Lessons

Lesson Info

Basic Sewing Techniques

We finished last time we did a buttonhole and a sewing button on and they're just a few other little things I'd like to show you with the bomb what comes with your machine and then we'll get on to some of the optional presser feet and I'll do is many of those as I can with the time we have there's more of them available than what we have time for. But one of the things I wanted to show you we talked earlier about the patterns selector dial this is actually a little stitch out of all the different stitches that aaron your machine sometimes people say, what are all those stitches and what are they for and how would I use thumb? S oh, you have your sort of basic utility stitches like straight and zigzag and this one here also with in just a moment it's an over casting stitch this one can be used to if you want to use a have a stitch, finish the edge of the seat seem alone so that it doesn't unravel when you make your scene that's a really good one your honey comb stitch isa good one to us...

e for elastic insertion and so is thie multiple stitches eggs egg which I'm going to show you in just a moment you've got blind him stitches that other over edge stitches in this little but a group of decorative stitches and you can mix those up mix your decorative threads mixed the stitches if you surprised a lot of places you can use those here's just the simplest little potholder that we did. We just had a few little scraps of this left over from a quickly did and here's your little cross stitch here's a zigzag just mixing threads and mixing stitches too just create your own personal look so just experiment and have fun with it they're really a lot of fun and when when you know you have these stitches what's kind of interesting is when you're out shopping, you start looking at home decor items and ready to wear a little differently you start think I could I could put those stitches on the border and make a border that looks just like that and you'll start thinking even differently when you go shopping so that's a lot of fun, so what I'm going to do to start out is take that multiple stitches zigzag stitch and so I'm going to turn my dialled to over to where multi stitch the executive is set my with very wide and bring my stitch length down fairly short, you might have to experiment with this on a scrap to get it toe look the way you want but on and we're going to repair a hole in some denham maybe you've got some work clothes, children's clothes and there was a little tear and you want to fix it of course I would have the thread match so it blends in, but I'm going to do a contrast color so that you can see it and what you would do is just take a little scrap of the same fabric if you don't have a scrap of the same thing, just get something of similar weight and just put it behind as a sort of stabilizer and there's the little hole that we want to sew up and the multi zigzag where normal zigzag goes back and forth zigs, eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs is aeg the multistep zigzag does step, step, step, step, step, step, step like that. And so if we bring the stitch length closer together, we're almost doing like a darning, so to speak of that whole area so let's, go ahead and do that and put my press their foot down step on the book and this is going to really stand out because it's white thread on this dark blue, but you'll see it, and here we are you see how we brought that those two sides together, you can even just turn it around one hundred eighty degrees and just stitch it again and it's really nice and secure and you've got a nice patch or repair in your hole there the next thing I'd like to show you is when you want to do a ribbing insertion, and where this might come in handy is ifyou're making t shirts repairing t shirts? Maybe you've got like, a hoody where the sides seem came open and those kind of fabrics where you need to sew a seam that also doesn't seem finish, but when you're all done, it will stretch, so we're going to go over to our patterns selector dial, and I'm going to turn this to my slant over edge stitch this is going to make a scene with a finish at the same time, and because that's, one of those blue stitches we talked about earlier, I'm going to turn my dial. So the stitch length dial's on the s for stretch and as I said earlier today, they look their best when they're at their widest with so we're all set up for that, and now we're going to do take our ribbing. You know what ribbing is it's like what you see on cuffs and around the neck bands of t shirts and sweatshirts, we're going to fold that in half, and all these are if you if you're making t shirts, you want a rib that has a nice sum like rick content in it, the ones that one hundred percent cotton tend to get a little stretched out and he's with the spandex like roe kind of content to them have a little more memory and spring back into shape better so I want to watch for those and now when we so I'm going to put my ribbing on top folded in half of all the raw edges to one side and the bottom when I'm just going to guide it in but the top one I'll stretch slightly as I go so as I so you can do this right at the edge or you can do it in a little bit treatment later it's really up to you but you see what I'm doing is just stretching the top slightly well I keep the bottoms just sort of got going in straight I'm not stretching the bottom is well just guiding it in you need to stop for just a moment to just reposition that slightly if it's moving around and your foot a little bit just go ahead and do that so when we're all finished turn the hand well toward you on ly till the needles in its highest position and just starts to come down and then you know you're in a good place to remove your work from the machine and you could see what we've got here now is where we've sown in our rib it stretches and we've got a nice ribbing insertion like a like a t shirt sweatshirt caller so you can either construct them or repair them with that stitch. The next thing I want to show you is how to insert elastic and I got a neat little trick for that especially if you're using these little bit narrower ones this is great for slips and doll clothes and children's clothing you can either do it with the top of your fabric turned down or do it right at the raw edge. It depends on your project but went for these narrower elastics I kind of like to use my presser foot is a third hand so you can take your elastic and just kind of trim the end to a little bit of a point feed that elastic in through that hole and then snap your press their foot back on to the machine but the threat under the foot and then when you stitch this now we're going to go back to that multi zigzag needle is out of the fabric so I can turn my dialogue and I want a nice wide with to cover the elastic and I want to put my length maybe about average now this time when you so you want to hold the elastic from behind probably that length needs to come down just a little bit hold the elastic from behind you stretch from only the elastic you're not pulling the fabric you just stretching the elastic from behind and in front you could stop to readjust and smooth this out but you can already see it's gathering in the back again just stretch from behind stretch men back but don't pull it just you're just holding it talk to keep my arm out of the way when you're all finished turn the hand well toward you raise the needle out of the fabric until it just starts to come down again lift the presser foot lifter remove your work and there you have your last a concession great for doll close real quick quick way to insert elastic okay um so next I want to show you but you're free arm you khun do hemming of small tubular areas children's clothing shirt cuffs you remove your extension table here it gives you access to this what we call free arm and that's great for when you want to small tubular areas like this fit really nicely around the end of a free arm to stitch around it in ham it when you don't have access to a free arm what happens is when you want to sew around a leg like this you have to work from the topside and keep moving this around and it's all kind of fiddly because it's all here in front of you but when you have the free arm slide this off and then just slip this on to the end of the machine and then just stitch around it in a circle in just to save time I just show you this way because I have so many other things I want to show you but you would just work all the way around so around in a circle and then remove your remove your, uh work from the machine so that's your free arm ok, so now let's, go ahead and we're going to move into some of these optional accessories is that are available from you can take a look at our website to see where to buy uh we're going to expand your machine's capability by experimenting with some of these feet on the first one and probably the most popular one, which is why I want to start with it is the satin foot and the satin foot is what you use when you want to do applicator. Now here I have my initial b on this fabric and this very, very dense stitching that you see around the pink part here this b is an applicator on a base fabric, this on this tote bag this is an applicator to it's a little different looking because we still used a zig zig stitch, but we just use regular threat instead of a shiny ray on we used regular thread and we have the stitch open a little bit it doesn't always have to be dense and sat me like this, you can have it look a little more raw and organic like this if you want you can even have the little po keys from your fabric when you cut it just has a little bit more of a raw look you can really just experiment with that to get the look you want, but the reason we changed to a satin foot is I'm just going to show you the difference between your regular foot and your satin foot. The regular foot is for construction when you turn it over and look at the back side it's flat on the back side so that it stays in contact with the feed dogs to help feed the fabric through. But when you do this dense stitching with your regular presser foot, what can happen is you can get the thread can jam up underneath your foot and you just see all this thread like building up and building up and building up under right in front of and underneath the footing. You basically make this big thread ball because it's not feeding because you've got this dense stitching that can't pass underneath this flat side of the foot. So when you change to the satin foot, what happens is not only is it transparency, you kind of watch your work as you go, but it's got this sort of groove or tunnel on the underside that lets all that dense stitching press freely underneath it so you can so dense stitching successfully so let's, try a little of that, so we're gonna just snap it on. It just snaps on like all your regular feet do, and we're going to start by making a little heart applicator, and I'm going to show you how to go around and applicant here's an example of another applicator to, um, here's my initial again. And there are different ways you handle this when you go around curves versus when you go around corners, so we'll try that with the heart it's a real simple shape to start with, will have curves, and then we'll have a corner that we can try, and I'll show you what to do there. So you always want to test your stitch on a little scrap of fabric to make sure you get your your your winds of your stitch and your length the way you want it. Really what determines that is how large your apple k is or the look you want if you had a very, very large oversized application might want your stitches a little wider. If it's a very tiny applicator, they might be a little narrower, so just depends on your project. But we're going to go to our zigzag stitch and we're going to I'll just start out I'm just going to experiment with maybe kind of an average stitch length and see how it looks and then bring that stitch length down pretty short see if it's really what I want for my project I just have a regular cotton thread in here we could change to array on which I will do when I show you the next example, but for now we're just going to so a little bit and as I so I can see that this is a little narrow on a little open so it's not really quite what I want for my heart someone a widened that out just a little bit widen that out and bring the length even a little tighter try it again how's that looking it's better but it's still a little open a little too much air showing in between the stitches so I'm going to bring it a little shorter but I don't have to worry about the stitches balling up because that little bridge underneath the foot will let them pass freely so I can be more focused on the look I'm after now that doesn't look too bad those stitches look nice and dense so now that we've determined that that looks good we can start on our little heart well it's here's let's use this one here so I'm going to start right here at the point of the heart and what you what you're after here is that when you so find something to point with um you're stitch goes eggs eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs like this and you want the kind of the zig to be on the inside of the applicator and the xag tio just go off the outside right hand edge so that you don't you don't want to be zigzagging all here where you're sewing most of your stitch on the background part so you want to really in close that applicator itself okay? So that's going to what we're watching and this foot being transparent really helps me to see that so I'm going to have to adjust a little bit to make sure I'm clearing this way just so you know if your curves are a little um bigger like this is you can pretty much keep sewing but when they're a little tighter like this you may need tio to negotiate that tightness of the curve you may need to stop and pivot your fabric a little bit so we'll stop for for curves going this direction we're going to stop with the needle down on the right hand side and we can just lived and just slightly pivot the fabric to keep going so we're negotiating that curve so here we're getting where we need to do that again stop with it down lift pivot just a little bit wait keep going that way get a nice shape to the curve okay and just keep going way wantto stop with it on the right hand side you wanna pivot with the needle on the right hand side for this direction of ah okay, we can trim this and now we're coming to an area that's a little bit more of a straight away so we can probably manage this about doing a whole lot more pivoting just probably one more time way this's you're actually really a lot of fun it's a great way to, um people do monogram ing without an embroidery machine you can create a monogram look, you got a pillow over on the sofa there with your initial on it they're kinda on watch for that that that comes home with a ana was initially it also is so here we're coming down to the point so what you would do is just so all the way through to the end and stop with that needle down in the right and then we're going to lift pivot and then we would resume to come around the other side of the heart and I think you get the idea what we're doing there so that's how you that's how simple it is to do an applicator and a quick question from sisterhood of the traveling stamps well through eyes this clear the presser foot the best for patches as well. Sewing patches on. Um, probably because of the density, but you want to? Probably those patches are a little thick. Probably use a good, you know, heavy enough needle, too. So I won't finish that cause I think we've got the idea what's happening there because I have so many things I want to show you with the time we have left, if you want to get a more of a decorative look, can you would you mind grabbing me that one pillow that's over on the shelf there here is just a yes, please. Um, it's funny people say, what can I do with these stitches? And this looks every bit like something you would find in, like, batik that sells home to core accessories. And all this is is a piece of a silk leftover silk remnant that I had from another project. And this is a satin stitch, just like we use for the applicator. But we changed to ray on thread and what you could do there is just simply, you know, if you like, oh, I don't know if I'll get my lines all in the right place, you can just use one of these wash away or some of them go away with air after a little time that air removes them. The blue ones like this rinse away, but you could just draw right on your face you have sort of like your road map for where you're going to stitch and then you would change your thread but still use this satin foot and you would change your thread. Teo, I think I've got this blue color here way wanted to do this same look like we've got on this pillow now in this case in the accessory trade because I'm using this kind of school, replying that here it is that other spook cap that's smaller school cap is great for the's cause they let it the threat just past really freely right off the end of the school rather than this big one. It could maybe possibly get caught down there because it's ray on in its real slippery it's snap it in my press, her foot is up so that's good, and I got to get that take up lever up high, so I'm sure I'm going to thread properly and will is that needle threat? Er didn't have my needle all the way up there we go if your needle isn't all the way in its highest position, your needle thread or doesn't work, so make sure that's all the way up when you when you bring that lever down and then you can just simply follow the line you drew with a nice dance satin stitch and this one this threat is a little thinner than the one I just used so it might be that I have to bring my stitch link to a different study just depending on the look of the stitch but you see, all you have to do here is just follow your line because that foot is clear you can see through it that your little road map where the stitch miss it just a little bit no worries because this marker is a fabric marker and it just comes right out and just take your time and you just continue on through your project you just echoing what we've done here on the other side and you can change your colors I mean, I just think this is wonderful a wonderful way to change the look of a room with just a few accessories easily done with the most basic stitch so that's how you would use your satin foot so we had the question earlier about how to do a blind him so we're going to do that next and to do that I'm going to switch back to regular thread regular kind of normal normal weight thread yes showed out again to lose who says I won't have to look at at annex expensive embroider machine to do simple decorations I love it yeah well, machine embroidery isn't for everyone if that's not your thing but you know to do monograms applications the way tio way to get that look and she's the one with the eleven year old daughter haley who says haley does irish dancing and we're thinking of making her first solo dress which has a lot of satin stitching on it this is a great class and becky is covering so make sure you use stabilizer you know, a tearaway stabilizer with all that satin stitching I had that underneath the fabric I was using what what that does is if you just do satin stitching right straight on the fabric you can get this tunneling or this puckering happening and you're like what is happening here it's making the sides of my fabric tuck in and I've got this like bump in here you really need a stabilizer underneath there it just gives this foundation while you're stitching and when you're done it just comes right off it just tears away that's why it's called tear away okay, so this is your blind him foot and this is what it looks like and it's adjustable there's a adjusting screw here on the side to move the guide depending on the the thickness of your fabric sold to demonstrate that I've got a piece of well here and this is just a really pretty well that I had done a straight pencil skirt out of and so it's some of my leftover from that and you would first finish your edge you could do it with a pinking shares or with an overcast stitch but this is kind of the wrong side of the fabric with ham turned up this would be the right side of your fabric and I think what usually kind of throws people office like howto fold the fabric properly to feed it into the blind him but into the blank him foot so we're going to first I'm going to go over on my stitch dial and I'm going to find my blind hem stitch which is right here and I'm going to set my with fairly wide I might adjust it depending on the look I want for the stitch and I probably want my stitch length to be fairly long and this foot just snaps on like so now what's going to happen here is I'll do this a couple times you can kind of get it because if you haven't done it before you like what did she just dio and then once you get it you're like oh I get it so the him turns up the hem depth that she want you trim this to be you know you get your ham depth and then if you want your him um finished the way you want this is the wrong side now what you're going to do is just turn this back like this so that you're still looking at the wrong side this is the hem depth and I've just turned this back on itself do that again so here you are you've pressed that up everything's great with the world and then you're going to just turn this back on itself like so and then this is how we're going to feed this into the machine. Okay, so what happens here probably should hope this shows up okay cause that the fabrics kind of dark but the lip of the head and chop of the him there that sticks out that goes underneath this extension on the foot and then as your stitches sewing the way it's going to stitch is it's going to go? The blind hem stitch calls like this boom boom boom over over todo over over boom boom boom boom over over so this little when it juts over like that to the left that's where it's just coming over to grab a little a little bite into the fold. Ok, now I'm going to be using a contrast thread so you can see the result now I would use a thread that matches the fabric of course, but you if I did that right now, he wouldn't see what happens, so this is going to really be a strong contrast, but again we're going to stitch this little extension is going to go underneath this the extension of my hand will go under the extension on the foot, and then I'm going to sew so that I go stitch, stitch, stitch and then it's going to come over and just grab a little bite of the fold comeback over stitch, stitch, stitch, comeback over, grab a little bite of the fold and we're going to proceed like that. I would probably practice on a scrap piece first if you have left over from your fabric from from, um, making a garment because you might want to adjust the width of your stitch, the length of your stitch, or even the placement of the foot guide, depending on the thickness of your fabric. So here's a little scrap and let's just do that, so I'm placing my fold under here and thie the folded hip part is touching up against this extension and I can see right now that I'm catching way too much. The needle is coming way over here, so I'm going to turn this adjustment um, seen this direction so I'm going way over like this. I'm catching just a little bit of that poll that's still a little too much. I want to go a little closer over so that as I'm sewing stitch comes down, I've got the wrong I picked the wrong stitch give me one second, I picked the you need a lot of the fabric there's the blind him stage ok I got the one going the opposite direction that's used for a different technique okay so here we go here's my blind hem stitch you see what's happening here is here's my fold and I stitched it came over and just grabbed a little bite of that fold came back over here stay aged a little more this looks pretty good I can tell when I turn it over to the right side but should happen now is on the front sight I should just have these little tiny picks now of course if you had the chocolate brown threat in there like you would if you did this for real on this fabric you wouldn't see that at all but if you want even less of that to show you might do your with just a little bit narrower or you could just adjust your adjusting screw on the foot to just grab a little bit less like get that just over more so it's not biting so deep into the fold so if we do that for riel on our real fabric once again I know this is sometimes the first time you do this through it seems a little counterintuitive but it's actually quite simple there's or him and you just turn this back temporarily bring this into the foot have the um get those threads out of the way c and then the fold is just up against this extension and the rest of the stitch forms onto this flap that sticks out underneath the foot on then as we so we got that adjusted just the way we wanted it to. And you, this's. Great for hemming curtains, huge long hams, bed skirts. If you do your own bed linens, I mean, you spent hours hemming and you don't always want that top stitch. Look, because that looks kind of more casual. If you want something a little more elegant looking, you know, you want to blind him, and this is a really fast way to do it. Okay, so here we are. And of course, like I said, you would use the chocolate brown threads. So there was there was the wrong side from before. See how we had folded that up. That's, how we stitched might even help a little bit. You could even loosen your upper thread tension. Just a little bit of help. Apps out, thread. Relax. And then when you're all done, you would not see your stitches on the top side. Because, it's, you would have the thread to match. But that's, how it's done, okay, and that is your blank him foot. The next one I'm going to talk about is your over casting foot and what's nice about this one. This is for when you want to do a finish on the edge of the fabric to keep the edges from unraveling. So maybe you have a fabric like this is ah, wool here I have a cotton, and you want to do some kind of before you put your seems together if this was let's say I was going to sew these together with a seam, but and then press them open, but I want to have the edge is finished so they don't unravel, so you want to use your over edge foot to put a seam finish on this before you saw your seems and what's nice about changing to an over edge foot as compared to using your regular foot is, if you look at these together, you'll notice if you look at this really closely there's a little prom, like in the middle of this opening in the foot, and what happens as your stitching you're over edge stitches because you're stitching right at the edge and when you so at the edge, with the regular foot that contend to pucker this and tuck this and pull this in, because the threat is kind of wrapping around the edge of the fabric and and it's pulling tight and by adding this little extension here it puts just enough extra threat into the stitch so that you can so at the edge without it scrunching in on you so that's why it's called the over over edge sometimes over casting foot sometimes goes by a couple different names so here we have I'll just use this gold thread I think it's ok but we're going to just put our fabric in here and you would guide your fabric there's a black extension at the front of the foot and that's where you guide that raw edge of your fabric and we're going to pick let's do that slant over edge stitch and put that on the stretch and so here we go on you may be hard for you to see at home but the stitches going over this extension like this so it puts a little extra thread into the stitch as your sewing so when you're on the edge it relaxes instead of pulling tight and scratching in the edge on because you want to have a nice flat scene and I think that's enough to make a point there but see how nice and flat that is and it wraps through on the edge it didn't curlett didn't talk it didn't pucker anything so that's an over edge foot was wonderful for that you can use it on cotton anything at all that's going to give you trouble like that right at the edge so that's our over edge foot one other thing that's real popular today is thie uh sewing oilcloth and vinyl and I've got some examples of that and when you do that you're going to want to use a nonstick foot people are doing liking lunch bags for going back to school I love to do a little like travel poaches I'm traveling all the time and these are wonderful I mean you can find these fun little prince if you're sewing leather pleather I mean not only do you need the correct needle but you want to use a nonstick foot the nonstick foot has this sum kind of silicone e sort of surface so that it floats over over this when you use a standard foot for this you might be successful but I can tell you right now I'm even kind of just pulling this across this without even sewing and my foot feels like it's sticking to the vinyl the surface of this fabric so you want to switch to ah non stepped foot whenever you want to so any of these and the other little tip I would give you besides changing to the weather needle is the reason I have these paper clips here is this is what you would use for uh pinning so to speak your your edges together so if this was two pieces of fabric for example, you wouldn't put pins in here to hold it together because pins in the leather, the oilcloth or the pleather leaves holes permanent holes. So what you want to do instead is use your paper clips toe, hold your seams and then stitch your with you. You would you? I'm not going to take time right now to change to the leather needle, but but you would want to use one to get crisper holes in your fabric and then, as you stitches, put that back on a straight stitch and a nice long stitch length. But that in center and then as you so just remove the paper clips as you go pretend this is two fabrics here. I just hold it in house think you get the idea, but then I get effort was sewing on the leather and vinyl because it didn't. It didn't fight me at all. It didn't stick to my press, her foot, where it would have probably gotten stuck underneath my standard metal foot, especially the oilcloth.