Sewing Tidbits
Posted on 12/11/2011 05:40 pm by ReveA few links to start:
- New Mexico State University has a guide to sewing machine maintenance.
- TLC has a lovely and fairly comprehensive article on altering and mending clothes.
- My sewing category may be of interest; in particular, I use the tag “mending” for all mending and alteration related posts.
Basting – Basting is stitching intended to be removed, used to either test for fit or to hold pieces together for the real stitching, when pins would be unwieldy. It is done either by hand or with the sewing machine set to its longest stitch. A line of basting may also be used for gathering fabric, where either the top or the bottom thread (but not both) is used like a drawstring for the fabric.
Box pleats – a pleat is just a fold in the material, stitched in somehow but loose below the stitching. An ordinary pleat has the fabric in a Z shape, and has direction: the extra material in the pleat is pressed to one side or the other. In a box pleat, you have symmetry: half of the extra fabric is on each side of where the points meet, putting the fabric in a sort of squashed capital Omega shape. Box pleats are my go-to when I need to take width out of fabric at an edge but leave it free away from the edge, such as in the top center back of a coat lining. If I have two points at which I am taking out width I may do two mirror-imaged ordinary pleats, which is like a spread-out box pleat. Technically a box pleat has the fabric folds that meet each other on the wrong side, and if they show, it is an inverted pleat, but I use “box pleat” for both. Pictures of box pleats.
Cuffs, making – These are not so hard provided you follow the right steps. First, decide how wide/tall your cuff should be. Mark how long the pants should end up (see “hems”, below). Mark a horizontal line at the desired finished length, one cuff width below that, and another cuff width below that. Cut the pant leg about 3/4 of the cuff width below this last line and serge or zigzag the raw edge. At this and subsequent steps, make sure the seam allowances are pressed open. Fold in on the middle marked line, press, and pin. Sew the two layers together around the leg (machine sewing is fine; the stitches will be covered by the cuff). Turn the cuff up to the outside of the pants, which is a fold at the remaining two marked lines, and press. Pin on each side and stitch in the ditch through all four layers vertically (in the inseam and outseam of the outermost layer of the cuff). Pictures of a fake cuff.
Darts – Darting is removing slim stretches of fabric by folding it right sides together, and either making a diagonal line that is at the fold to the inside of the piece and away from the fold (typically by a relatively small amount) at the edge of the piece, or meets the fold at both ends and is away from it at some point in the middle (I will call these “triangle” and “diamond” darts, though they are technically both triangular). They are one important piece in the arsenal of techniques to make flat fabric fit non-flat humans flatteringly. The most common uses of darts are at the waistline (triangle darts for pants and slim skirts, diamond darts for shirts so they will flare back out to accommodate hips) and bustline (as part of the waistline darts below the bust, but also triangle darts aimed at the armholes and sometimes at the side seams just below the armholes).
Dyeing fabric – This can be time consuming but it is not too difficult. Rit is the most common brand in stores, and here are two pages about mixing Rit to make a rainbow of dye colors. Considerations: bleaching fabric to prepare it for dyeing weakens it, and if it is already weak, may eat little holes in it. Also, most polyester sewing thread is colorfast, meaning it will neither bleach nor re-dye. Consider the contrast you might get between the thread and the fabric when choosing dye colors.
Ease – Ease is extra size added to garments in the design process. There are two kinds of ease: wearing ease keeps your shirt from being a body cast, and design ease is added for stylistic purposes (e.g., slim vs. blousy sleeves). Here are two different charts of the amount of ease added to garments with different silhouettes (from fitted to loose). Garments made of stretchy fabric or that leave the parts of your body you move a lot uncovered (e.g., tank tops) need little to no ease; how well the seams of the clothing match the locations of your joints also affects how much ease you need (an armhole that is too far into your torso makes the sleeve constrict your shoulder joint more). Ease may be added generally, as overall larger pieces of fabric, or locally, in the form of pleats, gathers, and gussets.
Gathering, lazy – for real gathering see Basting, above. Lazy Gather works best when you don’t have a lot of extra fabric to contend with, or when the gathered part isn’t going to show (such as where the sleeves of a coat lining meet the shoulders of the lining). Pin the fabrics right sides together, smooth until the ends of the gathered region. Then, pin the halfway points of the fabrics together. Treating each half as an individual region, pin the halfway points together again. Repeat until you’ve spread the extra fabric out sufficiently.
Gussets – A gusset is an extra piece of fabric added to allow a garment to move more easily in a specific location. Diamond-shaped underarm gussets are the most common, but gussets at the crotch or knees of pants or the elbows of a shirt are also seen. If a gusset meets the edge of the garment, such as the bottom of a shirt or skirt, it is called a gore. Here is a discussion of gores and gussets with an eye toward Renaissance fashion, and here is a how-to for underarm gussets with the goal of making 40s and 50s patterns less intimidating.
Hems, marking – Pants that are too short make me crazy. If they are not clam diggers, pedal pushers, capris, or other intentionally short pants, they should overlap with your shoes (this opinion is, sadly, not universal). By how much they overlap is a stylistic choice; Effortless Gent has an article with pictures of different breaks, as they are called. For me, with moderately full-legged dress pants worn with flats or low heels, I like the hem to meet the top of the sole in back, which in bare or sock feet on a hard floor translates to 3/8″ off the ground. For heels of more than 2″ you may want the pants even longer. To mark hems solo, do a guess and check method: fold them up how much you think is right and pin them. Stand tall, with your side to a full-length mirror, and check them. Adjust as needed. If you are on carpet wear your shoes; this can also help when marking solo because seeing where pants end relative to the shoe is easier to do by sight than a measurement off the floor.
Hems, sewing – You can certainly fold your hem up twice, sandwiching the raw edge inside, and stitch around with a machine. Jeans and other casual clothing are hemmed this way. In the alteration shop we used to keep a wooden mallet for “tenderizing” jeans hems, beating the folds at each inseam and outseam to flatten them a bit and make them go under the sewing machine more easily. Knit fabric is typically hemmed with a double line of stitching, that has a serger-like back thread. You can mimic that on your home machine with a twin/double needle, decreasing your thread tension, shortening your stitches, and gently stretching the material as you sew. I wrote a post on this.
Blind hems are seen on dressier clothing and may be done by hand or machine. With hand stitching, the idea is to catch only a few threads of the outer layer of fabric with each stitch so the stitching is completely invisible from the outside. It’s most easily made as a zigzag type stitch, alternating sewing through the turned-up part with catching threads on the main pant leg or body of the skirt. For sturdiness, make sure the stitches on the outer fabric are less than half an inch apart. For a truly invisible hem, you have to work by hand or with a commercial blindstitch machine, which has a curved needle that scoops the outer fabric and on which you can adjust the depth at which it scoops. However, for a very nearly invisible hem, you can likely use your home sewing machine. Here is a very clear youtube video on that process. I have a different machine from hers, but the symbol for blindstitch is the same.
Patterns from clothes – If you have a clothing item you love and want to replicate, or something that is dying that you want to replace, you can use the original piece to make a pattern. If you want to retain the original piece, Missy Meyer has a lovely post about using masking tape to make a pattern, so I won’t reinvent the wheel there. If you are not going to keep the original, you can cut it apart at the seams (cutting off the old seam allowance, which may not be a standard width if serging on the edges scrunched the fabric), pin the pieces to paper, and draw a new (known width) seam allowance around the outside. I have pictures from when I did just this in replacing a coat lining.
Stitching in the ditch – If you need to get a collar or facing to turn more smoothly (have a sharper edge where it meets the body of the garment) or if you need to tack down such a facing or a turned-up cuff, you want to stitch in the ditch. This refers to stitching along the seam; for turning, it would be the seam that attaches the facing or collar, and for tacking, it is a seam that runs perpendicular to the facing or cuff, such as the shoulder or inseam. Pull the fabric on each side of the seam you are stitching on away from the stitching, so you are sewing between the two sides as much as possible. When you finish and release your hold on the fabric, it will bounce back and hide your stitches. For turning, this gives the pieces more of a “hinge”, and for tacking, it is a way to keep pieces in place without a lot of invisible hand sewing (though of course that is not always avoidable).
Tapering and clipping seams – Fabric will want to lie in the same curve as the seam is stitched. That means, if you don’t want a corner in your fabric, you don’t want a corner in your seam. This comes up most when making alterations, such as taking in pants at the waist. Gradually curve your new stitch line to meet the original line at a very gentle angle. You should also trim your seam allowance to a reasonable width and clip curves to allow the seam allowance to lie smooth. If seam line is curving to get closer to the fabric edge, you need only snip the seam allowance perpendicular to and not quite all the way to the seam. If it is curving away, you need to snip out a little triangle of fabric, pointing at the seam line. Pictures of different angle seams, and clipping.
Tension, sewing machine thread – This has a reputation for being more mysterious than it really is. I wrote a whole post on this, which includes some pictures. The tension on a sewing machine adjusts how easily the machine allows the top thread to move (in many machines, it controls how tightly two or three metal disks press against each other). For 90% of projects, tension is “set it and forget it”. Start with your tension set to its middle value. Load top and bobbin threads of two different colors into your machine and sew a straight stitch at your usual stitch length on a double-layered fabric of a third color. Choose the fabric to be representative of your usual sewing – I set my tension using calico or muslin. If the stitches look taut or the bobbin thread pulls through the fabric, decrease the tension. If the stitches look loose or the top thread pulls through the fabric, increase the tension (the top thread pulling through is not much of a problem in most situations, though). The stitching should look the same on both sides of the fabric. The bobbin thread has its own tension setting, but that is via a screw inside the bobbin case and is designed to be adjusted only by those trained in repair.
Zippers – This segment will have to be augmented gradually. For now: to shorten a zipper at the bottom end, stitch around and around the teeth to make a new pull stopper. Cut the zipper about a half inch below that point. Replacing broken zippers in flies may get a blog post eventually, but for now here is a WikiHow article on creating a fly from scratch.