Cut21 -- Part 4 -- The Jeans

The second part of the outfit is the jeans. I knew I wanted to make some for my FMP, and to begin with, the designs were fairly mainstream, though better-fitting. As it goes with designing, the more I sketch, the sooner I come to a good idea. I came to these (note: these are my sketchbook pages, not my scruffy-book pages):

Some features I chose to include in the jeans were: a slightly lower front waist so it doesn't dig into you; a gusset between the legs to avoid the "slicer seam" problem; and purposes, a contoured waist-facing instead of a traditional straight-cut waistband, giving a better fit and less bulk, as well as cleaner lines for the aesthetic. I wanted slim-fit legs, turn-ups, and, eventually, a back yoke shaped like a traditional shirt hem, just because.

Now, had I been able to make them in my size, I would have had more freedom to finesse the fit. As it was, I was required to make them in a tall size 12 (probably a shop size 10), and had no one the right size and height to test them on. I tried the toile on myself and had to pin a considerable amount out a the waist and turn the hems up a lot more. (Images here to save data).

These are the jeans I finished with.

Notice the high back and low front, for comfort and security while riding.

Granted, they would look better on a person. :)

Here are some detail shots:

The pockets feature the soft selvedge of this non-selvedge 11oz denim.

Inside the back pocket

Crutch gusset to make cycling more comfortable.

The gusset was quite tricky to sew. I had to clip into the corners to be able to get past the crutch point. I would have used a curved gusset like Kathleen Fasenella, but I couldn't get the curved edges to be the same length as where they had to go on the jeans, so I used a diamond gusset instead. She does on her jeans anyway so it must be acceptable.

Hand-topstitching using waxed embroidery floss.

Even though I used hand-topstitching, there is a lot of machine top-stitching on these jeans too. It's virtually invisible as I used the right colour Gutermann Sew-all thread (I can't remember the number for sure, but I think it was 512). I tested a couple of thread colours and put the sample and notes in my pattern file. That must get some points. :)

No waistband -- just a waist facing with its lower edge bound. There is a hook and bar at the top too, instead of a button and buttonhole.

If/when I make another pair, I will sort out this zip issue. I will have to stop lower down (would be easier to get the right length to begin with now I've time) because this comes close to showing when the jeans are fastened.

The other issue here was that the facings are not level inside. I don't know why, because the toile seemed okay, and the pattern, I think, was correct (must check). I want to find out what caused this because it annoys me to have that fairly noticeable (when you are getting dressed) fault. >:|

And, yes. That wobbly navy stitching on the binding on the zip guard does bother me.

Anyway...

All the garments in my collection feature hand-embroidered labels. Including labels is sure to get me a few marks! :)

The yoke line, which you can only see by the Sashiko-inspired stitching, is meant to resemble a shirt hem. The lines of the pockets echo this. I used extra long belt-loops for looks. They are backed with yellow bias because I refuse to use an overlocker on Cut21 stuff.

The back pockets were cut on the cross (not the bias, the cross, in case you use the wrong term) to take advantage of the selvedge, so when they are worn there is a shading differences, annoyingly. You can see in the photo that the grain doesn't match.

So much binding!

Side seams are bound to suggest the look of selvedge jeans. I tried opening the seams and binding separately, but it looked too sporty so I chose this option.

One thing I learned when doing all this binding is that it is much easier to sew on in one go if you press it in half first, perhaps with a little bit extra showing on the underside, just to make sure it gets caught in the stitching. If you have a really good binder attachment then maybe you won't need to do this, but I don't have one.

So these are the Cut21 Jeans. I would give them about an 8 out of 10, taking design into consideration, and the neatness inside. Plus the fabric is really nice! :)

Next week, you will see the shirt in more detail.

Sabrina

P.S. Sorry for posting late this week, I was doing a trial but I'm evidently too slow to work in an alterations shop.

Cut21 -- Part 3 -- The Jacket

Okay, now I'll get onto the jacket. It's an open jacket so it has not fastening. It's meant to be simple in style, which is why there is no closing. That's a feature I might change if I ever made it again.

A sketchbook page featuring the jacket

Just because it's a simple style and has no closing, it doesn't mean to say that it was easy as pie to make. It's unlined (a lining would have made it easier in some ways) but as I refused to use a zigzag stitch or overlocker on this project, all of the seams had to be felled or bound, but the main two challenges were the pockets and facings. As you can see, this was very fiddly to bind. This was an issue that had to be amended. I did this by introducing a full-length Princess seam at the front and sewing the front edge of the pocket into that. I also changed the shape of the other side of the pocket so that it had a much less acute angle to bind, a curve. In this photo you can see the side seam, the side of the pocket, and the back peplum seam. The hardest part was going over the bulky cross seams. You have to use some finger skills here, and a humper-jumper helps. The hem was originally going to be a simple double-turn hem, but that didn't work with the steep curve at the back. So I decided to use a bias facing.

There was the conundrum of what to do about the part where the hem goes into the facing seam -- how to sew it neatly by machine? The solution was to leave the facing topstitching undone at the bottom at first, tuck the bias into it, then TS it down, being careful to match up the TS lines as discreetly as possible.

So this is the final jacket (I must sort out a nice backdrop for photography):

The back swoops down to cover you while you're riding a bike.

And a couple of detail shots:

The armscyes are bound. The stitching at the top of this one is not perfect and now it's really bothering me. I won't be letting that happen again.

Binding, facing, felled seams and front TS -- all in one shot :)

I hope you like it! It was actually the easiest part of the collection to make and took about two days, if memory serves. After I had made a few, I expect one day would suffice, especially as I wouldn't be taking photos during the process.

Sabrina

Cut21 -- Part 2 -- Concept and Consumer

I know I said I'd do the jacket post first, but then I remembered that I have a some work to show you first.

Consumer

Those among you who are fashion students or professionals will know that we have to have a consumer pinpointed. If no one wants to wear our product then there's no point in making it. We make a consumer board and profile.

Consumer Board

Consumer Profile

If I have done it right, you should be able to get a good idea of who my consumer is and what she likes by looking at the board above. Now, I am aware that I ought not to have labeled it "consumer board"; I did it because I wanted it to be quite clear that it is not a mood board, and that is hard to tell with your own work because you see it differently.

Name: Lily James (I just realised that they are Harry Potter's parent's names)

Age: 27

Profession: Minimalist Photographer

Lives in: London, but travels

My consumer is a minimalist who lives in the City so she gets around by bicycle. This has been taken into consideration with the features of the designs.

If I tell you any more than that it might affect my originality rating on my submitted work, so I'll leave it there until I get my grades. :)

Fabrics and Colours

Fabrics Board (Please forgive the blurry image; it was taken on my phone on the last day of college.)

Above is my fabrics board. I think it's my best yet. It's definitely different from the others. Somehow the hand-writing doesn't have the effect I wanted it to (hand-work against neatness); it just looks a bit unprofessional. The fabrics are stitched on. Thankfully excessive neatness was not required for my concept. :)

As you may see, all the fabrics have texture to them, and some are hand-loom. Those that aren't are from France.

We went to Paris to get our fabrics

It is the best place to get fabrics and notions! They had a whole section of a wall just for buckles and buttons! In England I am lucky to find three different buckles in a shop. I think we have the edge on customer service though. Maybe it's a cultural difference and I'm just not use to the French ways, but I found some of the sales assistants unhelpful and rude. Only some of them though. There were, of course, some very nice ones. The waiters in the restaurants and cafés are delightfully cheerful there. :)

The fabric shopping is incredible! You can find almost anything! It was so good that some of us were talking of relocating after college! :)

Charlie got her black denim there. She had tried and tried to get it in England to no avail and was so excited to get her lovely black denim. She also got some burnt orange linen for her shirt.

Alice found "the button" that inspired her collection's final designs, and fabrics to go with it. (Imagine how excited she was when we found an exhibition will over 900 different buttons!)

I got my shirting, linen, and bias binding. If I remember correctly, it totted up to about €75. The shirting is unfortunately polyester, but it was the closest thing I could find to what I wanted. I had planned to use Khadi Cotton but it was too similar to the linen I got for the jacket. I wanted a heavier weight for the jacket, nothing affordable was quite right. So I worked with what I could get. (I said you could find almost anything.)

The denim I got was 11oz Indigo denim from Merchant and Mills. It's so nice to work with! It's soft, it eases round curves for felled seams, and it's a good weight for jeans. It's just so nice! Especially after working with calico.

Next we'll get onto the jacket. :)

Sabrina

My Final Collection -- Cut21 -- Part 1

When I began my degree in Fashion Design, I often despaired at the lack of examples of Degree-level Fashion work shown online. I soon found out why there is so little to see: it's a lot of work to do and students don't have time to write about it all! That's one reason. The other is secrecy and plagiarism. No one wants their work stolen, and even if that were not an issue, when you upload your written work to the college's/university's database, it checks the Internet for similar work to make sure you haven't plagiarised it so if you blog it, it will think you've copied what is actually your own work. These are why I haven't posted about my final collection. Yes, it has been two years since I began my degree at Bishop Burton College. Yesterday was my last day a Bishop Burton College. I shed more than a few tears once I got home and read the cards that my friends gave me. I won't focus on that or I'll start up again.

Onto my final collection...

It is called Cut21. The concept is a contrast/harmony of modernism and industrialism. It's partly inspired by CC41 (which is also the inspiration for the name). I wrote a 3500 proposition on the concept and I won't bore you with it here. To sum it up, these are clothes for days when you want to kick off the world and do what you want. It's quiet rebellion in clothes, a way of saying "stuff this, I'm doing things my way".

Mood Board

Collection Board

 The outfit I made:

Final Design Board

Hand-stitched buttonhole -- look how neat it is! :D It took me about 45mins to do and at least 4 months to learn!

It consists of an open jacket, a pair of jeans, and a shirt. The jacket is the simplest thing in design and construction. The jeans are more complex and even in the final garment there are issues I would like to perfect. The shirt was, I suppose, the most complex thing to make, and quite fiddly because the fabric was quite springy and I was using 1cm seam allowances or smaller. One premise of Cut21 is that I refuse point-blank to use a stitch other than straight stitch or buttonhole and button-sewing. I did hand-stitch the top buttonhole on the shirt (and I am so pleased with it!). Also, nothing is lined. This means that all seams must be clean finished, either felled, bound or French (that reminds me, we went to Paris to get our fabric -- more on that later!).

How it all began...

In the interests of getting everything done on time, I began my work well before the module began. I began collecting images in December when I was in London. It started with Architecture as Libby (first work placement boss) was telling me about the buildings in London as we ran errands in her car. I was thinking of combining inspiration from old buildings and new ones. This evolved over the following months to being modernism combined and contrasted with industrialism. My boss at my second work placement told me about how concepts are worked with in real life. You take two things that sort of fit together, and sort of contrast, like plumbers and cowboys (both working men, but totally different work).

When I was about 7 or 8 years old I had a pencil tin with a drawing of a modernist chair on it. For my FMP I had been doodling very clean designs with swooping lines and had that chair mind. I couldn't find that chair on Pinterest, but I did find a lot of other interiors images. I wanted my collection to be based on minimalist modernism, but I knew that that wasn't really a concept.

At Wayside Flower, part of the inspiration, as I see it, is workwear. My boss introduced me to CC41 and I researched that. It was very practical, which suited me. But I am rather fed up with vintage as it is in the media (so over-hyped now). So I ended up combining the two influences and got modernism combined and contrasted industrialism. I called it Cut21 because the cut is so important. That had to be perfect. The 21 is a play on CC41 as well, but refers to the 21st Century. One of the logos is C21, which means 21st Century as well, if you are a lexicologist at OED.

I built quite a large Pinterest board with upward of 330 images on it. They vary from furniture and modern art to consumer images and toiles and beyond. Now, the images I picked were mostly what I call 'mood images', i.e. there is not a lot in them that one can design from. The way I worked in this module was to build up the idea in my head, to get me in the mindset of that aesthetic, draw a lot, and the designs would come out like that. No one had ever heard of that happening, but it worked for me. Of course I had to show some link between the images and my designs for my sketchbook, so I had to make some linking sketches. You just have to play by the rules if you want the grades. :)

This is how I worked this time:

1. Develop concept

2. Collect images that reinforce the feeling of its aesthetic

3. Get frustrated with supposed expectation to design something avant garde when that simply isn't me and I can't do it.

4. Go in a mood and design whatever I jolly well want.

3. Sketch in that mood

4. Develop silhouette based that fits that mood

5. Draw style lines that fit that mood

6. Have them be unusual

7. Show tutor and get surprising approval (sigh of relief)

8. Continue designing until you have three outfits and have run out of time.

When you are designing a collection you need a line plan. What garments do you want in your collection? I needed to design 2-3 complete outfits of 2-3 garments each. Once you know what you need to design and made, it's much easier because you have direction, a sort of to-do list (or "snag list" as people seem to call them round here). If you are going to make all the things, it is advisable to have a few base patterns that you tweak for several designs. E.g.:

Tailored jacket block → basic C21 coat → C21 jackets and coat (princess line, no collar, two-piece sleeve)

Close fitting dress block → C21 Shirts and Utility dress (princess line, back yoke, back-seam sleeve)

Jeans block → C21 jeans and shorts (curved yoke, lowered front waist, pockets, gusset)

The designs have features in common. This is working horizontally and vertically. You have the x-axis of the pieces you want (coat, jacket, shirts, dress, jeans, shorts) and the y-axis (design variations in design book). This way you get the pieces you need, and you work into the designs. It gives depth to your work.

You can see some of my sketchbook pages on my ArtsThread Portfolio here. (It's interesting to see how my work has changed over the last two years.)

On the following posts, I'll show you what I made and we'll start with the jacket because that's what I made first. :)

Sabrina

Accidental Scaling in Adobe Illustrator, and How to Fix it.

Today I toiled my dress block, the one I drafted on illustrator. According to the program, the measurements are correct. What made me check is that the dress came out too big.

In case you came to this post by google and don't know about sewing, this dress is supposed to be close-fitting, not a semi-fitting sheath dress. It also ended up too long in the bodice so the bust darts are about 3cm too low! The armscyes are also too low so raising my arms lifts the whole dress.

What caused all this you may ask. Well, I printed "borderless". On the little print preview, I couldn't see a difference. Just to check, I printed out two test squares. Each measured 10cm x 10cm on Illustrator. These are the results:

What happens when you print "with border" in Illustrator

What happens when you print "borderless" in Illustrator

As you can see, it adds 2.5mm onto 10cm. That's an automatic scale of 102.5%! Over the length of a dress this can make a big difference, going up by about half a dress size. When you're sewing close-fitting clothes, this is a paramount difference. I've learned my difference: do NOT print "borderless" in Adobe Illustrator.

I thought I'd better post about this for the benefit of everyone who has this trouble, not just sewers and pattern makers. I hope it has helped you as much as it will me. :)

Sabrina

How to Position Horizontal Buttonholes Correctly

If your buttons and buttonholes are not positioned correctly, your garment will either be too tight or will gape and the collar will not meet at the CF (I know).

Most sewing and pattern-making books tell you that your buttonholes overlap the CF by 3mm (1/8") but, unless you have a very wide shank or very distant stitches on your button, that will be far too much. As it turns out, there is a simple trick for centring your button and positioning the overlap so that your garment will not gape.

Positioning your Horizontal Buttonhole

Centre the button over the centre front, put a fabric pen (or a needle with a knotted thread) down the hole that is nearest the fold of the fabric, with the needle nearest the middle of the button (as if the button were looking away from the fold). This mark will be the start of your buttonhole.

The Length of the Buttonhole

The length of buttonhole will be the length of the button + 3mm OR you can wrap a ribbon round the button's diameter and pin it tight, remove the ribbon, and the folded length + 3mm (1/8"). Measure this distance from the start of the buttonhole (the point you have marked) away from the fold. This is your marked buttonhole.

Marking the rest of the buttonholes

The rest of the buttonholes will start the same distance from the CF and be the same length. One will be at a button's length from the top, one will be on the bust-line, one at the waist. The rest are distributed evenly in between. It is easiest to lay the buttons on the pattern or garment and arrange them as well as possible. Then space them as evenly as possible.

If you want a set number of buttons you can find the space between the buttonholes like this: length from top buttonhole to bottom buttonhole) divided by (number of buttons - 1).

E.g. if you have 36cm from the top buttonhole to the bottom one, and you want 10 buttons, divide 36cm by (10-1 = 9) = 4cm between buttonholes. 

This is a lot of buttonholes for such a length, but it works as an example because of the simple maths.

The distance from the edge

The distance the garment edge should be from the CF line is the width of the button, or 3/4 of that depending on which you prefer. So if your button is 16mm wide, the edge should be 12-16mm from the CF line. This leaves a nice small amount of fabric between the button and the edge.

I working this out from instructions in the chapter about facings in Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph Armstrong.

Sabrina

Bernina 380 Review

[Image from www.berninausa.com]

It was a bumpy ride getting used to my new machine. Apparently Berninas take a bit of getting used to. The top-stitching is generally superb and there are so many lovely decorative stitches! I love the Bernina feet and the shop (on-line, ordered by phone) was good enough to throw in the Manual Buttonhole foot 3 for free and the compensation plates for half-price!

The trouble was with the buttonholes. I somehow (perhaps unreasonably) expected the machine to make perfect buttonholes while I sat back and watched, not even holding the fabric or taking care sewing. Of course this does not work and left me wanting to return the machine.

The other issue, which I soon resolved, was a buzzing noise that started as soon as I switched the machine on. It turned out that the person who checked the machine, either at the shop or at the factory, had left the bobbin winder on. When I turned that off, the buzzing stopped and it's fine now, even when I wind a bobbin. (The bobbin winder is really great by the way: it's easy to use and stops itself when the bobbin is full!)

So I emailed the shop about it and she helped me. I think there must be a universal law that the minute one complains about something officially, the problem corrects itself. That is what happened here. I sewed with care and attention and perfectly fine buttonholes appeared. 8-|

So now I am quite delighted with my machine. It does such lovely scallop-stitching.

The Machine

It is bigger than I thought it would be, but somehow looks smaller in its cover. I thought I would have preferred it in silver, but the black actually doesn't bother me. 

On of the first things that struck me was has small the stitch plate is. Here it is next to a spool of Gutermann thread for comparison:

See, it's tiny! 

Feet

Waking Foot

And the feet are smaller than they look in videos. Here's the walking foot, which I thought would be big:

[Here you can see how well the walking foot kept the plaid matched up,

even without my forked pins, as long as I kept it matched up as I guided the fabric. 

Note: this is not a welt seam, I just had a tiny seam allowance on one side.]

The feet of the walking foot are not toothy like the feed dogs; their sort of rubbery. I wonder how one could keep them fluff-free?

It comes with three soles: one for general sewing (already attached), one for quilting, and one for blind-hemming. It also comes with two stitching guides (a left one and right one) for parallel quilted lines. They attach with a little doohickey that's in the box.

Jeans foot #8

[Bernina Jeans Foot #8. Image from berninausa.com]

This is good for any straight stitching. The outer edge gives you a seam guide of 7mm from the centre needle position, but you can move the needle over 1 notch for a slightly bigger or smaller seam allowance. The notch on front of the foot gives a 1/8" seam guide which is good for tiny seams, and the inside of the toe gives you a tiny-width guide (probably 1/16" but I haven't measured) for tiny, tiny pin tucks and edge-stitching.

I think it's sold as being good for going over thick seams, but I prefer foot #1 for that, which is the same width, but less (and I use the word hesitantly) bulky than foot #8 and has a wide needle hole for wider stitches.

Blind-hem foot #5

[Bernina Blind-hem foot #5. Photo from berninausa.com]

The blind hem on my new Bernina B380 is the best I have ever done on a machine! It only take a tiny amount of the outer fabric, and would probably be nearly invisible if I used the right colour thread (instead of just what was handy) and loosened the upper tension a notch.

This foot is also excellent for top-stitching and edge-stitching. You can even use it over humps. It is different to edge-stitching foot #10 (not included) in that #10 doesn't have the metal bit in the needle area and so is probably better of stitching-in-the-ditch, but Sandra Betzina uses the blind-hem foot #5 for that in POWER SEWING (you can see it in the photos in the book).

Zipper foot #4

[Bernina Zipper foot #4. Image from berninausa.com]

This foot is about 7.5mm wide, which is about nearly 5/16" wide.

Though the manual tells you to have your needle the farthest left or right position, you can have it on notch closer to the centre if you wish. I'm not sure whether this foot could be used to insert invisible zips because there is a small distance between the needle and the edge of the foot, even with the needle in the extreme left/right position. That's why I got...

Manual Buttonhole Foot #3

[Bernina Manual Buttonhole Foot #3. Image from berninausa.com]

Ha! Did you think I was going to say "invisible zipper foot"? In POWER SEWING by Sandra Betzina, she says, and shows in a photo, that you can insert invisible zips with the manual buttonhole foot #3. I have also seen this foot used for heirloom sewing techniques, and it can be used for sewing cording too. Well, you know how I like versatility, so I asked for this foot and they kindly included it for free. (It isn't included as standard.)

Open Embroidery Foot #20

[Bernina Open Embroidery Foot #20. Image from berninausa.com]

This foot helps a lot when you sew satin stitches because it has a wide groove underneath to allow the dense stitches to pass through. If you tried satin stitching with foot #1 you'd find the patterns kept getting shorter-looking and shorter-looking because the dense stitches build up at the presser foot and stop the fabric from feeding through easily, like a traffic jam. I'm not much good at doing any other effects with this foot yet, but that might be due to a lack of stabiliser.

Overlock foot #2

[Bernina Overlock Foot #2. Image from berninausa.com]

A sewing machine's "overlock" feature is not to be confused with an overlocker/serger. It does not cut off the fabric for you. It simply sews over the cut edge of the fabric to hold the fabric's threads together and prevent fraying.

Using this foot with vari-lock stitch #3 (which looks like a shorter, mirrored blind-stitch) you can sew and neaten narrow seams in one go (as long as you have cut them already of course). It is good for jersey and can be used at necklines and such things on t-shirts. If you are going to use a zigzag stitch with this foot, move the needle a notch to the right, and widen the stitch so that the needle doesn't hit the little metal bar on the foot.

The bar is what keeps the raw edge down to stop it from curling up. It also means that there is extra thread in the stitch, which Bernina says allows some stretch to remain (presumably helping to prevent broken stitches and seams).

Also included are the reverse pattern foot #1 and the automatic buttonhole foot #3A (the A means automatic). Foot #1 is the standard foot, and it's fairly obvious what foot #3A does, so I won't go into those.

Features

I'm glad I got this model because the mirror function really does come in handy. The pattern end function is great too. These functions stay activated for all stitches even as long as you have them switched on. So if you mirror and pattern-end one stitch and then change stitches, it will mirror and pattern-end the next stitch. Easy enough to deactivate though; you just press the button again or press [clr].

Automatic Buttonholes

There are four automatic buttonholes on the Bernina 380: a standard buttonhole, a stretch buttonhole, a keyhole buttonhole, and a bound-buttonhole/leather buttonhole. Each is adjustable in stitch width and length.

[Buttonholes on a remnant of stretch denim]

[Standard buttonholes. I think I made them narrower than standard. Here you can also see two of my favourite decorative stitches: a flower and a tracery scallop.]

[Bound buttonhole stitch on the left, Keyhole buttonhole on the right.]

[More Keyhole buttonholes (centre) and standard buttonholes (outer)  --Yes, I missed the B out of my name on the alphabet stitches.]

I think there are several uses for the bound buttonhole stitch:

• bound buttonholes (obviously)
• buttonholes on non-woven fabrics
• sewing on labels
• bound/welt pockets
• embroidered letterbox slots
• staying hand-stitched buttonholes should you wish to make some

Any other ideas?

Knee-lift

While this is necessary for attaching the buttonhole compensation plates, I don't know that I will use it all that often, at least not while my sewing table is also the dining room table. I consider it quite unladylike to sit without one's legs together, don't you? I wouldn't want it to become a habit. Still, it's nice to have it should I want to use it.

Sewing table/extension table

This is very nice to have. It takes a bit of strength to put it on and get it off, but it makes free-motion embroidery so much easier. Plus, it came with an accessory that I didn't know what included: the sliding seam guide! I haven't had a use for it yet, but I've only been playing with my new B380 so far.

It has marking on it for measurements in both directions, taking centre needle position as point 0. There is also a bias marking for sewing corners. I imagine this is for quilters, but I haven't done much quilting so I can only assume it's for piecing triangles and such things.

Foot pedal with self-storing cord

The self-storing cord is one of my favourite features, and will be appreciated by anyone who hates having loose wires in their drawers.

Cover with pockets

I can keep all my accessories with my Bernina 380 because they all fit in the pockets that are on three sides of the cover. I keep my walking foot, buttonhole compensation plates, and knee lift in the left one; my foot pedal and power cord in the right one; and the extension table, manual, accessory catalogue, and accessory box in the large one at the back, which has a flap.

The cover, when it's new, has that horrible smell of plastic. If you fell prey to the dance-mat craze of the early noughties, you will know the smell. But it's beginning to wear off now, after four or five days.

Accessory Box

This is a zip-up case with a sort of velourish divided section for the feet and othe accessories. Most of the space is for the feet. In the bottom right hand corner is where you keep the buttonhole foot #3A, right next to the bobbins (5 are included; one is is the machine). They also include some Mettler thread, which I think is rubbish because it's so fluffy and leaves lint on top of your machine when you wind a bobbin, so I'll stick to Gutermann. Anyway, I've left the Mettler thread in the large section of the box along with the spool guards, needles, quick-unpick (which I think is the sharpest one I've ever had) and those foam things that go on the horizontal spool pin before the spool to stop it from rattling or unwinding too fast (I think).

I also keep the stitch card in there. Some people find these annoying, but they're just as good as having the stitch on-screen to me, if not more convenient.

What made me choose the Bernina 380

As you may know, my Brother XR6600 spat a needle end at my eye because the needle bar had moved (thankfully, it didn't go in my eye, but very nearly) so I would not use it anymore. I still had a Toyota 21-DES but that is a very simple sewing machine and wouldn't do much of what was in the book Fine Machine Stitching that I got for my birthday. So I wanted a more advanced sewing machine. I also wanted one that was built to last, and you can see photographs of inside the Bernina 380 on the internet so I knew it was sturdy (if somewhat heavier).

I was considering the Bernina 530 because of the extra stitches, wider sewing space and adjustable foot pressure, but it's bigger, heavier and more expensive. Plus, people who actually own the B380 (and the 1008 which doesn't have adjustable foot pressure either) have said that their machines sew through chiffon just as easily as through heavy wools. Plus the B380 comes with a walking foot, which makes all the difference with stretchy fabrics that are prone to going wavy. I'm glad I chose the B380 because it's quite heavy enough and big enough for me. I don't think I could have lifted the B530 without straining myself.

Conclusion

I don't think I could include in one post all that you can do with the Bernina 380. I do mostly dressmaking, and I am getting interested in practical heirloom sewing and will be doing only a little quilting (only extremely basic for making a laptop cover), so techniques I learn will come up on this blog, even if only mentioned. I now have a machine that can do beautiful decorative sewing (including alphabets!) and exquisite top-stitching, and a myriad of other effects once I learn them and have a go. I think as I go along, I may be rewriting the manual for the Bernina 380 on this blog, because the manual leaves something to be desired (more content).

Do you have the Bernina 380? If you do and you have blogged about it, please leave links in the comments below!

Sabrina

P.S. I got Bernina 380 from over the phone. It came two days after I ordered it and the extra accessories (buttonhole foot #3 and compensation plates) came the day after that.