Make your own Companion Fabric

Here is an idea for adding interest to your sewing project. This is Vogue 8714 that I made in a grey rayon woven that is lovely, but it needed some pizazz. I had some  vintage square mother-of-pearl buttons, so I decided to embellish the front panel with straight stitching to mimic the shape of the buttons.

 It was quite easy to do this. I used the front panel pattern piece and cut a piece of fabric that was about two inches bigger on all sides than the pattern. It is important to do this rough cut prior to embellishing the fabric because many embellishment techniques can cause shrinkage during sewing. I wanted the stitching patten on the diagonal. I thought that would be more interesting than if it were either vertical, or horizontal on the garment.
 The first step I took was to press a light crease at a  45 degree angle across the approximate center of the panel. Next, with the right side of the fabric facing up I sewed along this crease from one edge of the fabric to the other. Using the edge of the presser foot as a guide, I continued stitching row after row of equally spaced stitching until  half of the fabric was filled with straight rows of stitching. I then did the same on the other half of the fabric. After the entire piece was fill with evenly spaced rows of stitching, I pressed in another 45 degree angle and used it to repeat the whole process. As the photo shows I ended up with perfectly shaped squares but on the diagonal grain of the fabric.
 This process took some time, but I have always enjoyed this kind of sewing. I sort of get "in the zone" and just keep checking that the edge of the presser foot is right on the line of the previous row of stitching.  Next, I used the pattern piece and cut the front panel exactly to the pattern shape.
 The white stitches looked so nice on the fabric that I decided to continue with that thread for the top stitching at all of the garment edges.

There were two buttons remaining so I used the scraps from the embellished fabric to make two tabs that I sewed into the side seams right above the waist.