Hello! First up, apologies for these terrible, dark photos. We tried to take some pics just before we went on holiday but clearly the light levels were too gloomy. So even after some editing you still can't see what's going on too well. Anyway!
I tend to find my projects largely fall into one of two camps:
- A garment or accessory I really want to wear or use
- An idea or thought experiment or that I want to see come to fruition
This project was definitely from the second camp. In my experience, when it comes to working with scraps, slinky woven fabrics such as viscose and Tencel are the hardest to find uses for. I've tried piecing them together to make a garment from previously, but it didn't hold up very well because of my choice of seam finishing, plus I wasn't in love with the outcome stylistically. So I wanted to see if I would have more success by using a similar piecing technique to the one I adopted for my patchwork quilted denim jacket project.
Piecing:
I started by getting all my slinky woven scraps out and selecting some that formed a nice colour palette. As you can tell, I'm really into autumnal shades such as mustard, rust, teal and forest green. It's fun seeing my previous garment projects represented in this selection! There's leftovers here from a dress that I still wear a fair bit, a Vali top that I love, a rust coloured tank that didn't work for me that I gave to a friend, my slinky Luna pants, plus a couple of bits from the scraps bin at work.
The next step was to dissect larger scraps and trim everything up into rectangles. I find my rotary cutter, cutting mat and set square make this part of the process pretty quick. Then with the rectangles laid out, I started to find a pair that each have an edge about the same length. I pined, stitched and overlocked them together, then pressed the seam allowances to one side (I do this in batches to save time and energy).
I would then add another shape to that joined pair, or another pair of shapes, with an edge a similar length and so on. The shapes then started to come together to make larger 'islands' of fabric. You'll often get to a point where you need to cut some 'custom' shapes to make the design work, so I kept some of the original scraps back for that. The main piece of advice is to not overthink the piecing process. It's super easy to spend too long questioning the position of each rectangle in relation to the rest and drive yourself insane!
It took quite a long time to eventually land on what I was actually going to make from these pieced together scraps. At first I thought a top, then I realised that I'm in far shorter supply of bottoms and I thought a wide-legged pair of culottes might look good. Then I realised I had enough scraps to make full-length, palazzo-style trousers, so I went with that plan. The pattern I created for this project is a hybrid of two other patterns. I used the top part of the trouser section from the Peppermint magazine/Ready to Sew Valley jumpsuit (then lengthened the rise in both the front and back). Plus I used the leg width and shape of the Wide-leg jumpsuit pattern by The Assembly Line, but eliminated the side seam as per the Valley jumpsuit. Having no side seam was going to result in less waste and fewer awkward shapes of pieced fabric at the side seams.
Construction:
The 'fabric' I was creating by piecing scraps together slowly continued to grow until I could see that it had become big enough to fit the pattern piece on top. Obviously, I needed two of these large shapes of fabric. Then I cut out a pair of the pattern piece and constructed then garment as if I had cut it out of a flat piece of virgin fabric. The waist is elasticated, the channel constructed by simply turning down the top edge twice and edge stitching.
Thoughts:
I LOVE that I managed to make an entire garment from leftovers from other projects, the scraps that would so often just go into the bin. I'm not sure if I'm super into the finished look, but I'm certainly into how they feel! Tencel and viscose fabrics usually have a wonderful drape to them anyhow, but all the additional seaming on this project has given the fabric some extra weight and made them somehow feel extra luxe. I do notice the seams on the reverse side a little against my skin, but I wouldn't describe it as unpleasant or annoying.
I really hope that more sewers/sewists develop the habit of saving their scraps and leftovers where possible to use for other things. It's a good way to extract more value from the natural resources and the financial costs that went into the fabric in the first place, and it can keep textiles out of landfill for a bit longer.
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