finished some sleeves.  Next up, connecting all the pieces of the tunic.  Here is the order I went about attaching all my pieces in.

1)  Attach front and back sleeve pieces along top seam (done last time).

2)  Sew front and back tunic pieces together at the shoulder seam.

3)  Stitch the armhole seams (sleeves get attached to the tunic front & back here).

4)  Sew the bottom seam of the sleeves and the side seams of the tunic.*

5)  Attach the v-neck binding.*

You may notice some red asterisks near steps 4 & 5.  The reason for these is that if you know what is good for you, you will switch the order of these steps – v-neck binding first and then the sleeve and side seams.

Because I was slightly terrified of the v-neck binding step (the only other time I did a v neck facing was for a tunic, and it sucked hard), I thought it would be a good plan to stitch the bottom of the sleeves and the sides of the tunic together first, saving the nasty bit for last.  However, when I truly thought about attaching the binding with the tunic already in this nearly completed state, I realized my error.

Rather than having lots of space to work with since the fabric would still be open, I had to bunch a lot of the tunic up under the machine arm.  I made it work, but it was not ideal.

I imagined that attaching the v-neck binding would be similar to the Freddy Krueger collar, which I had recently done.  However, I decided to consult The Google for specifics.

Thankfully, the interwebz and You Tube came to my rescue again.  I watched several different videos and read a few tutorials, but this was the method I settled on.  Aside from the strange music, I found this video very useful.  Mind you, I still had to think hard about how to properly pin the “v” part of the neck line.  In my opinion, whatever way you THINK is the right way, do it the opposite way.  This was another one of those Epic Sewing Spatial Reasoning Challenges.  This time, I won!  Hopefully, this picture will help you figure out the proper way to pin the bottom of the v-neck area.  There are no pins in the picture below, but you should get the idea as I have only sewed a small bit of the binding together here.

 

After following the instructional video to its completion, I wound up with quite a nice v-neck collar on the tunic.

 

The only thing left on the tunic was to hem the sleeves and tunic bottom, and then to insert some black trim into the sleeves to match Inuyasha’s outfit.  When I hemmed the sleeves I left the bottom part of the bell unhemmed at first, just in case.  Afterwards, I decided to weave the black trim in by cutting tiny slits in the fabric and using the smallest elastic threader I had to pull the trim through the improvised casing.  I used fray check on the edges I cut, and also on the ends of the black trim pieces.

 

With my tunic completed, I proceeded to work on the balloon pants part of the costume.  I am going to spare you the details here, because this was essentially yet another pair of pajama pants.  I stopped after getting the pants pieced together.  I wanted to do a fitting with Phoenix prior to adding in elastic at the waist and ankles.  I did that yesterday, and there isn’t a lot of fixing to be done as the pants fit fairly well.  A few inches off the bottom of the pants and some elastic and we’ll call it done.  You probably won’t get another post on this costume until I have pictures of both finished costumes to share from Halloween, so check back in two weeks or so 🙂  Here are some pictures of the 90% done project.

 

 

I guess I do have to finish a sash to go with the tunic as well, but that will be quick too.  Cheers!

Freddy Sweater Part 2: Sleeves & Collar

The Freddy Krueger sweater is coming along nicely.  Having settled on a good way to attach the green stripes, I completed the front and back last time, and connected the two pieces at the shoulder seam.  Before I went any farther, it was time to tackle the collar piece, which I was not looking forward to.

I consulted the following online resources:

1)  A You Tube video tutorial from WhatTheCraft.com

2)  This other blog tutorial

I did some of each, but the general methods were the same.  I didn’t do all the measuring suggested in the second tutorial, but it was nice to hear all the numbers in case I wanted to be exact.

Here are the things I learned about t-shirt collars:

1)  It seems pretty important to stretch the neckband piece as you are sewing it onto the shirt.  Although I admittedly did not try it without stretching the collar piece.

2)  It is not as scary as it seems at first.

3)  The back piece of a shirt or sweater should have a much less rounded neck band line.  The one I created with my pattern for this sweater was more round than I should have made it, but it will do.  Really the neck band on the back of a shirt should be almost straight while the front of the neckline should be nearly circular.  There is a good picture of this in that second resource I listed above.

4)  The video tutorial gave me a nice way to attach the collar without having to stitch the ends together into a circle first.  I appreciated this since I was working with a knit and these tend to stretch a little as you sew.   Its kind of like sewing an elastic casing – you start further ahead than you want to, and end sooner, leaving an opening (generally in the center back where the seam will be).   Then you cute and unfold the neckband pieces and stitch them together.  Looks something like below.  Then you refold the collar and close the opening you left in the stitching.

Here is what my collar looked like when done.  I was pretty happy with it, though I am curious what it will look like on a person, since my collar lines on my pattern were apparently a little bit off.

Next up was the sleeves.  I much prefer the flat method of sleeve sewing to easing, so that is what I did.  I was fairly happy with how this worked in terms of the pattern lines.  I had to do a little pulling and stretching as I pinned, but all in all, this turned out good.

You can see that I attached the sleeve prior to putting on the green stripes.  I wanted to do my best to line up all the sweater stripes.  You’ll see how that went in a moment.  Here is the finished sleeve seam.

In the picture above, you not only see my pretty seam, you can probably also see that I have a problem.  There is pretty much no way for me to line up the top green stripe because it is so very high on the chest piece of the sweater.  When I look at other images of the Freddy sweater, I notice that most frequently the stripes do not begin until the armpit level where they can be lined up.  Either that or the shoulder seams of the sweater are longer so that the sleeve is almost perpendicular as it falls of the shoulder, making the stripes easier to match up.  #*@$&%!!

I also realized that even if I had been able to attach a stripe on the sleeve to this top stripe on the front and back, I would have needed to place and stitch it on prior to sewing that shoulder seam.  Double $@!%#^&*!

However, I decided to continue anyway.  It would be a lot of trouble to rip the seams on those stripes and who knows what state the fabric would be in after words.  I decided that top strip was just not likely to have a counterpart on the sleeves.

I folded the sleeve in half and pinned the stripes on, beginning by eyeballing the distance from the armpit corner to the stripe on the body and mimicking that distance on the sleeve.

From there I used the lines on my sewing mat to leave just a little more than 2″ spacing between each green stripe as I pinned them down.  After stitching all the stripes down, I had something like this.

Then I rinsed and repeated this process on the other sleeve.  At this point, I have a nearly finished sweater!

I don’t think the lack of a green stripe in that shoulder area will make too much difference, but we will see when Aeris tries this on.  I think I am going to leave the sleeve seams and side seams open for now, or maybe I will baste them shut.  I want her to try it on before I finalize the fit of it.  The only other thing left is to put cuffs on the sleeves and the bottom of the sweater, and they will look similar to the collar when all said and done.