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Lesson Info

Stitches Examples and Button Holes

I'm going to show you here on the front panel uh a little bit about stitch length and stitch with so when I turned the machine on it goes directly to a straight stitch and what I see in the window right now is ah, it says two point four that's my optimum stitch lengthen with on mechanical machines when you turn on dialled to select a stitch, you need to go in and then select your width and select your length in order to start sewing and on a computerized machine what happens is and the optimum length and with our set for you automatically and you certainly can go in and change them to your preference depending on what you're doing and the look you want for your stitch but the optimum length and with their pre selected for you so you can just begin this here is where I would adjust my stitch length and this icon that looks like short you no longer longer longer this this is my stitch length and that one is already got a little light under it and that tells me that's, my optimum length a...

nd my optimum length for this stitch over here this is my stitch with control, and if I touched either one of these buttons here that will bring me over to my with and by touching either one, it just tells it it's elects it for me and I can it shows me my with this pre selected at three point five and then I can go ahead and change from there and you'll know on either your length or you're with where'd the default setting is is because the light will be read when it's the optimum so you see when I change is if I make my stitch just one step longer the light goes to yellow so I know I'm off of default setting doesn't it doesn't matter it just it's just let you know when it goes back to red that you're back at optimum should you want to remain like where was average again? What was optimum if when the light is red, you'll know you're there same thing with your with optimum in the case of the strait stitch is three point five that means center in the case of a straight stick because this is a seven millimeter um stitch with on this machine so three and a half would be center so that makes sense and then but I can go off center and what that you obviously don't have withdrawn a straight stitch, but when you use your wit controls with a straight stitch, it actually gives you different needle positions so if you're doing top stitching and want to do several was a top stitching, you can move your needle over a little bit from side to side as you desire so let's play a little bit with length and with as we so and we'll go back to that optimum here's optimum length optimum with we're good to go, so we'll stitch I've got this blue fabric here here's regular length but I can certainly the needle always stops up so now I'm gonna lengthen that out and I'm going to go to my longest stitch length in this case it's going to let me go to all the way to a four point eight and you'll see that my stitches get very, very long theory zin I want to tell you about that is depending on the thread you use in the fabric you're selling, you may want to adjust your stitch length if you're sewing things like um silky fabrics any finer weight fabrics you'd use a finer wait needle and you'd use a shorter stitch length when you go to a heavier fabric and a bigger needle, you would lengthen out your stitch length, particularly in the case of like leather fabric. If you so very short stitches with weather because holes are permanent in the leather, you could perforate the fabric because the hole they're too close together almost like carrying a coupon out of the magazine or something I mean you're just going to have those holes really close together and you could perforate the fabric so that's a case where when you're selling your straight stitch you may want to go in and lengthen your stitch length but the stitch length also effects things like here we here we are here's what I was just saying here's that looks like a lot of lint here um shorter stitches medium stitches longer stitches but it also is true for your decorative stitches so here's a zigzag shorter medium longer one of your deck stitches a scallop you've actually got a couple different scallops stitches built into this machine this is your smaller the medium and longer so you'll see as you play with your length and with you can get different looks this is an example of all I've got all of the stitches that are built into this machine already stitched out and you can play with your length and width on all of these and completely changed how they look so even though it looks like you've got just what's here, you can expand on them I love this one here this serpentine stitch you can make this look so different let me just pull that one up for example the serpentine stitch cultures like that one a lot too I'm just going to touch it it's going to go to the optimum lengthened with so let's just so a little bit of that to see how it looks love this stitch it's really fun ok, but now look at when I change my length I'm gonna bring my stitch length down shorter my thread is going to get caught on my foot their way they're much closer together. Tightened it up. I can lengthen this out really long, but I can change the width as well. So let's put it back to just kind of its optimum but let's make that really narrow. Here you go. See how we brought the with down. I'll just re threat. I think I just broke me through it so I didn't either. I thought I broke it let's. Just keep going. I thought I heard my thread break but it didn't look it here. How different I can make that stitch look just by playing with the length and with so just experiment with these because people sometimes say, what do I do with all those stitches? And you can just do even the simplest little things. I got this little coffee cozy that I made with some of the different decorative stitches built and just have fun with them. Just it's. So much fun to just play here you've got your vine stitch its right here next to the serpentine here's, this little star stitch it's really funny? They I've done a lot of beginners selling classes, and I have some projects I do where they get to pick their stitches. And almost invariably everybody picks this fine stitch in this little star stitch spent fun to watch. Everyone really loves those that we put those on our cozy there. That was one of our projects. We did one time here's another example a stitch length how how it, um, is a affect zigzag stitch we've got a little more open, the shorter we go with the stitch length setting, we bring it down to where it's very close together and you get a satin stitch, which I'll do for you in just a little bit. Okay, so that's your lengthened with setting. So now let's, start sowing some of these stitches and some some of these accessories that you have. So I want to show you how to do a buttonhole and your machine has on the front panel, you'll notice that there are two styles a buttonhole there's, a larger bar attack and a smaller bar tex will buttonhole. So how do you know when you to do which one that's a matter of personal preference, it may also your decision may also be affected by ah, the size of your button, the weight of your fabric, thie like if you had a very tiny button, you probably wouldn't want this big bartek buttonhole you might want the smaller one if it's maybe a linen blow, sir, a cotton dress, something like that. This might be more for a coat or a jacket or home decor projects, for example, and your machine has what we call an automatic one step buttonhole we're just going to find my button here to show you so what you do here is this had this buttonhole foot has a slider on it, so you open that up, open this up and you're going to set your button on the back of this foot and slide that shut, and now the machine knows how big to make that button hole for the fabric that you're working with. So we're going to press this button to release the foot remember I showed you that earlier how to release the presser foot and this ah buttonhole foot there's a piece here and a piece here that the buttonhole foot lever when I bring this down, that's needs to fit in between these. So first of all, what I'm going to do is just snapped this on, and it has that same little pin that I showed you your your regular foot has a little pin like that for snapping it on, so does this one same exact way it's a bigger foot it just goes on the same same exact way snap if it doesn't quite snap on just move it around a little bit till it does right and then these two little pieces on this foot you want to make sure this buttonhole lever is right in between them you don't want it behind here and you don't want it in front like that you want it right and between right in between them and this is all clearly illustrated in your instruction manual is well ok so then what we do is we come over to the front side of the sewing machine and down at the bottom front panel there are your two choices of your buttonhole so we'll do the large bar attack buttonhole presets my length and with for me I can adjust my stitch length if I want to but I'm going to try went out first on my fabric and uh um see if I if I need any adjustments just depending on my preference and my threat this right here is a piece of that dress wait will like I showed you earlier when we were looking at needles and what I've done it would be like a placket of ah blow sir are excuse me a plaque it of a dress or a jacket and what I've done here is add a if usable interfacing which I would probably do on a placket of a garment, it would probably be in my project instructions to add interfacing to the placket. So and then the other thing I want I'm just going to reach behind me and grabbed a stabilizer. You may want to also add a tearaway stabilizer to the back side of your work when you so after what it does is it gives your fabric a little more stability, so that when you so you don't get any little puckers or anything like that, because the buttonhole is a dense stitch, you would never just do a buttonhole on just fabric without stability of either interfacing and or a stabilizer. If the garment or project does not require an interfacing you for sure, at least want to use a stabilizer and their temporary and just remove when you're finished. But what they do if you if you were too so your buttonhole right on the fabric, you probably get this tunneling puckering, or it might make a really beautiful buttonhole, but then the topside looks a little puck reon each end like that you like? Why is it doing that? Why is my machine puckering my buttonholes? It's not you just didn't prepare the fabric properly, so use a little stabilizer and put that underneath, and then you put your fabric underneath your buttonhole foot, ok? And we'll just go ahead and so one and see how it looks so it's all one step you just have to step on the foot controller until it's finished. I usually like to stop and trim this tale before I get a little get in there a little better get rid of that thread tail so it's actually measuring the exact button that I have in the foot to make that buttonhole exactly the right size for that button. Of course you would most likely have your thread matching your fabric, but I usually use contrast ing threads when I'm doing things like this so you can see what I'm doing. So here we are we're gonna pull this out and I'll just trim this thread and there's our perfectly made buttonhole right now if I if I do another one it's gonna look exactly the same. So put that underneath here we'll score head and stitch another one beauty again of the one step buttonhole versus a four step buttonhole is that it's all one step you just wait to step on the controller till it's done you don't have to determine when to turn around to come back the other direction and the legs so the same direction so that there's no twisting potential for twisting and it ties off at the end, when we're done, we simply remove move our threat. Clip those threads. And if you look at your buttonholes, they're exactly the same size, exactly the same shape. And then to cut those open what you can do. And I believe this is in your book as well. Um, you would remove your stabilizer? Of course, that tearaway stabilizer. We don't need that anymore. Trim those threads in the back. But you can put a, um, pin in your the end of your buttonhole right there. It kind of works like a little bumper so that when you use your scene ripper to cut your buttonhole open, you can put your tip of your seam ripper in here and slide that through to cut your button open, buttonhole open and you won't accidentally go too far by sliding this and hope. Oops! I cut my bar, attack and ruin your buttonhole so that's just a neat little tip there. And then you have perfectly made, um, professional looking buttonholes based on the button that you placed in the foot so those couldn't be more easy. And then again, the smaller side. The other button hole that you have on the front of your panel is simply a narrower zigzag, and you might use that for a shorter button on a lighter weight garment.