Pattern Weights and a Drawstring Bag as seen on BBC The Great British Sewing Bee

August 27, 2016

Pattern Weights and a Drawstring Bag as seen on BBC The Great British Sewing Bee

Let's make some pattern weights, I saw these on the BBC's The Great British Sewing Bee and thought I'd have a go, now you can too !

Here’s a YouTube link : https://youtu.be/TKH3nnBxNy0

I would like to thank my lovely friend, Tracey Symmonds, contestant of the 2016 show, who suggested I use aquatic gravel.

Update, I have purchased steel ball bearings https://amzn.to/2LetQAv
which do not rust and give a better weight than gravel, food items or the gravel.

The Essentials

A fat quarter (22" X 18")

Fusible, medium weight Interfacing (enough to cover half of the piece of the fabric)

Weights; I have bought a 700g pot of plant gravel from IKEA

Optional - embroidery thread

Cutting and sewing tools.

Rice, wheat etc is sometimes used as weight.
As the gravel is stone, for the same volume it gives me a good weight and it was a very reasonable purchase.

Pattern Weights

Open out your fat quarter and mark up the fabric on the wrong side.

You should be able to get 10 good 3" x 6" rectangles, but my fat quarter hasn't been supplied to the right size, so I have only managed 9 rectangles using the layout below.

I've managed to measure 6 X 3" going along one way and 3 x 6" going across the fabric, leaving me a nice big rectangle at the top for my drawstring bag. There should have been enough fabric to squeeze one more rectangle along that bottom row.

Now to press the fusible facing to the wrong side. I am using white facing, so I should be able to see the pencil lines when fused, otherwise mark the rectangles onto the facing afterwards.

I've used a rotary cutting blade to cut the rectangles out accurately. Use a self healing mat. You can buy card mats, but they will blunt your blades. Prym (aka Dritz) Olfa brand are my preferred brand.

The best stitch for this project is the triple stitch, it's highlighted by the red mark at stitch 24 below. I used a 2.5 stitch length which I feel is perfect.

A triple stitch is simply a back stitch... It's a reinforcing stitch and great for heavy duty wear, or like for these weights, a secure stitch to prevent beans / gravel spilling out.

Stitch the shorter sides of each of your rectangles together, right sides together, leaving a ¼" seam allowance.

This is the raw edge of the fabric flush with the edge of the Janome foot A. Check your machine's guidelines for measurements.

Once I've sewn this line, I just carry on sewing all of the pieces at once, like a chain, before moving onto the next stage.

Open the seam of one of the pieces and finger press this to the opposite side.

Sew along one of the open edges, leaving a ¼" seam allowance... like so...

You must take care to sew right across the opening so there are no holes left for gravel to slip through the bottom.

Now flip each bag right side out and gently poke out the bottom corners with a chop stick to give crisp sharp corners.

Tuck in ¼" of fabric along the open edge.

I weighed and filled each bag with 50g of gravel. You may not want to fill yours with this much, or your weight may not be the same if you use a different filling. This is just a guideline, showing how much I used.

Now all that is left to do is to seal this bag closed; close the opening, bringing the sewn line at the back to the side and pin... giving a tetrahedron shape.

Option 1 : attach a zip foot to the machine and sew the opening closed.