Sewing is a creative process, yet recently it has felt boring and chore-like. It has become a bit stale, and I realized these feelings in me when I actually considered ditching garment sewing for quilting. Quilting! For someone who still can’t quite grasp why you’d cut up perfectly good fabric just to sew it back together, that’s saying something. Yet, from my outsider’s perspective, quilting seems to offer a playful exploration of color and composition.
Ah-ha – the lightbulb moment – I am desiring more fun, creativity, and ownership than simply matching fabrics to patterns and diligently following instructions is offering.
And Yet, how to add fun while still making clothes I’ll actually wear. I recognize there’s a fine line with creative clothing. Too many bold choices can easily tip a garment into “wacky” or even “costume.” What I truly need to fulfill this creative void are those subtle details. The things that are there, and look normal, yet unusual, or the details that require a closer look to even be noticed.
Regardless of what sparked this current boredom and sewing paralysis, a breakthrough arrived, at least on paper. What follows is over a dozen ideas for future garments. Details which will inject more playfulness, and sometimes add a challenge, which is always good for growth, while giving us all the option to maintain subtlety or blow it out of the water – whatever suits the garment and the occasion.
Our clothes, like us, can be wonderfully unique.
Add Stuff
Add Embroidery – A figurative motif, or stitches that enhance the print of the fabric, or something to add visual structure where the garment has none.
Add Appliqué – This could be a patch, a strip of other fabric, a piece of lace, a printed motif cut from a fabric, a quilt block, or a piece of hand-woven fabric.
Add Trim – Remember Rick-Rack? Bring it back. Or mini pom poms? Trim down the side seam of your pants, over the empire waist seam or narrow trim around a sleeve hem split. Jumbo rick-rack can be used for straps on a sun dress or tank top.
Add a Pocket – There was a preschooler in the school I worked whose mother sewed a new pocket onto her dress every few weeks. (We had pocket day on Fridays when we counted everyone’s pockets). Her dress was so cute after a few of these pockets were added and she was very proud of it. Patch pockets, cargo pockets, a kangaroo pocket on a shirt, all of these change the style and add practicality.
Add piping to a seam – The piping can be contrasting or matching. It can be single row of piping or a double or even triple row. Piping is easy to make and easy to add.
Mix Up the Fabrics
Colorblocking – clothing with interior seams is ideal for colorblocking but if the 80’s taught us anything, it was that anything can be colorblocked.
Patchwork – piecing your fabric together before cutting out the pattern. This is a great way to use up scraps or to repurpose older clothing.
Interior Pieces – Make pocket bags, pocket linings, collar stand or collar stand facings, under collars, cuff facings, tower plackets, and facings from larger scraps or smaller cuts of fabric; cotton prints, stripes, a contrasting color or your signature color as long as the fabric is a similar weight and can be laundered in the same fashion as the garment fabric.
Collars – Add interest to a coat (as well as warmth) by making the facing in fleece or faux fur. Or add a bit of Lux by replacing the facing with satin.
Distort the fabric – Before you cut out the pattern, change the fabric. Add block printing, or hand paint a motif or design, add decorative stitches by machine or hand, or bleach out or overdye the entire yardage or only certain areas of the fabric.
Sneaky Inside Details
Surprise Inside – Use a fun lining in your jackets like a bold color or fun print.
Protect and Decorate – Finish your seam allowance with a Hong Kong finish in a contrasting fabric or print. Or overlock your seam allowance in a fun, contrasting color thread.
Secret Message – Sew or write a message to yourself inside the garment where only you can see it. Or sew in a secret pocket to keep your Lucky Charm close.
Know the back of your garment in the dark – Add a fun or serious label, or a tag made from scraps so you can get dressed in the dark. Or sew a loop to the back neck so you can hang the garment from a hook.
Closures can be Creative Too
Swap – A button closer can be replaced with a separating zipper, a laced-up front, or kilt buckles. Replace an exposed zipper with an invisible zipper and vice versa
Waste Not – Use up buttons from your stash they don’t have to match but they should be the same size.
Pop of Color- Stitch one buttonhole in a different color thread (do you have a signature color?) Sew on one button or all the buttons with a contrasting color thread.
Change the button spacing – adding more or less buttons than originally called for (but add snaps to keep the garment closed).
Stitching Fun
Color – Use contrasting thread for topstitching
Texture – Use a zigzag or decorative machine stitch for topstitching.
Add or Subtract – Add lots of extra topstitching or remove all the topstitching from a garment that traditionally would have topstitching.
Inside Out – Hem the garment inside out, use a flat lock stitch on the serger/overlocker, or add rows of stitching that have only a decorative purpose.
Mess with the Construction
Bind it off -Contrasting or matching binding can replace the hem of a garment or the fold-over, top edge of a patch pocket.
Slits and Slashes – Add side slits or take them away on shirt and pant hems. Or, heck, add slits anywhere.
Make another seam – sort of like patchwork, cut your pattern symmetrically or asymmetrically, (add seam allowance) and sew the pieces back together for more seams. These could replace a dart for shaping or be strictly random and decorative. Especially fun with striped fabric because you can rotate the stripes.
Ruch a seam – Slash and spread the pattern piece and then gather it into the seam for a drapy and soft, ruched seam
Asymmetry – Making a hemline asymmetrical is more common, so how about making the neckline asymmetrical? Be sure to throw it off-center enough so it looks purposeful 😉
Frills – Add a ruffle to any edge, at any width.
Super Size It – Make the collar larger, smaller, pointer or rounder or scalloped or… you get the idea
Tie it up – Extend part of the hem of a dress, skirt, tunic or shirt to tie it together.
It’s Your Project
Adding details, or making changes like any of the above-mentioned ideas, makes the sewing process more creative, challenging, and fun, which makes me more excited, motivated, and inspired to sew.
Our me-made clothes are ours, why not own that “one-of-a-kind-ness” even more and have fun doing it.
If you have any ideas please share in the comments below.