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Tag Archives: sewing

How to cut a really large circle from cloth without a pattern

Have you ever found yourself in a position where you needed a really large circle (or several really large circles) of cloth and yet the pattern you had just been using to make these circles inexplicably disappears?  No?  Well, I have.  And should you ever find yourself in a situation requiring a large cloth circle and you have nary a pattern around with which to make it, you can be thankful that you’ve read this tutorial on how to cut a very large circle out of cloth without a preset pattern.

Materials:

  • enough cloth for your really large circle
  • tape measure
  • scissors
  • straight pins
  • iron/ironing board

Procedure:

  1. Determine how large you need your circle to be.  I needed a circle that was 20″ in diameter.  That means the circle has a radius of 10″.  (You know, d=2r.)
  2. Fold your cloth into quarters, making sure that each side is at least the length of the radius of your circle.  This way you only need to draw out a nice arc that is a quarter of the circle, instead of drawing four nice, perfectly matched arcs to make a circle.
  3. Iron down the creases.  You’ll want nice, sharp creases to get a cleaner, circle-ier circle.
  4. With the beginning of your tape measure firmly fixed on the corner of the single fold, mark out the radius along the cloth.  The more marks you make, the more accurate your circle will be.  Also, be sure that the beginning of your tape measure is in the correct corner!  You want all the loose edges away from the beginning of the tape measure.
  5. Connect all your marks in an arc.  Or don’t if you think you can eyeball it.
  6. Pin all layers of the cloth together near the edge, making sure that everything is smooth and even, and cut along your mark.  If you don’t pin, you may get a very strange looking circle indeed.
  7. Unfold your freshly crafted circle and iron out the creases, if so desired.

I had actually doubled up the cloth and made two 20″ diameter circles at the same time.  This is really thin cotton though.  I wouldn’t recommend doing that if you’re working with heftier cloth.  Your circles will come out slightly oblong and be different sizes.

Incidentally, right after I took all the pictures for the tutorial, I found the pattern I made for 20″ circles.  It was sitting smugly on my bookshelf the entire time.  So annoying.  Also, you could do this with basically anything out of which you need to make a large circle.  You might want to leave the ironing steps out for things like paper and stuff, though.

Why do I need such large cloth circles, you ask?  It’s a secret.  But my secretive projects are nearly finished.  So…soon…soon shall be the reveal…

Hemming jeans while keeping the original seam

There are a lot of reasons as to why you might need to hem your pants.  Perhaps you are really short and can only find pants that are really long.  Perhaps you are rather tall and have an irrational fear of pants that are too short, so you always seek out and buy pants that are entirely too long.  Perhaps you bought your pants from an outlet and it happened to have one pant leg that was longer than the other.  If it’s the latter scenario, I suggest you try shopping someplace else where you can find pants that are clearly not defects and factory rejects.  But anyway, whatever the case, sometimes you just need to hem your pants.  For dressy pants or chinos and such, this normally isn’t much of a problem.  A normal cut, pin, (iron), and sew is good enough.  But what about jeans?  Jeans have an annoying distressed hem and if you use the typical cut and sew method, it’s very obvious that you’ve hemmed your jeans and sometimes…they look really ridiculous, especially if you don’t have the same color accent thread as everything else.  So, here’s a tutorial on how to hem your jeans and still keep the original seam.  Huzzah!

I know this has been done before.  I’m mostly doing this for myself so that the next time I buy jeans that are entirely too long because I have an irrational fear of having pants that are too short, I’ll kind of remember what I did this time so I can do it the next.

Materials:

  • your jeans that are entirely too long
  • appropriate jeans colored thread
  • a sewing machine with the zipper foot
  • straight pins
  • iron and ironing board

 

Procedure:

  1. Determine how much the offending jeans need to be shortened.
  2. Form a cuff with half of the measured distance from the bottom of the cuff to the seam.
    I am a fan of ironing before sewing because it makes everything lie flat.  So, now is also the time to iron.
  3. Attach your zipper foot so that the seam will be on the left side of the foot and adjust the needle to the center position.
  4. Sew away.  If you have a sickly sewing machine or if the inseam is just really thick, stop right before you start sewing into the seam and back stitch.  Raise the presser foot and move the pant leg so that you are sewing after the seam.  Remember to back stitch.  There’s no need to strip the gears in the machine trying to get a needle through the seam.
  5. Iron down the seam and flip it inside.
  6. Iron down.
  7. Move the zipper foot so that the seam will be on the right side of the foot and sew the cuff down.  Same deal with the inseam.
  8. Aaaand…finished!
  9. If you feel that the area around the inseam needs some re-enforcement, a few quick hand stitches will do the trick.  I used a backstitch.  Feel free to use whatever you like.  I also still did not actually go through the seam.  The needle I had available was kind of wimpy and I did not feel like poking the eye of the needle through my thumb that day.  But if you’d like to, go right ahead.  A needle through the thumb kind of loses its appeal after the first few times.  Also, I didn’t bother cutting off the excess material because there wasn’t that much.  If you have a lot of material, you might want to cut it off and then finish with some kind of zig zag stitch or with a serger to keep the cut edge from fraying.