Saturday 14 November 2009

Hat Bandana - the fabric arrives

This week I have been kept very busy!

The fabric for the Hat Bandanas arrived from Spoonflower, and it looks great! (see below)



I took the initiative by putting a keyline around each hanky, so I knew where to cut. This trimmed size allows for a hem allowance (see below).



The way the size of the hankies fit on the width of the Spoonflower fabric, there is a level of wasted material down the side. Rather than just throw it away, I thought I would make good use of it two-fold.
Firstly I wanted to test the design I am using for the upcoming Five Hatband, as this will be the same material I will use for that; and secondly I have designed and made labels to in the hem of the hankies, giving the maker’s seal and care instructions for washing the hanky (see below).



Hemming them is a fiddly thing to do, but once you get into the swing of it, and set off on the correct footing, it becomes second nature.
The key is making the corners as neat as possible, and avoid the most obvious thing to do, which would be to start at a corner. If you do this everything goes well until you get back to where you started and you find that you cannot fold the corner as neatly as the others.
The answer is to start halfway down one of the long sides, the approach and fold each corner in the same way, before ending back on a nice straight run where you can over stitch by a few stitches to lock everything together.

It’s then the long slog to sew the hems around all the hankies. But having an iMac on the desk next to were I do my cutting, means I can have iPlayer running and catch up on The Sarah Jane Adeventures to make the time pass a bit quicker!



It’s then not too long before I have got all 20 of the hankies hemmed and labeled ready for dispatch (see below).


If you are interested in buying a Seven Hat Bandana, please get in touch by emailing me at tennantcoat@me.com.

4 comments:

  1. Looks great!

    How sharp did the print come out by the way on the small details?
    :]

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  2. Spoonflower is usually very sharp and crisp, but only if you give them decent images to use. The Hanky is from 72dpi scans, and considering how they had to be stitched together in Photoshop, it has come out pretty well.
    I had sharpened the image as best as possible before testing it, but you will always have to accept a level of degradation in quality when scanning and reprinting a design.

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  3. This is true I suppose.

    Well any road they look great!

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  4. I am planning a convention weekend for my 18th this year and am looking at 7th doctoir costumes, so am suitably impressed.

    ReplyDelete