Iron-On Vinyl: How To

So, with my excitement over finding this new wonderful material I thought I would make up a quick how-to post for anyone who doesn’t yet know the joys this product can bring.

This is HEATnBOND. I have no brand bias yet since this was my first experience with the product, but I have no complaints. I made sure to get the sewable style as I knew I’d have to stich seams together. It cost around $6.99/yd. retail, which is quite steep in my opinion, but I had a 40% off coupon so it wasn’t so bad in the end. It comes in 21-22” bolts just like interfacing. *** In fact, it was thrown in with the interfacing at my local fabric store ***.

As a slight side note: Does anyone else get irritated that interfacing (and now this product) only comes in single layer 22” strips instead of 45” bolts like every other fabric? I always get cranky when I to buy twice the yardage of interfacing as fashion fabric.

Any who, back on subject. First things first. Measure the pattern piece you’ll need to have plasticized.

I had already cut out the major pieces for the inner bag, but I still needed to make the inside of the drawstring opening. So that’s what I measured.

I’m a bit of a worrier so I decided to cut out a 5”x5” piece of vinyl to make doubly sure I had clearance. You don’t have to do this though. ***You can actually just cut the pattern piece out directly from the vinyl.***

Now’s the time you’ll also want to cut out your fashion fabric.

Tip:

Cut out your fashion fabric .5”-1” bigger than your vinyl piece. This will make it easier to center the vinyl on your fabric later without any bits hanging off the edge. The first time you see your iron touch this product you’ll realize why this is an important step. Let's just say it took me a good 10 minutes to get my iron clean.

Now that you have your fabric and vinyl cut out, you’ll want to place the fabric right side up. Make sure to clean off any fuzz balls or threads. You’re about to laminate it so you want it looking as good as possible!

Once finished, go ahead and peal off the vinyl's paper backing.

The corners are sometimes stubborn to get started, but if you just rub it between your thumb and forefinger it will come a loose. Don’t throw this paper away though, we will need it later!

Now go ahead and place the vinyl sticky side down onto the right side of your fabric. The HEATnBONDs ‘sticky’ side was of relatively low tac. This was great because it was really easy to reposition when I made a mistake.

Smooth out all the bubbles and get ready to iron!

Following the directions that came with your iron on vinyl set your iron to the indicated temperature and wait for it to heat up. *** Mine said to set it on medium with no steam ***

Now, this step is important. When preparing to ironing on the vinyl side of the fabric, make sure to place the paper backing you peeled off between the fabric and your iron. If you put the iron directly on the vinyl it will instantly melt into a globby mess. *** I just nicked a corner of the outside, but the speed of meltage was really quite shocking @_@ *** So I repeat, DO NOT PLACE YOUR IRON DIRECTLY ON THE VINYL. 

I saved a larger piece of the paper backing from an earlier piece I’d made. This was awesome because it ‘ment I didn’t have to perfectly line up the fabric with the paper every time.

Read your brands directions to know how many seconds it says to heat each side. I think mine said 8, but I didn’t follow it to the T. I pretty much just treated it like iron on interfacing.

Now you can flip the fabric over and iron the other side in the same way. Because you *wisely* cut the vinyl smaller than your fashion fabric, you can iron directly on the back of the fabric without worry.

You’re all done! Now you have water resistant fabric in whatever color or pattern you want! You can sew this just like normal fabric to create whatever shape you need.

*** Note: I would be a bit more conservative with your fabric pins now. Because your fabric has a plastic layer it won’t recover from small punctures anymore ***

This product has opened up the awesome ability to make PurseBud diaper bags without being limited to any specific color or pattern that my local fabric stores have on hand. I can use any color I want!

Pooh Bear Bag Update!

I finished the Winnie-the-Pooh bag yesterday afternoon and, despite my reservations about the characters, it turned out super cute.

My favorite part of this bag, aside from my love of its waterproof innards, is the fact that it’s convertible from an over the shoulder bag to a backpack. This allows for both arms to be completely free when needed. It also has the 6 outer pockets hidden inside the leaves and petals just like the standard sized PurseBuds. That means lots of places to stick toys,clothes, diapers, and bottles!

Hopefully my moms coworker loves it as much as I do ^_^.

Pooh Bear PurseBud Backpack

Iron on vinyl is so cool!

Okay, let me start at the beginning. I make PurseBuds. These are my own originally designed wristlets, purses, and backpacks/diaper bags shaped to resemble flowers. At some point I plan to make a post where I pimp out my PurseBuds, but I’ll limit this post to just the one I’m working on right now.

My mom has a coworker who is getting ready to have a baby and she asked me to make her a PurseBud backpack as a baby gift. I had made my aunt a bright pink and green one for my cousins about  half a year back and it turned out really cute, so she thought it would make an awesome diaper bag. Due to a craft show, and Christmas, and new years, then school…. I’m way behind on this project (I was supposed to finish it last month @_@). She’s due to give birth in the next few weeks so there’s no more time for procrastination!

Since it was going to be used as a diaper bag having the inside be waterproof was pretty important. Seeing as my lovely town is lacking in such fabrics I went online and ordered the obnoxiously loud bright pink vinyl that I would need to reproduce the bag. When I called my mom to let her know that I had ordered the fabric and was just waiting on delivery she got very despondent. Apparently she didn’t want it to be pink, she wanted it to be a pooh bear bag.

Okay, I’ll admit it had been about three months since we’d talked about the bag so I may have forgotten some things. And I’ll also admit that she told me the baby shower was going to be Pooh Bear themed... But I will never admit that she ever told me she wanted a Pooh Bear bag @_@!

I know that other people have different tastes than I do, but these are flower shaped bags… I would have remembered if someone requested one with a fabric that so clashed with the general theme. Gradient, fine… stripped, okay… even polka dots I could see in the right situation. But I would have remembered a request for cartoon characters on a flower.

I started to panic. I told her I’d work something out and not to worry. Maybe I’d make a zipper pouch to put in the bag in pooh bear fabric? But anyone who has ever seen the cartoon/books knows that neon pink is not exactly the color that comes to mind when you think of Winnie the Pooh. This wasn’t going to work.

I decided I would scrap the pink and start from scratch. I have another friend who is pregnant and wanted a bag. If she finds out she’s having a girl pink would be just the ticket for her.

So… what to do about this bag?

I went to the fabric store and looked at the different Winnie the Pooh fabrics they had. I just couldn’t picture any of them on a PurseBud. It would look weird! I was just about to give up when I had an epiphany. In the fleece section (which is overflowing this time of year) there were a quite few fabrics with relatively large characters on them. Making the whole bag out of the fabric would look ridiculous, but I could cut out the characters and applique them onto the bag instead! Then I could make it whatever color vinyl they had on hand.

So I had a plan. Upon perusing the vinyl selection though I was once again at an impasse. It was all ugly. Well, I’m sure that these colors would be great for lining boating seats, but not for a diaper bag. A diaper bag should be light and cheery… not brown or black. /sigh
I finally broke down and asked some of the employees if they had any ideas for me. One of them asked if I’d considered iron on vinyl.

What is this, they have a way to make fabric waterproof? That's awesome! I was so thrilled I almost kissed this woman. I decided to go with a nice light yellow and dark green for the purse (a relatively popular color combination).

I’m only about halfway through constructing the bag *** and I’ll post an update when I’m completely finished *** but I just had to come rave about this product. It goes on so easy and basically turns any fabric into plastic coated awesomeness! I mean, it’s not pretty per se. It makes fabric shiny and its no longer soft and drapy, but it’s waterproof! Which is exactly what I needed. I think that this lady just opened up an entirely new world of possibilities for me.

For now I must get back to work, but here’s a picture of my awesome Pooh Bear appliqued leaves.



Never underestimate me… I can make anything, even a Pooh Bear themed PurseBud ^_^.

Orange and Teal ‘Steampunk’–Part 4

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 1
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 2

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 3 

Do you want to know the preciously guarded secret to corset making? You have to promise not to tell anyone….

Okay, are you ready? Keep everything organized! It sounds really simple, but this is no joke. This particular corset has 6 panels on each side and an extra self drafted piece in the front, that’s 13 all together. With three different layers of fabric, that’s 39 pieces! If any of those stitched together upside down, backwards, or in the wrong order it completely changes the shape of the garment. A fabric marker, or chalk, is your best friend here. Mark everything! And double check before you stitch. As long as you keep everything in order, making a corset is really super simple. It’s just sewing a lot of seams together ~ And then pressing those seams with a tailors ham ~ before sewing a ton of straight lines for boning channels.

Sure there are a few extra steps I’m leaving out, but it’s not the scary intimidating garment most people assume it is. Any who, now that I’ve shared that super secret tip I’ll move on with the costume.


For this corset I used TV110. I really wanted there to be an extra flap of fabric over the busk that would button up along the corset. This would add two important things. First a bit of style to the corset so it didn’t look quite so much like underwear. More importantly though, it would add a slight bit of extra coverage for my friend. I could have added a modesty panel to the front, but it still would have seemed like you could see her skin between the busk. Since I know that would make her uncomfortable I wanted to do my best to alleviate it.  To add the front flap I just took the front panel pattern and, subtracting the middle seam allowance, placed it on the fold of the fabric to cut out a solid front. This is the same thing you’d do if you wanted to make the corset without the busk in front. Then I just sewed it alongside the front busk panel when I added the front side.

Perhaps the most nerve wracking part of this whole corset was adding the buttonholes. Anyone who has sewn buttonholes would likely feel my pain here. Even though most machines today make it really simple to put them in, any number of things can go wrong. The fabric could slip, or the thread could jam. And it’s not easy to recover if you have to pick out buttonhole stitches. The number of times the needle pierces the fabric pretty much leaves it shredded. It was scary to trust my machine to do it’s job without error after I’d spent hours carefully sewing the corset panels together. To make matters worse, I had to do it 12 times. Eep!

Thankfully everything turned out beautifully. I finished the corset up by adding some awesome orange and brown buttons and by binding it with a pretty satin ribbon I'd found that was in the same tone as the skirts.

I’d hoped to include more information about the jacket in this post, but I’m off to take photos of my latest costumes today so I’ll have to cut this one short. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able finish up with some jacket and accessories!

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 5

Orange and Teal ‘Steampunk’–Part 3

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 1
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 2

Okay, so it was time to get busy. After my long fabric debacle the silver lining of this costume was knowing that there wouldn’t be too much in the way of custom pieces. Earlier in the week I perused TrulyVictorian.net and ordered the skirts, corset, and bustle that would be needed. ~ BTW, If you haven’t looked at their patterns before, I seriously recommend them. They’re absolutely amazing. ~ The only thing I couldn’t find was a jacket I really liked… but I’ll get into that later.

Doing things properly, I started with the foundation of the garment; the bustle. ~ At some point I will probably go on a rant about people not wearing the proper foundation garments for costumes, but for today I’ll stay on topic. ~

I’ll be honest, I really love this bustle. It was so easy to make and it even collapses down for easy travel. A few months earlier I had seen Artemisia's post about her experience with this pattern. ~ She’s the author of Diary of a Renaissance Seamstress and a wonderful read if you like Renaissance style clothing ~. She had the best idea of edging each of the petticoat frills with bias tape which I totally copied. It was really simple and added the cutest pop of color to an otherwise plain skirt. Sure no one would see it, but everyone walks a little taller when their underwear is cute right? She edged hers in black, but I decided to go with a light blue cause it seemed more airy.


The only problem I had with the bustle was of my own making. You see, I only had 5 and a quarter yards of white fabric… but the pattern called for almost 6. It was the middle of the night, and I had been so frustrated with the previous fabric woes I decided to go forth with what I had on hand. The petticoat flounces weren’t really ‘needed’ so it wasn’t as though the completed bustle is lacking. It’s just not as ‘floofy’ as it could be.

I whipped out the brown skirt pretty quickly using pattern TV201 because I wanted to be sure that it would fit over the bustle. ~ When working on a time schedule, premade patterns are your absolute best friend ~

In a fit of speed, it completely slipped my mind that I wanted to put a hidden pocket in this skirt. I suppose this eventually gave my friend an excuse to tote around a cute bag with her outfit, but costumes should have a place to stealthily hide your camera, phone, etc. while your hands stay free. /sigh. Live and learn.


Next I started working on the overskirt. Again a pattern saved my sanity as I was working into the wee hours of the morning. ~ Sometimes I feel like I should have sent Truly Victorian more money as a thank you present ~.

It was right about this point that I started to panic. Orange, teal, and brown… what in the world was I thinking?!?!?! This was going to be a disaster. Freaking out, I started obsessively pinning fabric up and staring at it to see if the colors were going to cause spontaneous eye spasms.

Luckily, my compulsion helped me stop and take stock of which way I wanted the back panels to face. I had cut and stitched them with the intention of there being a huge splash of orange down the back, but instead of being this great impact, I found myself leaning more towards the blue. It seemed to set off the pick-a-boo pleats more. After asking for a few outside opinions, I decided to stick with my gut and flip them over.

Now that I had the bottom half of the outfit done it was time to finish the top, starting with a bright orange corset!

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 4
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 5

Orange and Teal ‘Steampunk’–Part 2

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 1

Okay, so I had my design with approximate fabric yardage needed all printed out and ready to go. Now all I needed was the fabrics.

This was a bit of a struggle. I’m very wary when it comes to ordering fabrics online without getting samples first. There’s no real way to know what the fabric feels like, or if my monitors colors are tuned exactly right. It’s just not a gamble I’m usually willing to make. Since, once again, I didn’t get the bright idea to make this costume until about a month before the event, waiting for fabric samples to be mailed and confirmed before purchase really wasn’t possible. I would be limited to brick and mortar stores. Being new to Oklahoma City, I knew of only about 4 or 5 stores that sold fabric. Choices were limited. On top of this I planned on using bright orange and blue in this design… this could very easily go horribly, terribly wrong.

As luck would have it, I found a gorgeous teal colored fabric in the clearance section of the very first store I went into. It was slightly more stiff that I wanted, but it was a beautiful color with nice grain lines. I was sold. However, I couldn't find any orange fabric in the entire store! ~ Aside from cotton of course ~  Is orange taboo now or something? I could find lots of burnt reds and marigold yellows… but no real oranges. Because I couldn’t very well buy one color fabric without knowing if I could find the others in the same tone, I reluctantly had to put the teal fabric back. ~ There were almost tears I tell ya ~

Over the next few days I went to every fabric store I could find in the area with no luck. There were blues… there were teals… there were browns, but no oranges. Maybe orange is only available from Sept-Nov like pumpkin pie? I was so frustrated. Was I was going to have to change my whole color scheme just because I couldn't find the right pop color?

Finally I decided I would drive the hour north to go to a second Hancock's. There is one about a stones throw from my house, but sometimes different stores in the same chain will have different fabric selections. I crossed my fingers and headed out.

My luck was in that day. In the upholstery section I found a gorgeous crinkled orange fabric. As a bonus I was about 95% sure that it was the perfect color to go with my previous clearance find. ~ that I of course didn't think to grab a sample of ~. I decided I would take the gamble and bought the entire bolt. ~ Apparently orange is a scarcity in this town… I wasn’t taking any chances. ~

I headed back to the clearance fabric and, thank my lucky stars, it was still there. I put my orange fabric sample up next to it and they went together beautifully. Yay! After that, it was pretty easy to find a brown fabric that went nicely with the other two.

But after the fabric debacle I was almost an entire week behind on constructing her costume! I had to get cracking if I was going to finish on time.

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 3
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 4
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 5

Orange and Teal ‘Steampunk’–Part 1

I have a friend who has naturally dark curly brown hair and an elusive hourglass figure. Aside from causing me extreme envy, her appearance has always has always given me the slight impression that she would be better suited to a different era. Perhaps it’s just my love of Victorian and Steampunk style clothing, but I’d been dying to get that girl in a corset and bustle for ages. So, for her birthday last year, I decided I would make it happen.

Narrowing down a general concept for this costume was extremely hard; mostly because I have hundreds, if not thousands, of reference pictures of Victorian style photos saved on my hard drive. ~ I might be a slight bit obsessed ~. Should it be a historically accurate garment, or a full out Steampunk creation complete with gadgets galore. Ugh, it was so hard to decide.

I wavered on this quite a bit. I didn’t really want to do a historically accurate gown, because part of the reason I wanted to put her in a corset and bustle was to show off her amazing figure. On the other hand, without discussing it with her first ~ due to the birthday surprise ~ I didn’t want to go with some super gadgety outfit in case it wasn’t to her liking. Plus that would have required me to learn about engineering such gadgets in a limited time frame. I plan on learning how to do these in the future… but I didn’t want to spend a month making a costume only to have the accessories be subpar.

In the end I decided to go with a design a bit down the middle. It’s not even close to historically accurate, but it’s also not crazy out there. I decided to leave off any ‘Steampunk’ embellishments, that way she could play it up whichever way the occasion called for.

 

The one major design choice I did make was bright colors. I haaaaaate how drab most Victorian and Steampunk clothes are. And there’s no real reason for it. ~ They did use color in the Victorian Era people! ... Perhaps not these colors, but colors none the less! ~

Now that I had a design, I was off to find the fabrics…

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 2
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 3
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 4
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 5

Upcoming Projects–January

Oye vey, my list of upcoming projects has officially surpassed the one handed counting limit. It’s time I jot this all down so I can keep things prioritized.

• Microwave Heat Pack - Done 1/8/12
• Pooh Bear themed Pursebud backpack Done 1/18/12
• Bathrobe - Done 1/10/12
• White Mage Hoodie - Done 1/22/12
• Pirate Corset
• Pink Aurora Dress
• B-Day present for Amy: Awaiting direction from the birthday girl.

I know it doesn’t seem like much, but with classes restarting today, and my upcoming vacation to Breckenridge at the end of the month, I’m booked!
Time to get sewing.