Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Laced sleepsack - step-by-step Part 2

At this point I want to work on the foot-pocket, and this presents the opportunity to talk about a cool tip - this is a good one.

When you are sewing with leather you often have a point where 2 seams come together and meet a third - this forms a T-shaped seam. I have found that if you trim your seam allowances too closely, you will end up with a gap where these seams meet because of the thickness of the leather. It is even worse when 4 panels come together (like at the top of a hood). The gap can become quite large. To avoid the gap, trim your seam allowances with a flap on one side as shown below:

First we start with a seam sewn, glued and flattened, with the initial trim of the seam allowances creating little wings.
The key is to just snip off just ONE SIDE of the seam allowance (not both)!
Then FOLD OVER the other seam allowance (enlarge the image if you need to) creating a little flap. I also clip off a little corner of that flap so the seam is not too thick with too many overlapping layers.
Same thing for the other seam: Trim one side only...
fold over the flap...
and cut away the little excess to keep the seam from getting too bulky.
That's perfect! Ready to clip and sew...
I know it seems simple, but really this helps a lot. No more gaps!
Here we have the side panel clipped to the bottom of the foot pocket, ready to sew.
And a post-sew, mid glue-up shot. Notice all the little wedges clipped out so the seam allowance will lay flat?
Here she is all glued down and pounded.
And now topstitched above and below the seam:
This concludes part 2, and the foot pocket sub assembly.

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