Wealth of Experience: Sewing Tips

A post of tips - anything you wish someone had told you when you started to sew, that you figured out yourself since!

Machine stitching
If you're new to sewing with a machine and you find that your seams are wobbly: keep your eyes on the edge of the fabric as it goes through under the sewing foot. I remember that when I first started I stared at the machine needle - but looking at the fabric edge gives you a more even result.

Take it slow
It is so tempting to race through stitching something together but puckers and slipped layers are very frustrating. Take it slow when sitting at your sewing machine: check that all your layers are lying flat and that no fold of fabric got in the way. Particularly when sewing in sleeves...

Sew shortest seams first
When you have a narrow collar or buttonband, or any similar pattern piece, that you need to sew to something at its narrow end - sew those seams first. If you leave this until after you sewed the longer side, it is incredibly difficult to get the angle right. The narrow end is likely to slope in one direction or other and will be too long or too tight. As a result, the garment will look less well sewn.

Sew onto flat pieces first
I did a blog post about this one. It is easier to attach pieces like a patch pocket, a pocket flap, collars, etc... to a pattern piece when it is still flat and hasn't been sewn to many, if any, other pieces. The sewing instructions that come with your pattern may have you do these kinds of pieces last but that makes it more difficult.
After all haute couture does a lot of construction in flat pieces and only pulls it all together right at the end.

Zipper length
If your sewing pattern specifies a zip of say seven inches but you can only find one of eight inches or longer, don't despair: get the longer one.  If the difference is only one inch, you can let that dangle inside (easier to sew in as well!) and if longer than that then stitch the zip teeth together tightly on the inside and cut zipper off below. Worse like a charm.

Pinning a concave and a convex piece together
Put pins in perpendicular to the fabric edge but don't align the edges of the fabric pieces. The longer outside curved edge will need to pucker a little at that edge to make sure that the stitching line (the seam allowance's distance away from the edge) of both pieces gets pinned together smoothly. You can get the fabric pieces to come together flat at the stitching line when you hold the layers between a finger and thumb (at the stitching line) and make sure they are smooth and flat to the previous pin. It takes a bit of trial and error but you'll get there!

Double-folded hems
These are really tricky. Mine often produce these slight diagonally dragging lines from the folded edge to the stitching line - because one of the fabric layers shifted away from the other layer. Basting the hem may help; you can try a walking foot; or at the very least using lots of pins! Set thepins into the fabric perpendicularly. If you still have problems: do baby hems instead!

Baby hems
Try these instead of double folded hems. You need to serge/overlock the edge of your fabric to be hemmed. Then machine baste along the line where you want to fold the fabric up (before folding it) - this is using the longest straight sttich on your machine. Then fold up and press the hem with your iron: the fabric will fold easily at the machine basted/stitched line. It works beautifully!  Once you have your hem pressed, stitch at a suitable distance from the folded edge from the right side. Experiment with how deep you want your hem to be or if you literally only want to fold up the serged/overlocked edge and top stitch very close to the edge (which is then called edge stitching)

Use a tailor's awl
When it is tricky to sew over the bit where one fabric layer has a seam (you get loads of those when sewing patchwork!), then use a tailor's awl to hold the seam allowance down so you can sew smoothly over this bit. A tailor's awl is a straight spike with a handle at the end. It saves your fingers from going too close to the machine's needle. Don't use your fingers too close to the needle, it's not worth it.

Pulling pins before stitching
It is tempting to sew over the pins where they hold the fabric layers together. It is safer to pull each pin as you approach it. You can either stop stitching to remove each pin, or if it is a long straight seam and you're going slow, you may be able to remove pins before you get too close to sewing over them (and before the screw at the side of the machine foot comes plunging down onto your poor fingers). If your needle ever hits a pin straight on, the machine needle can break at the neede's eye and the pointed end will fly off at a high velocity. You really don't want it ending up in your eye, take time to pull the pins instead. Much safer.


What tip would you give yourself if you could go back in time?  Please post in the comments!

Sources of sewing inspiration

At our monthly London Dressmakers Club meetings we often mention sewing blogs or other sources of sewing inspiration that we like. We all like different ones and haven't all come across the same ones, so it would be lovely to spread the joy and list one source each that other members (and non-members) may enjoy too.

I hope we will do more posts like this one. Let us know in the comments if you read any of the listed blogs - or even better: tell us if you want to write up your favourite in a future sewing blog post (yes please!). We would like lots of people to contribute to this members blog. It is all about the more the merrier!  Please share - one paragraph and the link is all that's needed.

Here goes:

I am being greedy and giving more than my fair share of reccomendations, and I could do many more, but here are 3 of them - Barbara.

i) MOOD SEWCIETY
 It is the blog for the legendary Mood Fabric store in the USA.  They have the most amazing free patterns to download (for women mainly, but also for men and children)  but I am not really sure how to subscribe to this from their site.  I used to have to keep checking for new blogs every so often but I have accidentally managed to subscribe to it today via Bloglovin.
The link should be here.

ii) STITCH SISTERS
This is a vlog rather than a blog.  The lovely Nikki and Rachel run a sewing school in Sodbury, near Bristol, and even though you might not get to their school you can still get loads of advice, reviews, fabric hauls and inspiration from their vlog. They are just as friendly and chatty in the flesh as on the screen- they do come to London sometimes and I have been able to admire the creations they have been wearing IRL.  They sew the sort of garments I would make for myself - if I had a bit more flair and colour sense.
The link should be here

iii) STITCHER'S BREW
And this one is a podcast.  An hour or more each Friday of bubbly chat from Gabby (Gabberdashery) and Megan (Pigeon Wishes) and their guests of the week who are people whose blogs you may well read or whose independent businesses you buy from or otherwise involved in the sewing world.  It is like eavesdropping on a stitcher's tea party and just the thing to listen to while seated at your sewing machine- preferably with a mug of tea and a bit of cake to hand- and hear the behind the scenes stories.
The link should be here


Here is my contribution - Giselle:

I always enjoy reading the Allison C Sewing Gallery blog
She uses quite a few Burda patterns and her garments are often very interesting but entirely wearable. There is one from the July edition of Burda Style that she refers to as #113 Knot Dress. It has a very intriguing round "cut-out" that gets gathered up with a bow.  I am fascinated by pattern details like that!
She makes all kinds of garments: dresses, blouses, coats, trousers, you name it.  I am very jealous about the fit she achieves!

Catherine's Patterns
I also enjoy reading about all kinds of patterns and garments that Catherine sees at exhibitions, and the many fantastic photos she posts. She writes about some of the many vintage patterns she owns. What I love the most is the amount of details of some patterns: sometimes it is the cut of a garment but it can also be a design element like a collar or vent or a neckline, or some intriguing gathering... there is such a lot of interest there. I am very glad that Catherine writes her blog! She is also one of our members.

I guess you can see a bit of theme here!  There are quite a few more that I love reading, I'll save them for the next post like this!


We want to post more like this one. Part II is to follow soon!

Bias tape on

This is a really good demonstration on how to use store bought bias tape to finish off raw arm hole edges:

Sewaholic's 'Finishing of armholes with bias tape'

It makes a lot of sense to use tape cut on the bias because it smooths itself around curves a lot more than tape cut on the grain would ever do, even if you were to iron it to within an inch of its life - straight grain tape would still pucker and misbehave.

I bought this kind of bias tape in a few colours, the one that is folded in at both edges - and I never knew what to do with it because it seemed to me that you would want it folded over just once with the crease running down the very centre.  I think I was thinking of using the tape as binding rather than as a facing.  Aha!

This makes a lot more sense.  Very glad I found this blog post.

Jaycotts.co.uk is a good site to get your supplies from

What kinds of projects have you used bias tape for?  Do you use it like a facing (on the inside of the garment) or like binding (visible on the outside of the garment too).

Please post in the comments, and better yet!  Why not do a short blog post about your project and show us how you used bias tape?  We would love to see!

Let's bring this blog to life again - now that summer and the holidays are over.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Four kinds of finishing seams

This is an interesting blog posts about different kinds of finishing seams.  Four of them to be precise.  There are another few mentioned in the comments.

Do check it out: I want to be a turtle -Notionally Speaking: Finishing 

I don't agree that bias binding is a quick method, but maybe you get quicker with practice?  Love an overlocked or a French seam.  But then again the Hong Kong (bias strip) seams do look very nice!  Just make sure to use tape from a really thin fabric.  I wonder if organza would work?  Might be too slippery to work with though.

What's your favourite kind of seam finishing?

How to ... improvise a skirt

When I just started dressmaking, I could only justify to buy remnants. So I ended up with a lot of beautiful fabric, unsure of what to do with them. One of the remnants is a turquoise polycotton with yellow polka dots, about 130 x 115 cm. Perfect for a half circle skirt, or so I thought. It turned out that my skirt will be somewhere closer to a 3/8 skirt.

I started with the pattern Barbara helped me to make. I drew the circles, one for the waist and one for the hem. Since I did not have enough fabric, the one for the lower hem - of course - did not fit onto the fabric. My idea was to place the pattern right in the middle of the fabric so that the pattern could be easily altered. I can't stress enough how important it is that nothing from the waist circle must be cut off since that's the only part of a circle skirt which has to be fitted. I then connected the outer waist circle with the most outer point of the hem circle and made sure I left enough for the seam allowance. It should be a straight line.

I then stitched together the side seams and tried it on. It fits perfectly and I was so enthusiastic that I cut the fabric along the side seam. In my enthusiasm, I only forgot that I wanted to insert a zipper on one side and hence did not leave enough fabric to actually be able to do it. It was a big mistake (first time ever!) and I hope I learned for the future. After the shock, I decided to make my skirt a little bit shorter and put in an elastic band.

An unexpected hint from a friend to add pockets as they are quite handy to have lead to me finding this post with the "top 10" of pockets. It has a lot of ideas and is a very interesting read with a lot of links. For this fabric, I decided for in-seam pockets. I found this post clearer than the others but it's definitely worthwhile to read through the other posts as well. Since it is very well explained how you can add pockets in those blog posts, I take the shortcut and ask to read those if interested.

Once finished the pockets (I had to do them twice) the only thing left was the waist hem and the elastic band. I went for the most simple of options, zigzagged the edge and folded it over once to insert an elastic band.

Et voila:

Link to a great invisible zip tutorial

This is a great tutorial on how to insert an invisible zip.

Actually, the whole By Hand London blog is great. Do check it out.

Do make sure you use a zip that's at least 4-5cm (around two inches) longer than the opening you want.  The lower end will dangle on the inside of your skirt but this is much preferable to messing around with pulling the zip pull up while you're in the middle of stitching along the sides. With a dangly end you can stitch each side all the way down in one go.  It makes sense once you try this!

Leave the back centre seam unsewn (if you are going to insert the zip into the back centre seam of course).

You need an invisible zip sewing machine foot.  Inserting an invisible zip without this is the proverbial pain in the backside.  Once you own one you'll be forever grateful that someone had the good sense to invent them.

Try pressing the zipper teeth aside (as per this tutorial), I am told it makes stitching easier and more accurate.

This tutorial also shows very clearly where you need to start closing the back centre seam once the zip is in.  Lots of tutorials don't show this, which is why I was never that clear about what you're supposed to do at this point.

The description says to start the back seam about a half centimetre away from where you stitched before.  That's half a centimetre horizontally away from the stitching line, not vertically as I first thought.  The photo thankfully clears up that potential confusion.

If back-stitching isn't suited to your fabric because it makes the end of the stitching line too bulky: reduce your stitch length to the minimum your machine will give you (around 1mm or otherwise 1.1mm) and use this for up to half an inch, then increase the stitch length back to normal. The resulting tiny stitches will hold your thread.  You can take the thread ends back below the end of the stitching line and back stitch them by hand a couple of times in a suitable place. If this will show through you can try to whipstitch the ends around your stitching line (on the inside)

Some great tips for sewing accuracy

I just came across this collection of tips on how to sew more accurately:

Tips for accurate sewing

This is posted on TheSewingDirectory.co.uk site - this lists lots of classes, courses and workshops and also shows some menu items in the navigation bar that I haven't checked out yet: Events, Fabric Sales, Projects, Reviews, Interviews and the Techniques section that the above link goes to, and a few more.

Well worth checking out.

The blogger who wrote the Sewing Accuracy article is Sarah Flynn from FairyFaceDesigns blog. She does some great quilts, ie patchwork and quilting.  Check out her cushion covers!  They look like excellent stash busters when you have a few scraps that are too nice to throw out and a half meter or so of another fabric for the back.

She also does some sewing, like this excellent tutorial for a pencil case, so cute! Or these baby leggings, even more cute!  All together now: awww......


Back to the article on the sewing directory.  What I particularly liked was her emphasis of using a dry iron (no steam) to just press (not iron) your fabric while you are constructing your project.  She feels that steam distorts seams and makes accurate sewing rather more difficult.  It's an interesting thought.  I tend to spray a bit of water onto hard to tame areas but not so much overall.  That might be a good thing now that I really think about it.

Her point on starting with an accurately cut seam allowance is a very good one. 

I hope you enjoy Sarah's tips.  

What kinds of things have  you come across that make it easier to sew accurately?  Please share any and all tips in the comments!

Sarah Flynn from FairyFace Designs - See more at: http://thesewingdirectory.co.uk/news/2012/03/23/tips-for-accurate-sewing/#sthash.p7qblTS5.dpuf

Sarah Flynn from FairyFace Designs - See more at: http://thesewingdirectory.co.uk/news/2012/03/23/tips-for-accurate-sewing/#sthash.p7qblTS5.dpuf

Turn out perfect collar corners

Here is the link to the 'How to turn your collar points so that they're perfect' tutorial that I promised to post at the Sew a Detachable Collar session on Monday 3 March.

The Off The Cuff tutorial

I don't think that you need quite as long a thread as shown here, a bit shorter is fine too. 

While the collar is still inside out and hasn't been turned yet: only the thread loops should be showing outside the whole thing.  If you can see the two ends of thread and the loop is hidden inside the collar layer sandwich, that's the wrong way round (ask me how I know. I've done this wrong on every single collar I sewed up as samples on Sunday. Yes, every single one).

Once you turn the collar out through the gap left in the stitching, you should then gain access to the two loose ends of the thread.  You want to pull at both of them at the same time - just like the tutorial emphasises.

You can apply this trick to every type of garment where you need to turn a corner inside out. You could even use a couple of thread loops on a strong curve to turn that out if you feel it'll be difficult to do, on say the end of a rounded lapel that has no point but a sharp curve?  Or perhaps the end of a fabric tube that you sew shut, that kind of thing.  Those long, thin tubes of fabric are often turned inside out with a plastic gadget that acts a bit like a needle.  Thread loops are as good as that gadget, and definitely much better than a safety pin, which is what I used to use.

I had a problem with cutting into the thread when trimming the corners - you want to make sure to hold the thread loop out of the way when it comes to trimming.  Or insert the thread after sewing with the help of a darning needle, that works very well too!

After turning with the thread loops still attached

Let us know of your experience turning collar points.  Have you tried this technique and what do you think?  Do you do something different, and how are you finding it?  Please let us pick your brain for further insights into other ways of doing this!


Re stitching along the top and outside edges of a collar: I have seen more than one tailor/dressmaker sew off the edge of the fabric and sew each seam of the collar in separate goes.  I am not quite sure how different this is to pivoting at the corner and sewing without cutting the thread.  Does anyone have any insights into this?

LDC jacket lining discussion

LDC Dilemma Corner: Lining your jacket
Sew-a-long discussion.

Hello Seamstresses,

Many of us got involved in the great jacket sew-a-long if you have completed your project how did you find the lining stage? Any hints and tips? If you are yet to complete it still let LDC Seamstresses know how you plan to tackle this section, it can be mind boggling ... That is my experience!

LDC's Dilemma Corner: For the Seamstress in Distress

LDC's Seamstress Dilemma Corner: For the Seamstress in Distress!

Hello Seamstresses,

Do you have a skill you really wish to master? Are you going about things in your own way following patterns and not sure if it's 100% correct? Have a general question regarding sewing, patterns, adjustments fabric, machines, sewing resources, and books? If so you're in the right place. Send your question(s) over  via the LDC blog site here.

 If you're a shy Seamstress and you don't  wish to  blog/ comment below or prefer someone else to blog your dilemma question, that's no problem just contact LDC and we'll see what we can do. 

But really we'd love it if you jump  and test the water yourself with a blog post  below... the water is not too cool!

Happy sewing seamstresses