- Classic Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor said, "A woman without a scarf is a woman without a future."

Another of my favorite quotes is this: "Not all superheroes wear capes.

Some wear scarves."

Today, we embrace scarves.

We learn the shapes, sizes, and finishes and how to wear them so they don't wear you.

And I'll teach you the most versatile little wrap ever, today on "Fit 2 Stitch."

(upbeat music) - [Man] "Fit 2 Stich" is made possible by Kai Scissors, Bennos Buttons, OC Sewing, Orange County, Vogue Fabrics, Pendleton, Imitation of Life, and Clutch Nails.

(upbeat music) - Every designer is in a business of design.

So many of us, as we look at the big names of design, we don't ever think of the business side of it.

The business side of it means they've got to pay the bills, just like all of us.

They've got to make those sales.

They've got to do everything they can behind the scenes.

And one of the most common little tricks of designers is to create a line of scarves and wraps.

The reason being is because they're such small expense to such large reward, especially when you look at the quality and quantity of fibers that go into that product versus what they yield out.

So we're gonna talk about all that today.

And we're going to talk about how you can duplicate what's out there, maybe how you can't duplicate what's there if you want certain things, and then how to make all those choices of how you want to bring scarves into your wardrobes.

I can tell you that as a woman who travels quite a bit, they really take that little black dress that we've talked about already, or the little black top, if you decide to make it shorter, and they really do change it up.

I've many times worn the same outfit two days in a row and just changed the scarf.

But in one case, the scarf was large and encompassed most of it, and in another case, it was just smaller, around my neck, and very minimal.

So the first thing we want to do is talk about scarves and their sizes.

So we want to really get kind of a basis.

There's lots of all kinds of little tiny sizes in between, but there's really basically three different sizes and it and it makes a difference as to how they're worn as well.

This one is the largest, generally what you see, and it's 52 by 52.

Now, that's pretty good size and I'll come back and open them up and show them all to you.

Then we go down to, roughly, it's 28 by 28.

And then we get the smallest one, similar to what I have on, which comes down to about 22 by 22.

You really don't want to go smaller than 22 because it really, if you think about it, it won't even wrap around your neck and tie.

And so it comes to a very small amount.

The way I've got this one fashioned, it's a little bit different to where the tie's in the back, but those are the basic sizes.

This one being very large.

Again, this is the 52 by 52.

But let's take a little closer look at these as we unwrap them.

And then we're gonna talk about finishing them.

So see, 52 by 52 is pretty good size.

And you know, I didn't really, I studied hard and long and really tried to figure out why those sizes existed.

And I don't know.

The only thing I can attribute it to, in some cases, fabrics are 60 inches wide.

And so the 52 works when you get rid of the salvages, and then they make them square, easier to fold.

So what, the 52 by 52, generally how it's worn is it's folded into a triangle.

Now, these finish, these edges are not finished.

Once we finish them, you'll see that it'll be a little cleaner looking, but I fold and I put the triangle to the base.

And then I wrap the points around the back to the neck, and I bring them to the front.

And that's just how it's done, that, whether it's woven or knit, it doesn't make a difference.

What you'll notice is the part that comes around the neckline here becomes a bias.

And so it really drapes well as a cowl.

This particular one is 100% cotton.

And so you really see how that nice drape comes into effect.

I have seen also where they take these and they tie them up a little closer to the neck And create a little bit of a different look there.

But what you see is definitely, this scarf, when it's worn this way, really almost becomes the outfit.

And it folds up, we're gonna see, into just a little tiny piece.

It's amazing.

This one right here is a Hermes.

This is very pricey.

We'll get to this here in a minute because it literally says Hermes on it.

This is a 28 by 28.

And so you can see, much smaller.

And generally, when it's worn, it's really worn to show off the scarf itself because when you're buying an Hermes and wearing an Hermes, you're really saying, I want you to see my scarf.

I want you to see how much I paid.

These are classic colors.

This is a classic scarf.

And these, this is not a print that we could buy and reproduce, you know, just can't be done.

This is something different.

But in this particular scarf, we're limited as how we can do it.

And then the smaller one is just kept at the neck line.

So let's look at the finishes on each of these.

We're gonna come to the table.

And I really want to take a close look at both of them.

There's some fun options, to be honest.

And I'm gonna tell you, it may sound weird to you, but when I decide how I'm gonna finish a scarf, I actually look at my equipment that I have first.

Because if I don't have a serger, which is what we're gonna look at first, this is done with a serged edge, and that's done on a serger.

It's called a rolled edge.

And we'll show you how to do this in just a minute, but you can see, it's very fine.

It's beautiful.

But again, if you don't have the equipment to do it, then you can just ruin the fabric and just cause a lot of frustration.

So it's no big deal.

There's other options, if you don't have the machine to do this, but I'm gonna tell you that if you need a new machine, this is a great way to justify getting a brand new serger because I did it.

If I did it, you can do it too.

That's my motto.

So then, that's the rolled edge.

We'll call that the rolled edge on the serger.

Then what this is, is this is a, it's a rolled edge also.

And you can see that literally, the edge is rolled and then it's hand stitched.

Now, again, this is the Hermes, and this is the way they do them and still charge five and $600 for them.

There was a period of time where, to me, this almost looked homemade.

And I think it's fascinating, as we look to that and see it done.

I'm going to show you kind of how to do this a little bit.

I'm just gonna give you a little bit of sample so that you can carry it on.

The first thing you want to notice is the stitches.

The hand, they're handpicked, and I've got a needle over here.

Those stitches are handpicked and they're about, oh, probably about 3/8 of an inch apart from one another.

You want to use just one thread.

Don't double up your thread, just use single.

And then what I do first, just to give the fabric just a little bit of stability, is I'll just run a little machine stitch a quarter inch from the edge.

Now, what that does is it'll give you a little firmness and it'll also give you, and you can see, as I kind of pull that tight, it just rolls in.

It'll also give you a place to actually pick the stitch because if you use that to run your needle under, it actually gives the fabric a little bit of support.

This is a silk.

This is a cotton.

Silk has a tighter weave than what a cotton does.

So it will, running that thread in there will just allow you to know that you're catching it consistently.

It'll also help you get the edge even because if you sew it first, it's almost called a little guide stitch.

So it'll help you in that way also.

But just take your needle, push it back, roll that, roll that underneath, roll the black portion underneath, and then just pick it and continue to do your stitches about 3/4 of an inch, about 3/8 of an inch apart.

And you can see as I do that, now, they're doing it on the inside.

They're using the same color thread so that it matches.

And if, I also want you to notice the corner because if you'll notice in the corner, there's a little section right there where you can actually see one edge coming into another.

And for many of us as home sewers, we think, oh, that just doesn't look right.

But again, go to the store and look at the Hermes scarves, and you can see wow, if they can do it, so can you.

So I think by seeing it done, it gives you a little permission to not do it maybe as finely as what you think it ought to be done.

All right, so then another way to finish scarves, if you don't want to do that and you don't have the equipment, is when you have a woven fabric, I think one of my most favorite ways to finish is literally by unweaving the fabric.

And so any woven fabric can do this because you've always got the weft and the warp.

And so the warp is the strength of the fabric and the weft is what's going through and it doesn't matter which one you unpick.

But what you want to do is reach up in there and just pull out those threads.

Now, the interesting thing to me is, and women say to me all the time, "Do I have to actually stitch there so that they stop unraveling?"

And you don't.

It just, unless you really agitate it quite a bit, it won't stop, it won't just unravel on its own.

And it gives that beautiful finish.

And of course, you can make and decide as long as you want that to be.

And I think it's lovely.

And I also think it's simple.

And there isn't any woven fabric that you can't do it on.

Keep in mind that because, sometimes with certain prints on scarves, like on this one, I've got one color going one way and one color going another way.

But you can see, there are my wefts and warps and I'm just gonna pull them and continue to pull them all along.

Don't cut them.

This takes a little bit of time.

It takes a little bit of patience, but it just really does a beautiful, beautiful edge.

And you can see it's done here.

And then of course, after it was pulled, they were allowed to tangle.

This is a linen.

And you can see what a beautiful effect that gives.

It's just lovely.

There are some edges here that you just can't do because these are actually, this is a silk scarf and I purchased the scarf.

It was hand-woven by a woman.

And I just thought it was just beautiful and lovely, but because the yarns literally are coming out of the ends there, and then they're twisted, that's not something you could do unless you were the one who was doing the weaving.

So it's difficult to emulate.

I do want to show you on this one where I went different directions with different scarves.

I actually cut a salvage of the fabric and then I sewed it back on.

Now, right now you can see where my serging, my stitching is showing, but you can come up and you can enclose that and make one more stitch to where you can't see it.

And then it's reversible from both sides.

So this side, one side I naturally frayed and one side didn't because it was curved.

And so I had to change that up a little bit.

I want to go to the sewing machine and we're gonna do a rolled edge.

I think anytime I do a scarf, or I kind of decide which finish I'm going to do, I actually will take each side and just do a little bit on each side.

And then you can say, hey, you know, I just really liked this one better.

And that works.

I think it works really well in that decision-making process.

Okay, so the goal here is to get a machine that you're familiar with and to get a machine that I think quickly changes from a four thread to a three thread.

When I was telling you to roll that edge, there's times when, instead of running just a single stitch, I run it through a three thread.

And when I run it through with a three thread, it again kind of gives the edge of that fabric a little bit of body and a little bit of grip.

And it makes it so much easier to roll because you've got some substance to roll.

So in this case, what I'm going to do is, just on the serger, I'm gonna go from a four thread to a three thread rolled edge.

And I'm gonna do that, this particular machine, I remove a needle.

So I'm gonna come in here and just take away one needle.

And that would be your left needle here.

We're gonna take that away.

And when I do that, I just take this thread and completely remove it, just to where it's out of the way, and doesn't get in your way.

And then on my machine, I just change two things.

I change, I'm telling the machine to go to a rolled edge, and then you have to change your stitch length.

And whenever you're doing a rolled edge you have your choice as to how tight you want the roll.

I love it where it's really, really small and really tight.

You should, on most fabrics, you should kind of play with that a little bit, because if you don't want your thread density to outweigh your fabric density.

So if you've got a cotton and it's a little looser weave, if you lay too many threads in there, it just, it'll curve at the edge.

It'll kind of, it just won't lay flat.

It won't lay nice.

And you're always okay to take off a little bit as well.

So I've got my, I've got my stitch length.

I've only got it at 1.5, so that's pretty close and pretty tight.

And you're gonna see that as I go along (machine whirring) I'm gonna go ahead and let it cut off some because this has actually got little dot, that's the salvage, that's... (machine whirring) And you can just see, it just does a beautiful job.

And that is just, I think, one of the easiest ways to get just a really beautiful look.

And it certainly doesn't look homemade.

See the a little dots I missed there?

You gotta make sure you cut those off.

And if it doesn't do what you want it to do, look, you can go back.

(machine whirring) I think it's like therapy.

It's really relaxing.

All right, so there we're good to go.

All right.

I want to look at a different kind of scarf because this is so beautiful and very pricey.

This was a scarf, it was made in Italy.

And I just want to show you all, this is a 52 by 52.

So good size, again, it's, that means it's not gonna wear you, but you gotta be careful of it not to.

But it's great to wrap around your shoulders.

I mean, it's just beautiful.

What makes it pricey is the layers of what's involved here.

And so what you want to do when you see something like this, and it's also a cashmere, you want to look and see how the process is done.

In this particular case, it's a silk on top and it's a wool below, or the cashmere.

So when you take and put this, I'm gonna just show you a little tiny sample of what's been done here.

On the edges all the way around, and I would not have known this necessarily by looking at it but the buyer of the store gave me an explanation.

She's been to Italy and seen how these are made.

And that was very helpful.

So they just take, and on the very edge they take and just push that in.

And they have a machine that does it, but this little thing does the same thing.

Now what happens is, because the knit or the cashmere or the whatever you're using, the knit, has larger openings than what the silk does.

And the needles kind of tighten the silk and they allow it to get pushed right down into there.

And you literally just push it down.

Now, once it was, you can look on the back side and you can see that they stitched around it, just to make sure it didn't come off.

And then they used all this great stuff and they just layered it on top.

And all these different layers were actually done by hand.

These are done by hand because I'm using contrasting colors, just so that you can see, but you can see that if it's all one color, just has a beautiful depth and beautiful effect to it.

So don't think a scarf has to be one piece.

The layers of all these beautiful fibers work really well together.

And with this, I just wanted you to kind of see that.

I just love this, and I've worn it a few times.

And when I have, the compliments are just off the charts.

Okay, I want to make the little wrap I have on, because again, remember that fashion designer, wraps are just a home run.

They're easy, they're simple, they fit everyone.

And what they do is they cover and women love to be covered.

You know, we just like somehow to be a little bit covered.

So we're gonna start off today and we're going to use two and a half yards of fabric.

So I have cut two and a half yards.

I've got it double layered here, but because I didn't want it the entire width, I've reduced the width down to 30 inches.

So 30 inches from top to bottom and two and a half yards wide.

I marked the center of the two and a half yards.

The two and a half yards is the running length and I've marked the center of it.

And so what we're gonna do is, and I actually kept the salvage.

When I reduced the width, I kept one salvage because I decided I could just leave that at the bottom.

This is a knit, and this, but this wrap could be done in knit or woven.

And if you did a knit, I don't know that you'd really need to finish all these edges.

I think there's something fun about a knit that's just not finished on the edges.

It kind of looks casual and funky.

And you know, you get to decide, it's your wrap and how you want to finish it.

But I think it's fun.

Okay, so I folded this to the edge.

I'm just gonna back it off one inch.

So this is gonna come there, and this side's gonna fold to the middle, but again, just back it off one inch.

And the reason being is because I'm going to have, I'm gonna have a ribbing that goes down the front or a finish that goes down the front.

Or you don't have to, you can kind of leave it raw.

All right, so I've got two and a half yards.

I folded them to the center.

And what I'm gonna do is, the arm holes are actually gonna be up above here.

So I'm gonna come nine inches in.

You want those arm holes to be at least eight inches.

Now, I have this wrap on, so you can see the arm holes are right here.

And the beautiful thing is, we've talked about bias, is what it does on the side is it kind of creates bias folds on the side.

It gives you a front neck line.

Don't stitch it all the way here.

You're gonna leave a one-inch seam allowance coming across the top.

And you're gonna leave a little bit here because I've gotta sew like also a 3/8 because I've got to sew the ribbing down that front.

So I'm just going to do one inch, on both sides I want to do the same, come in nine inches, and then sew a one inch, just sew from this point here to this point here, backstitch, backstitch, and just sew right along here.

That's it, do it on both sides.

The other thing you're gonna cut is the ribbing.

And for the ribbing, I, the part that I eliminated, because this was actually 60 wide, not 30 wide.

And if you have a fabric that's 60 wide, you can easily, with the two and a half yards, get two capes.

Rather than just the one, you can make one for you and you can make one for a friend.

So this is gonna, you can see, it's 30 inches this way.

So I cut the ribbing out of that.

And what I did on this is I cut it two and a half inches wide because you can see with what I have on, I wanted it to be one inch wide, but it's double.

So it's two inch, so it's the one double, plus two seam allowances.

So it's two and three quarters wide.

And then I just cut two strips and there's enough to go down both sides.

So I'm just going to sew it down the front here, down the front here, and I'm going to show you a little bit how this was finished, the wrap that I saw at the store.

This was high end.

This was not cheap.

And it was really pretty and I put it on and I just really liked it.

So I've got another one over here.

So I'm actually gonna leave this one here and we'll go sew this one.

All right.

So I'm gonna put my stitch length about 3.5 and I've got this one pinned.

So I'm gonna start here.

And this is basically one inch in and it's the end of my arm hole, but I'm gonna backstitch because there's not another stitch that will stitch over that.

(machine whirring) And again, you're stitching, you want to have a one-inch seam allowance there.

And the reason being, I'll show you in just a second, it actually is going to become a decorative part of the wrap.

(machine whirring) All right, and we're going to sew all the way into the beginning, except again, I'm gonna just stop short and I'm gonna leave a seam allowance.

And because, again, I don't have anything to over-stitch that, I'm going to backstitch there as well.

Okay, then I'm going to take the little band that I cut and I'm going to fold it wrong sides together.

Right sides together, sorry, right sides together.

And just stitch the edge.

You have to worry about cutting it to the right length because as soon as we run out, we'll cut it to the right length.

So there I have stitched there.

I'm gonna fold it.

Just reach your finger in and hold that corner and then flip the corner.

And you can see, it'll come out, and it'll be nice, sharp point.

If it doesn't come all the way out, you take a pin and just pull it out, but don't cut the edges, don't do anything like that.

This portion right here is what's going to sew all the way down on the side.

That, right where you stopped that stitching, you're gonna start all the way at the top.

You're gonna fold this down and start stitching all the way at the top.

Okay, so I've done this other side and there's something I want to show you because with, remember I told you, with that one-inch seam allowance, look how beautiful that is.

What you're gonna do is, you're gonna open it up, and you're gonna top stitch it.

And it finishes off the arm hole as well as becomes this beautiful look along the top.

So that arm hole is actually at the top of the garment.

So really quick, I'm gonna take mine off and I'm going to put this one on.

I'm gonna show you what it looks like, because I think that, the one I have on is knit, but this one, and that's why I say it always is fun to change your fabrics and change the different drapes of everything, because they're so pretty.

So see the armholes, what I love about this wrap is the arm holes are actually coming out of the top.

And then what it does, you have this binding, you can see, I did this side so that you can see, it just comes down the front.

But what it gives is it gives this beautiful drape under the arms.

It covers, it does all the things we love to do about wraps.

So I want to show you on the one I had on to where there's like a little bit of gap between where those seams show.

So here's the front band.

And you don't have to have that.

I just decided it was a nice little feature.

Notice, there's a separation here where the banding stops at the one inch, and there's a little hole there.

So you don't have to have that.

You could continue the band all the way around if you wanted to.

So all those variables are just really fun for you to be able to do.

And also, you can make it shorter.

You can make it narrow.

You could make it wider and then the drape would be really extreme and the bias and all that would hang completely differently.

Collars got their name in the 1300s, when the collar was worn as neck-protecting armor.

Next time we'll loosen up those colors a bit, change their style, and have some fun.

We'll learn some easy sewing methods you can use for collars on the next episode of "Fit 2 Stitch."

(upbeat music) - [Man] "Fit 2 Stich" is made possible by Kai Scissors, Bennos Buttons, OC Sewing, Orange County, Vogue Fabrics, Pendleton, Imitation of Life, and Clutch Nails.

(upbeat music) To order a four-DVD set of "Fit 2 Stitch" series nine, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.