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Lesson Info

Blind Hem Stitch and Applique

I'm gonna try to get it it's more specific techniques show you some the blind him we're going to do some satin stitch applicator I'm gonna try to show you the even feed foot for quilting and some twin needlework. Um and if I have time, I'm going to even show you some other really fun optional accessories that are available for the machine. So I think before I go to satin foot, I'm going to start with that blind him foot because I know we get a lot of questions on how to do a him properly. So what your machine came with comes with if you are, if you looked in your accessory trade probably saw foot that looks something like this this is their blind hem foot and your your book does tell you how to fold your fabric and so the blind him, but I'm going to show you a little bit more about that. And so here I have a pretty cashmere wool that I had actually made a pencil skirt out of for myself and this is the wrong side of the fabric this is the ham. This would be the right side of the fabric,...

so usually where folks get a little confused is how to fold the fabric properly, feed it into the machine so what you would do is after you folded your him up the depth that you want and you could use that over edge stitch that we talked about earlier, that satin that slant over edge, maybe even a pinking shears, depending on the fabric to finish this raw edge off so it doesn't unravel once that's been done. Then what you do is you just temporarily fold the fabric that hem back. It should say like this, so it might be kinda hard to see it because it's a dark fabric I didn't think about that should've brought a lighter color, but you fold that back, so this is still the wrong side of your let's say this is a skirt, so I'll do that again, here's your ham folded up and then you turn this him back just temporarily. So you're still looking at the wrong side of your garment, and then what we're going to do is when we so we want to stitch so that this foot open it up a little bit there's an adjustment screw on the side of this foot that makes this white extension piece move left or right, so when you're sowing, what would happen is you're going to guide your fold of this fabric after you've folded this back, the fold guides up is guided as you so against this white extension at the front of this foot. We use a blind hem stitch on the machine, which is the first one in your second row, and you can widen it out if you want to make it narrower, but I just want to show you on the what happens here is the blind him stitches those like this, it'll go a stitch, stitch, stitch, and then it will swing over like that, and when it so's and swings over, you're really here like this, where you're on your fabric and it's going to go a stitch, stitch, stitch, and then when it swings over, you want that point to just grab the folder the fabric and then come back and then grabbed the fold of the fabric. You don't want it to bite too much into that fold, because you'll see that as a big stitch on the other side when you finish your him so you just want it grabbing a threat or two of the fold so you can adjust with your stitch length or excuse me you're stitch with, or you can adjust with the adjusting screws on the foot itself. If you're sewing a garment from scratch, you probably want to try this first on a scrap by just turning that up and giving that a try so you can adjust either the width of your foot with of your stitch or the placement of this guide on the foot according to your fabric, the reason why it would need to be adjusted from fabric to fabric is you can just kind of think about it imagine this is a cashmere wool, and my fold is thicker than it would be if I had, say, a cotton that I just made a cotton skirt out of that fold is going to be thinner and finer than something like this wool cashmere so you would tweak it for the fabric that you're working with and then proceed. So we'll put this foot on, and we'll just give this a try and see how we want to adjust. Depending on this it's, I'm going to just legal this there we go, it's snapped in place and get up in front of mission here. I've selected my stitch, so we'll just give this a try on this sample. So you see, what I'm doing is that extension that I would have finished with a decorative are excuse me, eh? A new edge finish stitch or a pinking share that that part goes underneath the foot and then this fold is guided up against this extension at the front, and so as I begin to, so I'll do a couple stitches and that stitch looks a little narrow, so I'm gonna widen it out a little bit. And see if now that's actually catching I like I like a wider stitch, but it looks like I'm catching too much of the fold so what I'm going to do is bring my fabric so that it's um it's it moves my guide so it's pushing my fabric over to the left a little bit, so I'm catching less of the soul. So you going to do that either with the wind or with now there I did it a little too much and it's not even catching it at all. So then we want to adjust that back a little bit, maybe bring our with down you really need to experiment for the fabric that you're working with to make sure that you get that set the way you need it and then you can just go to tone on your on your him so let's see if we got that no, I moved the placement of my guide a little and I brought the width of my stitch down and of course you would do this with a thread that matches your fabric perfectly. So it's really, really blind I'm doing it with a high contrast just so you can see what it's happening now is still need to go a little bit more on the placement of this um uh foot because I'm still missing my still missing my my fold so I'll just cut that out we just keep tweaking it until we get it right where it needs to be. Yeah, I take you a couple three tries that's okay, get that under there a little bit when my stitch out a bit okay, now I'm no I'm catching it that's great. So let's let's try it on our main piece so we'll place this underneath all our threads underneath there the ham goes up against the edge of the guide and you just left that let the folded the fabric just guide it against that extension at the front of the foot so it lets you so this at a nice speed. Now this is a great thing to be able to do blind hemming by machine because you can imagine if you had draperies or bed skirts or do days or any you know thinks big full skirts anything like that that would require a really large ah ah along him that would be tedious to do by hand and you can do it by machine in a fraction of the time thief of course you could do a top a top stitched him, but that might be too casual of a look depending on the project and so here we go our stitch caught our fold and here's what it looks like on the back side and then when you're finished you turn that over and the stitches even though I had like a gold thread and there it's completely invisible see one little stitch right there but basically it it's all invisible so this is how it was folded again this is how it was folded when it was feeding into the machine with that foot the fold guided against there and then when you're finished you just bring that him back around like that this is still your wrong side flip it over and then there's your blind him okay, so I hope that that answered how to do that for some folks that might be wondering how it's a little counter intuitive I know how you fold that in their butt and you're blind him foot comes with your machine in your accessory trey ok, so one one thing I wanted to show you then was your satin foot that comes with your machine and it was in your tray as well and here's what it looks like and this is your standard foot you're all your general purpose but I should say and this is your sat on foot now the reason how these air different is when you turn them over is where you can really see how they're different is this one has a kind of like a tunnel or a path or a groove on the underside where this one is completely flat so when you saw satin stitches for example here's just something accuse a couple of examples of satin stitching on this stocking where we had a satin stitch to do the applicator of the silk on here when you so that stitches very close together and it's very dense and we can become almost like a little ridge and when you're sowing along if you have your general purpose foot on here those stitches when you're sowing contend to get balled up in front right in the opening of the foot because you're stitch length is really short and because this is flat on the back side they're not able to pass freely underneath and this foot is this way by design because this is for garment construction this is for your sewing your seems on your pillows it's for construction you want on all of this area of the foot to come in contact with the fabric that's in contact with the feed dogs on your machine to feed the fabric through but when you're doing satin stitching thie feed dogs come in contact with your fabric and on the sides here and you want this tunnel on the undersides so all this dense stitching has a place to go so it just slides freely underneath here so if you've been fighting with satin stitch satin stitching on your machine switch to your sat on foot and this isn't your manual your instruction manual as well ok, so let's snap this foot on and I'll get the sort of the way here's an example of some sound stitching too sometimes folks say how do I set up my machine for sentence stitching and like where does my width and where does my length go on after I select these eggs egg and the fact of the matter is it really kind of depends on the look you want for your machine because applicator doesn't have to always be a satin stitch for example on these little eyeglass case is that I have here which are just as cute as they could be this is felt and this is um I used this satin foot for this but this is a narrow zigzag but a very open stitch length because they just wanted it to have a little more of a kind of a hand picked look it doesn't have to look satiny like this so that was, you know, that's it that's it that's applicator but it doesn't have to be a satin stitch okay no here's an example of a um uh large application where the stitch was a little wider and we used a ray on thread to give it some shine and again just another look for applicator same thing here it's a little bit narrower with setting but there's no one right with their length it really depends on the look you want for your prada so let's say that we're going to put an applicator on, we're going to sentence stitch around this heart, I'm going to change my threat on my machine, and of course, whenever we do applicator, we're going to add a stabilizer to the back side. And while I'm switching my thread, I'll just talk about how, because of time, I'm not demonstrating how to put the applicator on the bass fabric, but what you need for that is some sort of fuse herbal web there's, different brands of it out on the market and, um, you you place your application fabric on one side of the fuse herbal web, then you you bonded on according to manufacturer's instructions, and you cut out your shape, and then you peel the paper off the back side, and then it becomes like a two sided it's like a two sided materials. So after you've applied the applicator, put put the excusable web on the applicator, cut out the shape, then you play, peel the paper off, place the application shape onto your base fabric and then up fuse it in place and now it's firmly in place, ready to go. You wouldn't just cut out a fabric heart and just said it on the fabric because when you start stitching, it'll it'll shift and go out of position, so you need to bond it to your base fabric with a few zobel web of some type. They're different types on the market, just whatever available at your local local fabric and kraft or kraft store. So to do this one, we're going to, we're going to use a a ray on thread, so I'll set this on top, and I'm going to give a try with my smaller school cap and put my thread here and make sure I want to go straight stitch with my needle in its highest position so that that needle thread her will work for me. Let's see, I don't mean to put there we go, bring it down to put down there we go and we're ready to put my cover back on my bob and cover plate covered played back on my bob in case I should say, and now we're ready to get started, so when they choose are zigzag stitch and before I really start sewing on my application over here, just on the side of the fabric, he would do this on a scrap, but just so I can show you, we'll try a few settings with the width and length to achieve the look we want before we start stitching on the actual application. So right now, it's at a five millimeter with and I think that might be a little wide for our heart I'm gonna bring that down to about of four to start and my stitch length I'm gonna at least start that at about a one point oh, and then it just down from there let's, take a look and see if we even like the way that looks I can tell already. It's it's a little too open there's too much fabric showing between my stitches for the look we want for this heart, so we're going to bring the stitch length down a little shorter let's have a look at that. Still a little a little bit too much air there, bring that down maybe one more notch that looks really good that looks like probably what we want for our heart. The stitches are much denser and closer together, so we'll go ahead, cut our thread and we'll get started selling around the applicator if you find that for the thread that you're the thread that you're using that it's still, your stitch length is down as far as it will go and you still see fabric between the stitches this happens to be a forty wait ray on you could switch to a thirty wait ray on, which is a little bit thicker thread and that would give you more of a filled in. Look, if that's your the way you want your applicator, look so you can experiment with your threads until you get just the look you want. So we're going to start here on the end of our applicator and what you want to watch for when you're stitching. I often like to call it like when using to the left and zag to the right on your zigzag stitch. So what you're really looking for here on your application is that when you zing to the left, here you're into your applicator, and when you zag to the right, you're going just off the edge of the applicator fabric. You don't want to be zigging here and zagging way over here, you wantto you have wanna have the majority, the good majority of your stitch on the applicator itself. It'll give you a nice raised edge, so I'm gonna get started with this. My foot slipped off the controller and just take your time with it stitches are real close together, so it takes a little moment to advance don't push it, don't pull it just let the feed dogs do what it needs to do what they need to do now I've just been on a straight away so it's pretty easy to guide it along, but we're coming up to an area where we've got some fairly sharp curves, so I'm going to need to stop with my needle down in this in the case of this it's an outside curve, I want to stop with my needle down on the right, leave it down kind of like a little placeholder and lift the presser foot slightly and just pivot a little bit so I can continue going around that curve. I don't want to keep forcing the fabric when I'm going around a sharp curve because I could go veering right off my apple case you want to take time for sharper curves, you just have to stop and pivot, so put the needle down we're going toe lift and pivot again a little bit and for these outside curves I pivot with the needle in the right hand side if it was an inside curve, I pivot with the needle on the inside curve and the reason why you do that is if I was to stay if I was to stop right now with my needle for this outside curve with the needle down on the left if I was to lift and pivot, you can almost imagine that over here on the right hand side I'm going to have an open an open area like this where it's going to open up a little bit where I would pivoted so if I stop on the left and pivot um I eliminate creating that gap on the outside edge so here we go we're gonna leave the needle down pivot again a little bit and you would just work all the way around this's you would do this more or less depending on how small your curves are. If you had a really small applicator, you might even want to use a narrower zig zag stitch for a cleaner look on a really small circular area just really depends on your project the size of it the shape of it stopped and pivot the needle down to continue around that heart. So I think you get the idea of what we're doing here and you're completely enclosing the edge stop and pivot stopping pivot to negotiate that curve to make your ok and that's how we did something like this is what this be looked like before we started and then we stitched around it with the sentenced it's just like we did with the white on the heart to create that application here we negotiated all the curves. When you come over to corners like this you just pivot ninety degrees so come to the end pivot ninety degrees proceed around you either pivot ninety degrees or you negotiate your curves inside and outside curbs depending on where you are in your application and that's how you do that but you want to make sure you're using your satin foot when you do that so that your stitches don't bunch up underneath your press her foot you can use different stitches to for your application you khun do set your machine for a blind hem stitch or a pin stitch down on your bottom row on your panel the third one over it looks like a little stitch that goes like this um I just kind of you with my finger here unless you can see the front of the machine it's a stitch right here and you can use that for an applicator. We did that here with this I've got a apple design instead of a satin stitch look like this that's all filled in and solid this says more of a kind of ah um casual look ah pin stitch applicator and it just comes over over like so it's sos around the edge so you can just apply your in this case the apple you would apply it the same way you just apply the heart shape and then stitch around it with this pin stitch rather than with the satin stitch there's a little stitch that that comes on the outside edges it's so so it's sort of captures the raw edge of the fabric to keep that from getting unravel. Lee so that's another alternative for applicators well, but I would still use my satin foot for that you could also use your blind hem stitch for application you bring it down very narrow. In this case this is a blind stitch and these were these shapes were not raw edges like the heart and the apple were they were actually folded under impressed and then when the shapes are placed down on the main fabric, it might be a little hard to see because it's the same color thread is this is the fabric is but it's just a little blind hem stitch real close together to catch the folded edge of that fabric. So sometimes you hear that referred to his blind stitch applicator. Here we have pins, ditch applicator or you have sat in stitch application so there's a lot of different possibilities with applicator. Now with satin stitch you can also it's not just for applicator. You can use it to do things like this and here's a pillow that we have where oh, I saw this idea at shopping at a home decor store selling, you know, home to core accessories, and I saw something and done similarly on a pillow, and I thought that it's again, I'm going back to what I said earlier, about when you know you have these stitches and what you can do with them. When you swim, you're out shopping, you start seeing things differently, so keep your eyes open and keep your mind open when you when you're doing that because you have a wonderful basic stitch package with this machine that you can really do a lot with. And so what you would do there with that is you would take your, um, fabric and you would use a fabric marking tool got a piece of that silk right here. This is a silk do peony, and in this case, you could actually just draw your stitching line on your fabric like so so you kind of know where two so you don't have to try to eyeball it and just draw your lines on now. One thing about fabric markers this I would probably on silk use a like a little chalk pencil, but I only have a white one here with me, and I wouldn't even see that on this fabric, because it's the same color. But you might want to have a blue one and a pink one and a white one depending on the color of your fabric and there's different types like this one that I just drew on here with is a water soluble won so in order for this line than to come out you would need to have a a a damp cloth or something kind of blocked that out or wash it out some of the kind of lavender pinkish colored ones you really need to read the labels on the packaging but thie some of them disappear with air eso you wouldn't want to draw those lines say late at night before you go to bed and say we're going to stitch that in the morning because on those air soluble ones well they'd be gone by the time you got up in the morning so you want to pay attention to that but this one happens to be a water soluble one these air chalk and it really just keep up keep on hand of few colors and a few types because it will depend on your fabric type in your fabric color which one to use but they have late they come with usually in a package that labels what they're for and how to use them and so all you would do there is just switched to all grab one of these green threads and well just do this real quick ok, but my straight stitch and highest position and then press it down and with thread that needle ok, and now you would use your zigzag stitch with a fairly short stitch length for that satiny look, if you wanted it more open, you could and just begin stitching fall with your satin foot on your machine. The nice thing about this satin foot two is compared to your all purpose foot, where the slit for the threat is over on the side. Here, the slit is in the center, so you could actually use that center, marking as a way to guide guide the line that you dream. Just take your time with it. Don't force your fabric, don't push it, don't pull it just what the feed dogs. Grab it and take it through and just follow that line if you wanted to make this narrower, narrower, wider, whatever you like when you're finished, you have a nice satiny line just like what we have here on the silk.