Piping: The Hawthorn Jacket

Hawthorn jacket is a fun jacket made from fabrics that you might not work with every day and these are some reflective fabrics. So there's a fleece backed silver reflective fabric. It's nice and shiny here. And then we have our contrast black reflective fabric here. And again, this is something that you might not work with every day and might be unfamiliar with using. However you should still treat it like you would, again this is a fleece backed fabric so it's got some stretch to it. This one also has some stretch to it. It's on a knit. So some of the same basic principles that you would apply to sewing and working with a knit, you can apply to this fabric as well with a few exceptions. So for me, I found that when I was working with this fabric I actually had to switch up my needle types. So I kept running into some skip stitches issues when I was using my ballpoint needle. So I actually switched and used a Microtex needle which is this extra sharp, a very sharp needle. And that's what gave me the best stitch quality with this fabric. So again, I mentioned in the very beginning that you wanna have a variety of needles for many of these projects whether that's your all purpose, your universal stretch Jersey ballpoint, Microtex sharps, any of those. And with your fabric you should always test out a little sample first with the thread you're gonna use, the needle you're gonna use, the fabric you're gonna use, the stitch and stitch length. And just make sure it's gonna work. So again, I did that with my fabric before I got started. Had a couple issues with that ballpoint, you know, so I went ahead and used the Microtex. So just a fun little tip to always make sure you're getting the best possible stitch quality on all of your garments. Another thing with this fabric is that it is very much like, almost like a leather or a full leather or a vinyl and that any time you pierce through this fabric, it's going to create a permanent mark. So that's fine when you're stitching because obviously you wanna be doing the stitching there even if it's top stitching you're gonna wanna see those stitching lines. But just know that for when you are pinning your fabric. So I am someone who generally pins perpendicular to the edge of the fabric. So if this is my fabric this is where I want to be stitching. I generally insert my pins perpendicular to the fabric because I want that pinhead off to the right so when I'm stitching it's very easy to pull those pins out as I go. However, with this fabric, you want to make sure that you are only pinning within the seam allowance. So this project, like many of the other projects, are constructed using a one half inch seam allowance. Which means any pinning that I do, I wanna make sure it is within one half inch of the edge. And either I can still do it perpendicular and just make sure that I'm within that half inch or just switch and put my pins in parallel to the edge of the fabric, again, with the head facing me. So again, it's easy to pull out as I stitch up to it but that way I know that any pin mark or any marring I'm doing on that fabric is happening within the seam allowance. And it's not gonna be a permanent mark that I then can't cover up on my jacket. So know that going into working with these two fabrics for the Hawthorn jacket. But aside from that, they're still very easy to work with. Very easy to sew. So if you take those tips into consideration and it turns into a very, very awesome jacket when you put it together. One of my favorite details on the jacket is the piping. So if you have never made your own piping before, it's definitely something that you can do. And the great thing about making your own piping as opposed to using a store-bought piping is that you can change up the size or thickness, if you will, of the piping. So generally piping that's pre-made is gonna be on a bias tape. And it's about an eighth of an inch maybe a little bit more in terms of diameter or thickness of the courting. For this pattern, it recommends quarter inch and you can get quarter inch or you can even get, this is a little bit bigger 'cause I wanted to make sure that you could see it. But you can use any thickness of cord that you want that. Thicker the cord the more pronounced it's gonna be on your garments so take that into consideration. But to make your own piping, it's really, really easy. So with this jacket for making the piping and of course there's a zipper you're going to need to insert at the end, you wanna have a zipper foot. And a lot of people recommend making the piping with the zipper foot also. And I'm gonna say, this is my little tip, I make my piping with my regular foot that way my stitching, which I'm gonna show in just a second, is not very, very close to the actual courting. That way when I insert my piping into my jacket, I can stitch as close to that courting as I want to and I know I'm not going to have the stitching from the construction of my piping showing at all. So I have my regular presser foot on my machine and I'm just going to adjust my needle position to the left. So it's as close to the left side of the presser foot as I can get it. You need to cut a strip of your contrast reflective fabric to make your piping. This is another one of those fabrics where as soon as you cut it, it wants to roll up on itself. So this is a strip of fabric. It just looks like a roll right now because it doesn't wanna to lay flat. So the great thing about when you're making your piping is you don't have to be super precise about the width of strip you cut to start. So with this here, depending on your piping, if you're using a quarter inch cord you want about an inch, an inch and a half inch strip. I went ahead and just cut one much larger. This is about a three inch strip just to make it easier to work with 'cause you can trim it down afterwards. So cut your strip of fabric. It doesn't even have to matter if the edges are perfectly straight. Just give yourself some room to work and then lay your cord in the middle of that fabric and wrap the fabric right around. Once you have wrapped just the top, I'm not gonna pin this because again, this is a fabric where it's very hard to pin because it leaves those permanent marks in the fabric. So I'm just going to hold it, put it under my presser foot and lower that down. So I've got my presser foot holding my fabric down and I have it pulled over to where the presser foot is tight against the courting and then I'm going to stitch. And again, I don't have my zipper foot on because I want my stitching to be just a little bit outside of the edge of that courting. But all I'm gonna do is stitch right along that edge. I'm using my left hand to make sure that my fabric and my cord doesn't move and I'm using my right hand just to sort of help make sure everything stays nice and straight as I'm going underneath that presser foot. I'm stopping every inch or so to adjust my fabric again because I didn't pin it so I need to do that as I go. And I'm really just making sure that my courting is staying for the most part in the middle of the fabric. Again, I did not cut a super straight, super perfect precise length or width of strip. I just cut myself a strip of fabric that I knew was plenty big enough. So you're just gonna do this all along your length of courting. So if you are following along with the pattern, you will read on the pattern that it tells you to make one really long piece of courting first and then you can just cut from it to put it in all areas of the jacket. You can do that or if you want to lay your piece of courting out along your front and side front pieces and make individual pieces of piping, you can do that as well. So I'm gonna go all the way down until I've run out of cord or I've run out of fabric, whichever one you run out of first, and I can go ahead and clip my threads. Now you'll notice that my stitching is about an eighth of an inch away from the actual edge of the cording. And that is what I want because what I want is when I stitch this into my project then I can stitch very, very close to that courting. And I'm not worried about seeing the stitching line at all. So don't think you have to have your zipper foot to make the piping but you do want the zipper foot to install it. But once you have done that line of stitching now because there's that courting in there it's a little bit easier for your fabric to lay flat. It doesn't wanna roll in on itself as much and now you want to take and trim the edges. So again, I didn't cut a one inch or one and a half inch strip to start. I just cut, again, it was about two and a half inch, three inch strip. So it's much longer and much wider than it needs to be. Again, you are going to be cutting, I'm sorry, sewing using your half inch seam allowance. So it's easier if your tape is only one half inch. And by that I mean, I'm going to take my ruler. I'm gonna lay it down on my cord and I'm going to push my ruler up along the cord until it is on there just as it was on my sewing machine. And meaning I can't, like my ruler is not on top of my cord and there's no excess fabric between my ruler and my cord. I'm right up against it. And then I'm gonna go ahead and come in here with my scissors to give myself a little visual mark if you're not really good at eyeballing half inch. It's always good to measure and now I can come in and trim this. And if I want to measure a couple of times along the way I can otherwise if you feel like you can cut a fairly straight line, you can go ahead and do that. So I'm just going to do a little bit here to show you that I'm now cutting this down to where my piping itself is one half inch from this edge here to right up against the courting. I want it right at a half inch because, again, we're doing our construction using a half inch steam lines. So that means now when I'm putting this between my front and my side front piece, I can align all of my raw edges, stitch exactly at a half inch, and then I know that my piping is going to be right along the edge of that seam, right where I want it. It's not going to be too loose. It's not going to be too far out from the seam. It's going to be perfectly right into that seam. So make your piping using whatever width of strip you want to start with, whatever is easiest for you to work with. Go ahead and use your regular presser foot. Then once you've made it, measure from the edge of your courting out and trim that down to again, if you're following along with the pattern, half-inch seam allowances for this. If you're inserting piping into something else and you're using a different seam allowance at a future date, make sure it's whatever seam allowance you're using and then you can align those raw edges and have perfect piping in your garments every time.