Vogue 1247

I now have four skirts made with Vogue 1247 (all seen on the right). This red skirt is my latest and favourite version of the Rachel Comey design sew far. What makes this one my favourite? Where to begin!

First, the colour, it is up there in my top three colours right behind orange. It is such a happy colour.

Next, I'm pleased with the length. The first three skirts I added ten inches to the original Rachel Comey design and they are hemmed up 5/8".

For the red skirt I added another two inches when I was cutting it out allowing for a wider hemline.

The hem on the first skirt (the purple and taupe print) was turned up 5/8" and topstitched by machine.

The blue and green skirt hems were sewn with a rolled hem that also took 5/8" of space.

The red skirt has a 1 1/4 hem that I serged and used my blind hem foot. I'm tickled pink with how it turned out.

I think the blind hem foot has moved into my top ten foot attachments position.

Another foot attachment that has moved into my top ten list is the walking foot.

It came with my sewing machine as part of quilt attachments. Well, anyone who knows me knows that I'm a quilter. I admire the art of quilt-making but it is not my area of expertise.

That said, I'm grateful for the sewing class at Quilt as Desired for discovering the joys of this little attachment.

I used the walking foot to stitch-in-the-ditch at my waistband seam. It worked like a dream. The stitch-in-the-ditch technique is not limited to quilting, there is a excellent blog post about it here outlining when you might want to stitch-in-the-ditch.

The magic behind the walking foot is that it has built-in feed dogs that grab and move the upper layer of fabric that is moving through the sewing machine that same time as the sewing machine's feed dogs are grabbing and moving the underside of fabric. Did that make sense?

Quilters use this specialty foot because it keeps the layers of fabric from shifting while they sew layers of fabric together. They stitch in the ditch using invisible sewing thread so that the stitches are not visible on the other side of the quilt. Cool, eh? I learn something new everyday!

Kelly at Quilt as Desired said that the walking foot would be a handy tool to use when I'm sewing my winter coat.

Have you ever used a walking foot or any other quilt attachments for your non-quilted projects? I would love to hear about it.  

Happy Sewing.