Zigzagin' all around

Hi hi!

Today I should have printed the back symbol on Date's coat but.. I wasn't in school. I will do that next time instead.. I figured today I could at least zigzag all around every part.. not like it's really needed because the fabric hardly frays at all but yeah, I just do it as an extra precaution and because I want to be able to press the seams open later.

Zigzaging is such a basic thing to do so I don't feel there's any need to explain the process or take many photos. The only thing I can mention is that because the fabric I'm working with is a bit elastic I decided to use the "stretch zigzag" stitch instead of the usual one.

Zigzaging ~

I saved the spiky lower part of the coat for last.. I figured it would be the hardest one to zigzag because of the spikes that have pretty sharp angles. I also had to watch that the very tips of the spikes didn't fold themselves under the presser or anything else unwanted.

While zigzaging the spiky part..

I found myself turning this piece around a lot when zigzaging it.. it was a bit annoying but it all went well in the end.. and what's surprising is that I managed zigzaging all the pieces without even once running out of bobbin thread! *winner feeling*

It was full when I started and this much left when done :'D

Next time I have art class I'm going to print the symbol on the back I can't start sewing the coat pieces together before that.. or adding the trims either.

See ya!

Start of Masamune's coat!

 How's it going? :D

Decided to cut out out the parts for Masamune Date's (battle) coat/vest thingy or whatever it's supposed to be. I did a prototype version earlier of the coat's upper part so I feel confident enough to cut the real fabric now.. or do I? -_- Oh well, here goes!

Preparations.. all patterns are in a pile

Patterns pinned in place, ready to cut.. (back and spiky piece will be cut at the fold)

I cut everything out after that. I did do a small modification before cutting out the front pieces though, I added some extra length to the bottom center because now when I think about it I thought the prototype version looked a tad too short there.. like the tips wouldn't touch just enough above where the belt will be.

Front pieces cut out with the small tweak

I'm not sure if it will work together with the rest of the pieces but I decided to add the extra width just in case. I can always cut it out later if it doesn't fit together with the spiky "butt cape" and the back piece attached.

Oh, I only left seam allowances on the parts that will be.. well, sewed together somehow. I skipped them on most parts that will have the white trim running along the edges.

Reference image

Here's an example:

As you can see no seam allowances on the collar's upper half
and the front part because there will be white trim..

Ah, and speaking of the collar.. I will do it double for extra strength (and probably put interfacing between) so I cut out two pieces more.

Pinning done collar pieces on fabric..

.. and after cutting the (second dose of) collar out I now had all pieces ready. YAY!

I then took the back piece and goofed around with it in front of a mirror and noticed I might want to trim the shoulder points a little because they looked.. well.. kinda exaggerated and I'm not sure if I like them that way. So what to do? I matched up the front pieces with the back piece at the shoulders, pinned them so that they wouldn't move aaaaaand..

Pinned and ready for modifications...

.. cut!

And that's about it. I then just took off the patterns from all the fabric pieces, folded them and put them away. I also noticed that the fabric hardly frays at all, cool. Then again it's some weird denim fabric with a plastic-y touch to the fabric's "right side". Oh, and speaking of this fabric's weirdness.. I wasn't sure how well it would take ironing so I took one of the scrap pieces and put the iron between 1 and 2 dots and tried first to iron at the "wrong side", aka the side that feels like denim, and well... the fabric's reaction was:

Except that the fabric rolled itself like hell I could see no damage done by the ironing. I could iron on top of the "right side" too. But I don't think I want to risk using the iron on any higher heat because this fabric sure isn't your usual denim.

That's it for today and tomorrow I will take the back piece with me to art class so that I can screen print the symbol on it!

Screen printing for Date's coat symbol pt.4

I should have written this already yesterday but I got home late and was tired as crap all day so.. lolnope. I will write it now instead but the actual process was done yesterday in school's art class. Oh, and excuse me most photos are a bit blurry...

Okay, so last time I said it's ready for test printing and this is what I did!
First up I cut out a fitting piece of black cotton fabric (from school) and then taped a piece of paper on the table where I would be printing to guard the table from.. well, getting paint on it. I used black fabric because then I could print with white fabric paint and that's better because Masamune's symbol is white.

cotton fabric and taped paper underneath

After that I put the fabric on top of the paper, stretched and taped it tightly along all corners. There was no iron in school so that was the only way to get the wrinkled fabric a bit less wrinkly lol. Oh, and obviously to hold it in place while printing.

Fabric taped in place

Okay, now ready for test printing! Here's the preparation and all items I would need. The white can is obviously fabric paint and those wooden things.. *googles* .. they seem to be called 'squeegee' in English. Sounds funny to me.. xD And then of course I'd need my printing frame.

Preparations complete

I took a spoon and put a row of paint at one of the edges of the frame...

The paint placed out (I used some extra.. you don't need that much)

And then took the squeegee and spread the paint so it fully covered the symbol.. wiped off the excess that was on top of the symbol and made sure there were no "paint lines". I left the remaining excess paint at the edge because I would be printing more than one.

It should look something like this..

When you lift the frame carefully the frame will look like this:

The symbol is almost transparent

I printed another symbol directly after the first. Can't wait too long between the prints or the fabric paint, especially the white for some reason, could clog up or something.. I'm not 100% sure of that but whatever. After the second test print my creations looked like this:

MAH BABIES 8DDDD

I had room to print a third one in the bottom center. Oh, and when test printing I put a paper on top of the already printed symbols so that the frame, complete with paint on it, wouldn't get on the already printed symbols. Then again if I were printing seriously (aka non-test) I would not do this because the paper catches up some of the paint of the already printed ones.. they don't dry in a second lol. If I wanted to print several ones close to one another I'd have to wait between each one so that the previous one would be dry. But yeah, because this was just a test to see that everything works as it should I did not care about slightly ruining my prints.

After printing the third symbol. Two previous ones still covered..

As you can see the printing is very exact and doesn't bleed or anything. Totally worth the extra effort at the start because after the printing frame is ready it's super chill; you could pretty much mass-produce almost perfect prints with little effort! Imagine how tedious it would be to handpaint each of these every time...

Oh, and after I had test printed enough I had to wash the frame. I used a sponge and just carefully rubbed the frame free of the paint under tap water. For some reason my tapes (which I put on earlier to conceal the holes) didn't peel off lol. I put it to dry in that same box I used earlier when developing the symbol with the water jet.

Drying drying.. (if you look close you can see the tapes on the other side)

And that's it. Next time I can print on the real thing!