Pad Making: Speed Serged Pads

I made some serged pads today, using the Nessie Pads pattern that I found on Etsy. I applied some of the tricks I've learned in order to make the process faster, and they were a big help. This method of pad assembly eliminates a lot of cutting and pinning and things that eat up a lot of time. It also produces a clean finished pad, whether you're using these techniques for serging or for the turn and topstitch method on your sewing machine. Here I'll just be focusing on serged pads, but I'll talk about using these tricks for a sewn pad in a future post. I made and photographed two pads at the same time here, so the topper color switches around throughout the post.

Start by tracing your pattern onto the right side of your topper fabric.  (I'm using cotton velour here, so I'm tracing onto the fuzzy side.)

Next, using a rotary cutter, just rough cut around the shape you've just traced, leaving some excess fabric around the edges.

Create your core, using your preferred method and materials. (See my previous post for the speed method I like to use.)  Center the finished core on the wrong side of the topper fabric.  So, on my cotton velour, that's I'm putting the core on the smooth side of the fabric instead of the fuzzy side.

As you can see, if you've used a light colored topper fabric and a washable crayola marker like I did, you can see the line of the pad topper through the back of the fabric. You'll center the core within that line, with the core material you want closest to your body facing down and touching your topper fabric.  My core is a layer of Zorb 2 and a layer of diaper flannel.  I wanted the Zorb closest to my body, so I put my core on the topper fabric with the Zorb facing down and the flannel facing up.

Pin the core in place.  You can use as many pins as you feel like you need to keep it secure. 

(If you can't see the line through the topper fabric, lay the core centered on the right side and use pins to mark the fabric along the outline of the core. Flip the fabric over and pin the core in place inside the pin guides you've created.)

Moving to a sewing machine, stitch the core to the topper. I like to start by sewing a channel down the center of the core, beginning and ending about an inch from each end of the core. You can use any stitch you'd like for this part, but remember these stitches will show on the top of finished pad.

Now stitch along the side of the core, making sure your stitches run nice and close to the edge of the core to keep it from bunching and shifting in the finished pad. I prefer a wavy line or a zigzag stitch here, because it seems to secure everything just a little better.  And I think it's pretty.

A walking foot works best for this, since you're working with differing fabric thicknesses. It's also a gem when working with knit fabrics, like the cotton velour, Zorb 2, and windpro fleece I'm using in this pad. 

Make sure you lift and lower the presser foot every few stitches as you come around the curves, or your pad and walking foot will not be your friends.  Your core will shift and stretch and pucker some, and you won't get a nice, smooth, centered core when you're finished.

Once the core is attached to the topper, you'll make pad a sandwich that looks like this: 

*Backer fabric, right side facing down. (The part that will touch your underwear needs to be touching your work surface.

*Core fabric

*Topper fabric (with the core attached to it), right side facing up. The side with the core will be
placed on the backer, and the side that will touch your skin will be facing up, where you can see and touch it.

Using your rough-cut topper piece as a guide, rough cut the backer fabric with a rotary cutter to basically match.

 

It doesn't need to be perfect!

 

Pin or clip the pieces together along the outside edge to keep them from shifting while you serge. I prefer clips because I don't have to worry about accidentally sending a pin under my serger blade and ruining the blade. It's totally something I would do.

 

Beginning at the wing, start serging with your blade and needles pointed in the direction of your traced line.

 

Continue serging, making sure that your blade is consistently cutting right on the traced line. Go slowly, and take care around the curves.  Since you're doing this on a serger, you won't be able to lift and lower the presser foot to navigate the curves like you would with a sewing machine.  So you will have to tug and shift and maneuver the pad here.  That's why the clips come in handy.

 

Another great thing about using clips here, is that as you serge towards and past them, they'll just fall away in the scraps without interfering with your work space or machine. And then you can just collect them all at the end, instead of pausing every few inches to pull out a pin.

 

Once you've come full circle back to the start of your stitching, overlap your stitches by about an inch, then turn your work at a 90 degree angle, and take two stitches off the side of the pad. Lift the presser foot and slide the pad backwards until the stitches slide off of the stirch finger. Flip the pad over and slide it back under the presser foot, lining it back up right in front of the needles and next to the blade. Serge for another inch or so (right back on top of the stitches you just made) to lock all the stitching in place.  Now you can clip the threads close to the pad without them coming unraveled.

(If that's too confusing, you can watch the video a few posts back about serged washcloths for a demo.  You can skip to about 5:05 in the video if you just want to see finishing off with the serger, instead of watching the entire video.)

 

Now you'll apply the snaps. You might want to fold the wings back, and wiggle them back and forth a bit to make sure that the pad looks symmetrical on the top, before deciding where to place the snaps.  It's possible on a wrap-style pad to place the snaps in a way that make the ends look uneven or pinched, so just shift the overlapped wings back and forth until it looks right from the top.   I like to make sure that the wing where I started serging hides behind the other wing, just so the weird threads don't show, for a prettier finish.

 

Once the snaps are fastened on, your pad is done!

Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy. And no cutting cramps.