Tech Sleeve - All Together Now ...

Tech Sleeve

Materials needed:

gadget (preferably a square one)

fabric: Fleece

kraft paper

ruler

scissors

tracing tool

pinking sheers

hidden snap set

fashion button

Everything that has been covered thus far can be used to create a simple item. A tech sleeve. What is a tech sleeve you ask? This is simply a fleece cover to hold and protect what ever gadget you desire, I am of course talking about something simple like a phone or tablet or small laptop.

FUN FACT: Fleece is also known as 'Polar wool', 'Vega wool', or "Velo wool'. These names suggest an organic origin when in reality fleece is made from Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET). In other words, synthetic fibers.

Ready to begin?
Once you have selected that gadget you will be using take measurements and be sure to right them down.
Take the measurements of the length and width of the gadget in inches.

Now get out a sheet of kraft paper and then measure out your device's lengths and widths AND add 1/2 inch on every length and width. When you are finished you will have an outline that is a 1/2 inch longer and a 1/2 inch wider than your gadget. NO seam allowance is added to your pattern!
Cut out your pattern.

You will now want to create a closure tab for your sleeve. On your kraft paper make a pattern that is 1 inch wide and 5 inch long.

Take your patterns over to your fabric and then trace them onto the fabric using a proper tracing tool. Trace your pattern once for your closure tab and twice for your sleeve. It will be best if you make sure to trace you patterns along the flow of the grain. To each outline add 1/2 in seam allowance with the aid of a ruler, you will not need to add seam allowance to the top of the sleeve. Cut out your outlines pieces - this is wear placing your pattern along the grain is helpful.
Trim the raw edges of your fabric pieces with pinking sheers. try to cut as little as you can and as uniformly as you can.

Attach the tab to one side of the sleeve using the sewing machine. Make sure that the side the tab is being sewn to is the right side of the fabric.

Now take your two pieces of fabric for the sleeve over to the machine and place the right sides of the fabric together so that the wrong sides are what is being seen. Sew along the line for seam allowance on three sides (the two sides and the bottom) and then use the bagging out method.

You can now finish the sleeve my hand sewing the snap set on and then the fashion button on top of your tab.

All done?
If so, place your gadget into it's new sleeve and admire your work.

Fastenings ...

Unless you are in a unitard or a one piece, 

or in an obnoxiously colored spandex suite

the chances that your costume is going to have some sort of fasten is pretty high. Whether they are the snaps on contemporary blue-jeans or clamping apparatus's from the nineteenth century it is easy to forget just how much we depend on them to keep others from seeing our pink spotted underwear.

On stage we depend on these types of safeguards just as much as anyone else does in society, so in the costume studio it is important to understand how one would secure these small accessories to our outerwear.

1. Hook and Bar

These types of fastenings are generally used at single points like near the waistband thought they can also be used to to close entire openings.

When deciding where to place these items on your fabric or clothing item it is important to remember not place them too close to the edges as this may  result in leaving a space or gap between your fabrics. Similarly you would not want to place them too far away from the edge of the fabric as this could lead to an uncomfortable actor in, now, too tight pants.

Once you are ready to begin sewing remember that you will want to double thread your needle, giving  the stitch more strength against the forces acting against the fasten.

TIP: Make sure you place a knot at the end of your now double threaded thread. It took me nearly a whole minute to figure out as to why my own thread was not making to proper stitch like everyone else...save yourself the embarrassment.

You will want to first sew the loops (or eyes) on the ends of both the hook and bar. Begin threading from the opposite side of the fabric from your hook or bar and loop with your thread around the curvature at the ends. Repeat five or six times (possibly more if you feel the hook or bar in not fastened tight enough) and then knot off the end of your thread once it has been cut.

Secured bar.
(Don't mind the little extra bit of thread, a bit of a mishap.)

For the hook you will want to loop an extra few times around the long end of the small piece of metal, this is so it can be better secured.

Secured Hook.

Once this is complete you or your actor can then fasten and unfasten your pants just as much as you like. Though preferably in private.

2. Snap Set

I quite enjoy snaps. Though this may possibly have nothing to do with sewing than as it does with the sound your voice makes when you say it. 

In any case.

Snaps are used, generally, on clothing such as jackets and the like and are rarely visible once fastened. The set has two items a ball and a socket, or if you prefer a male and a female. Because the male (Ball) has an extension that  resembles...well, you know; and the female (socket) has an resembles...you know, the other thing.

When you are ready to secure these pieces into the fabric you will once again double thread your needle (be sure to knot it, we know where that can lead us). As with the eyes of the hook and bar you will want to loop the open spaced and the outer rim of the item as well as repeat five to six times. When moving from space to space that needs to be looped make sure you begin from the underside of your item and not going over it.

Ball

Socket