Thursday, March 18, 2010

Stabilizer Panel Attached To Cape

It was a busy and productive night for me yesterday, and I did one of the primary tasks that I purchased my new sewing machine for. And it worked, so I'm very pleased.

The MAIN, if not only reason I purchased a new sewing machine is so that I could sew through the cape and attach it to the stabilization panel. The machine I had before could not do this.

Before I attached the panel, I had to sew on some velcro. I started by doing a test patch on an older version of the panel, the one I had screwed up when I cut the darts. It was actually super easy to do, and I used a zig zag stitch, just like they did on the screen used cape.



With that test behind me, it was time to move onto the real deal. I went into Adobe Illustrator and traced out the pattern of the velcro patch from a reference photo I had of the inside of the cape. I then printed out that pattern, and used it to cut out some velcro.



Here's the final piece. Even though I found those "attach a patch" velcro slabs online a week ago, they were still not wide enough for my needs. I ended up sewing two pieces of velcro together to get a piece wide enough for my pattern.



I had to make two, one of which was a mirror of the previous one. I just flipped over my paper pattern and drew it out on the other piece of velcro. It was super simple to get them sewn onto the panel. The denim is flexible, but not stretch, which makes my life a lot easier.



Then for the hardest part, attaching the panel to the cape. Well, I THOUGHT it would be the hardest part but it was actually really simple. The new needle and the killer sewing machine made quick work of it.



There is still more work to do on this, but I believe the hard part is now behind me. And that is a beautiful thing!

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