Just a quick note to say I’ve had an epiphany! Most of you will read this and think “Yes, obviously”, but this was not obvious to me.
Gradually as I have sewed more garments, I have developed a process for transfering pattern markings from my patterns once I have all the fabric cut out. If there are notches, I’ve been cutting a snip through the fabric within the seam allowance. If there are marks such as buttonholes or dart points, then I’ve been sewing in tailors tacks. For both of these I would make a hole in the paper where the marking needs to go and then stitch the tack through the hole. This takes me a little while to do, as you can probably imagine. I sometimes use chalk or a pen that fades under UV light, but depending on the fabric these don’t always show up very well, are hard to mark through the hole, or rub off too easily.
My epiphany came when watching a recent YouTube video from The Voice of a Creative – it’s a sew along video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyvA6exOwdA). I realised that for the darts she was cutting the whole dart out when cutting out the paper pattern, so there is a triangular indent. If I do that, it means that I don’t have to tailor tack through the paper (which is quite fiddly) and if I am using chalk/pen it makes it much easier to mark the point. The only disadvantage I can see is that it could make the pattern a bit more flimsy and lead to some innaccuracies when cutting, but as long as the paper is reasonably thick I think it’ll work really well. So from now on that is what I will do – I’m sure my sewing will still be very slow, but every little counts. Thanks Kealy!
The sewing resolution 