Simple project in stretch fabric

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Recently I was discussing an idea with a friend of mine who is a lot more up to date in young ladies wear than I am and it was about arm warmers. I had a look at the examples and thought, this is an easy project for anyone with an overlocker and a little imagination. She was kind enough to be the test pilot for the idea as guys don't usually wear this type of item. I had a roll of a very pretty fabric, a black semi-shiny velour that I used for making undergarments before I started making fleece trackies for the winter. This is the simple project that you can make for youngsters that costs very little and are popular with some kids

This is the basic pattern made from non-fusible vilene. A pattern of this type can be pinned onto fussy easily stretched fabrics so you get reasonable accuracy when cutting it out.

Pin the pattern to a double layer of the fabric laid face to face making sure you smooth the fabric and don't stretch it.

Cut the fabric out to the outline of the pattern.

Chalk a site line to overlock the top and bottom edges. This will depend a bit on both the overlocker and the fabric but in this case I used a small lightweight overlocker that is set up for edging single layer light fabrics.

Pin the polyester tape at the top of the seam in the middle and mark out the 2 locations where it is zig zagged. The width on this item is about 2 inches center to center of the zig zag.

Trim off the two ends of the polyester tape so you have tidy edges.

Carefully overlock the two edges together taking care to pin them up accurately. Once it is overlocked it is worth running a locking zig zag at each end of the overlock so it does not unravel.

This is the pair of finished items turned the right way around. I had not finally trimmed the two ends of threads but this is basically what they look like.

The overlocker I used is set up for fussy single layer fabric for edging and it is configured as a 4 thread safety stitch with #120 Coats Astra for the two needles and #180 Coats GRAMAX for the looper threads.