Seam Finishing 101 with Cal Patch

Chapter 1 - Finishing 101 Overview (lively music) - Hi, I'm Cal Patch. I'm a clothing designer and I teach across the country. Teaching people how to make their own clothing is my specialty and the trick to making your clothes look really professional and neat on the inside is seam and finishing. I'm going to walk you through different types of seam finishing, like pinking, zigzag and flat felled, French seams, mock French seams and seger finishing. We'll also talk about different hem finishes, like 1/2-inch double turned, blind hem, 1/4-inch curved and rolled hem. Finishing your seams properly is the key to making really long-lasting and professional looking clothes.

Materials - We're going to play around with these seam finishing techniques with some practice swatches. I've got an assortment of woven fabrics here to practice on, fabric-cutting shears, , a cushion and , , my , , and a marking tool. And we'll be using the serger and .

Finishing Seams

Pinked, Zig-Zagged, and Flat-Felled Seams - People are often confused by seam finishing, because it's often not really mentioned in a sewing 's instructions. They might just reference, now finish the seams, or they might not mention it at all, but it's very important. One of the simpler methods is pinking. Pinking shears are a type of that have this zigzagged blade, and they will a zigzag edge on the fabric. I've got a plain seam that I've already sewn on this swatch, and all I do is grab one of the edges of my and it off with the pinking shears. It's important to try to line up the blade with the end of each cut when you start the new cut, so that you get a clean, continuous zigzag edge. The reason why pinking an edge is, in theory, going to protect it is that each of those little zigzags creates a bias-cut edge, which means it's cut at an angle to the line, and a bias edge doesn't actually fray. However, it's such a small little zigzag that is basically still on the grain, so over time, this edge will fray and unravel, which is why it's not my favorite method. But for quick projects, it's a good option. The next simplest method of seam finishing is a zigzag-stitched edge. Here's a simple tote bag that I made, and you can see that I've just done a zigzag stich right over the edge, and I've actually stitched my two seam allowances together as one layer. You can also treat the two seam allowances separately, which is what I'm going to do. So I have a plain seam. It's pressed flat. And now I'm going to take one of the edges at a time, fold away the rest of the fabric, so I just have this one edge exposed under the . I'm up the raw-cut edge so that I can just see it inside the little hole in the presser foot. And I know that then when my needle comes down on the right of the zigzag, it'll go off the edge, and then it will bite into the seam allowance. Set your machine to a zigzag . And you'll want a fairly wide width. I'm gonna go to five millimeters. And the length can be pretty short. Let's try two millimeters. We're gonna do a little just to lock my stitches in. So you should be able to see that the needle is biting into the seam allowance

© Cal Patch and Creativebug Inc., 2020 1 when it comes down on the left. But when it comes down on the right, it's actually right off the edge, so the threads are wrapping around the cut edge, which will seal them and keep them from fraying. A little backstitch at the end. Now you can see how the stitches are landing so that the zig is biting into the seam allowance and the zag is actually wrapping off the cut edge, which will wrap over the threads and keep them from fraying. If you have a hard time lining up the zigzag right over the cut edge, or if your seam allowance is a little bit narrower, you can also do your stitching a little closer to the seam, so it's not actually wrapping over the outside edge. You can see that this zigzag is a little bit farther from the cut edge, and then I will trim it very close to the stitching. But I'm very careful not to cut into my stitches, because that would cause them to come apart and defeat the whole purpose of your seam finishing. That looks very neat and tidy also. You might have some other stitches on your machine that will give you a similar effect to the zigzag. You might have a mock serger stitch or another one. So play around and see what works best for you. ^The next seam finish is flat-felled seam. ^This is a really great way to finish denim, and it has kind of a work wear look. I have a 5/8 inch seam allowance already sewn here. I'm trimming off a quarter inch of that, basically about half of it. Then I will take the longer seam allowance and fold it over the shorter one that I just trimmed and flip it back in place, folding the longer edge over. You should probably press this with an iron. I'm just going to finger press it for now and then place a pin to hold it in place. Do that for the whole length of the seam. I've set the machine back to , and I'm going to line up this folded edge so that it's going to hit just to the left of that folded edge. Couple , always take your pins out before you stitch over them. You can see two lines of stitching, because we have the original stitching of the seam, and then the second stitching is from our flat-felled finish. This is actually the back side of my theoretical garment. The front will look like this. We have just our hidden original seam, and then the finish creates that extra line, like a quarter inch top stitch. I've used a white thread here, which contrasts. You might prefer to use a matching thread. I actually kind of like a contrast thread for flat-felled stitching, and I prefer the back side. So if you choose to have the wrong side showing, you would actually first show your seams with the wrong sides together instead of right sides together. Then you'll have this double line of contrast top stitching, which I think is a really cool design detail.

French and Mock French Seams - My favorite seam finish is the French seam. This smock dress has French seams on the side seams. Here's what it looks like, nice and clean with all the raw edges tucked inside. The one unique thing about the French seam is that you need to plan it from the beginning because you need to actually sew your pieces together with the wrong sides together, which is the opposite of normal sewing. I've got my two swatches, I'm lining up the raw edges. It should scream out to you that this is wrong, but in this case, it's right. So I'll just put a few pins here and I'm going to just sew a quarter inch seam. My standard seam allowance is 5/8, but I'm only using part of that for this first step of the French seam. A quarter inch seam allowance is generally when you line up your raw edges with the edge of the presser foot, so that's what I'm doing. (sewing machine whirs) Nothing really special about this. (sewing machine whirs) Here's my quarter inch seam, and I want to trim that down just a little bit to clean up any raw fraying threads that might stick out and just give myself a little more room, which will make sense when you see what we're doing next. Now my seam allowances are a little bit narrower, and they're going to fit better into the next seam. I can finger press this open. You can go ahead and go to the iron if you want to. And now I'll fold that right on my seam. And now I've folded it so I'm looking at the wrong side and my right sides are now together, which is

© Cal Patch and Creativebug Inc., 2020 2 how things usually are when you're sewing your clothes. Putting a few pins in just to keep everything in place. Double check that the seam is actually where you've got it folded, you don't really want it rolled to one side or the other. We'll go back to the sewing machine. So, again, about a quarter inch. A little bit fatter, maybe more like 3/8, so my edge is sticking out just a little bit from the presser foot, which gives me more than a quarter inch. What I'm doing here is just closing those raw edges that are on the inside from the first seam inside the tunnel of this second seam. (sewing machine whirs) And the first seam allowance being a quarter inch, and the second one being 3/8, adds up to 5/8 which is your allotted seam allowance. (sewing machine whirs) This is what the finished seam looks like, all your seam allowances are closed into that tunnel, no raw edges showing. From the right side we just have a nice clean seam. Looks beautiful. As you can see, to sew that French seam, you have to have planned it from the beginning and sewn your wrong sides together instead of the normal procedure which is your right sides together. If you wish you had done a French seam, you can actually do the mock French, which is what I've got here in the armholes of this dress. I use it here because the armhole is a very curved seam, so it's a little bit tricky to sew wrong sides together first and then flip it. What I do is sew a regular seam, and then the mock French finish can be done after the fact. Here's a swatch that I've already sewn with a plain seam, right sides , just like normal. I'm going to take these two edges of seam allowance, fold them in to meet each other, press them together, and pin. Lay that over there, keep tucking these edges in. And of course you'll probably want to take this to the iron just to get it all to lay really flat for you. Now we'll just stitch right along that folded edge to attach the two sides together. I'm lining up the needle so that it's going to stitch right along that folded edge. The standard way of stitching a mock French finish is with a straight stitch. I often do it with a zigzag, which is what I did on the armhole of the dress. Either way works fine. But in this case, I'll do the straight stitch. (sewing machine whirs) There's usually several variations you could do for any finish. Play around on swatches to see what works best for your fabric. (sewing machine whirs) This looks very similar to our French seam, the only difference is that you see that second line of stitching a little more clearly, but when I open it up, it's pretty much the same effect. And then from the right side, it still just looks like a nice, clean seam. Those last three finishes we did, the flat felled, the French, and the mock French are my favorite ways to finish seams on clothing because they completely encase the raw edges, which will protect your clothes from wear and tear.

Serged Seams - You may have noticed that most of your store-bought clothing is finished with a serger. This T-shirt has serged seams, and this is the inside out, the wrong side of the shirt. And you can see this narrow seam allowance with lots of criss-crossing threads. That's what a serger does. In this case, the serger was used to actually make the seam of the T-shirt, because it's a knit. But we're mainly talking about woven fabrics because they're the ones that unravel. So I have a swatch plain seam. And I'm going to show you how to finish this edge on the serger. A serger is a whole different machine than your sewing machine. It's got four threads. We've got them threaded with four different colors, which is fun. But you could also use the same color. They're fed into four different sections, each with their own tension dial. And then there's actually a complicated set of guides leading you to the needles where you're going to stitch and get this little chain effect. It's a little bit more complicated of a machine than your regular sewing machine. And it's probably not something a beginner would plan to use. The serger actually has a blade that's going to go up and down and cut off the raw edge of my seam allowance. I'm going to place the raw edge along this edge of the

© Cal Patch and Creativebug Inc., 2020 3 serger. And that will position it so that there's about an eighth of an inch to be cut off. I'll lower the presser foot. You can see how it's cut off a little bit of this edge, so we have a nice narrow seam allowance. And it's wrapped the threads around on both sides for a really secure finish. I don't often teach using the serger because it is a whole separate machine that beginners may not want to invest in. But once you have it, it is a great option for finishing your seams really quickly. I want you to see why when you're working through a garment with a sewing pattern, you need to address each seam and decide how to finish it as you go. I've got a side seam, which I used a French seam finish on. And here's the bottom of my arm hole, which I did with the mock French using a . If I hadn't finished the side seam before sewing the arm hole, I wouldn't actually be able to go back and do it. So as you work through a pattern, you'll need to finish each seam before moving onto the next one. Here's a sample to better illustrate why I need to do each seam as it comes. You can see I've got the side seam and the intersecting seam, and I haven't finished them yet. But now these seam allowances are trapped from when I sewed the next seam, which would make it really difficult to finish this seam now that it's trapped into the next seam.

Finishing Hems

Double-Turned and Curved Hems - Just like seam finishing, hemming is a very important part of finishing your garments. The first hem I want to show you, and the one I use most often, is a half inch double turned hem. This is what it looks like from the wrong side. And from the right side you just get a nice top stitch at a half inch from the edge. I'm going to demonstrate this hem on a swatch, turn up a half inch, and I'll just finger press it. And then a second turn of another half inch, which equals one inch of hem allowance. That's what I usually add in my own patterns, but take a look at how much hem allowance is included in the pattern you're using. I'll line up the needle with this left side fold, so that I'm going to be stitching right along that edge. This is a good, simple, sturdy, clean finish that I use on most of my garments. The next hem I'd like to show you is a quarter inch curved hem like you would have on a shirt tail. Before we sew, I need to adjust my stitch length up to the longest, which is four millimeters for this machine. That's going to give me a longer stitch that I can pull. I'm stitching at a quarter inch, so I'll line up the edge with the edge of the presser foot and I don't wanna backstitch here because I'm going to be pulling on these threads. So I'll just go ahead. Stitch. Again don't backstitch at the end. Leave your tails long. Here's my line of stitching, I'm going to look at it closely and see if I can tell which thread has tighter tension, the top or bottom. May not matter but sometimes it's quite obvious that one is tighter, and you do wanna pull on the tighter one, so I'm gonna go with this thread and just start pulling a little bit to get a little bit of gathering along that curve. Don't need a lot, but this is going to help that curved edge be able to have a nice, smooth hem. Okay, so now I can start turning my quarter inch, and the quarter inch for the second time. And you'll see that that stitch line is now the inner folded edge. The reason why I did that gathering stitch is that the cut edge is longer because it's a wider circle than it needs to be when I've turned it twice. So, running that slight and pulling it in a little bit is going to help it lay smooth and flat, whereas if I just tried to turn it along the curve, I'd probably get some buckling. You can pull on the threads if you need to adjust that gathering slightly. The stitching may not always be exactly where you fold is, but the point is it's helping you get a nice, smooth turn. Let's pull on that thread and see if we can smooth out. See how that section just smoothed out. Got rid of those tucks that were forming. That

© Cal Patch and Creativebug Inc., 2020 4 looks good, now I can go ahead and stitch. This is my final hem stitch so I need to go back to a regular stitch length of about two and a half millimeters. I'll be sewing along this inner folded edge, the edge that has the stitching on it. So I'll place that right under the center of the presser foot, and, do my backstitch. Take your time stitching along that edge. You do wanna be pretty close to that fold. And this curve is going to require a little bit of attention. But it should go pretty smoothly. You can always if you need to, when you're bending around the curve, lower the needle, pick up the presser foot and reposition a little bit, and just take it really slow. Sometimes stitching around curves is difficult if you're not used to it, but if you just take it really slow it should be quite manageable. I'm getting a little bit of bubbling here so I'll just try to smooth it out with my fingers. It needs a good pressing to really smooth it out but that looks quite nice, and from the right side you've got a nice, neat, curved hem.

Rolled and Blind Hems - Another pretty hem finish is a rolled hem. I often use it on a sheer fabric, like this, because it's a nice, delicate way to hem your garment. I've got this swatch already pressed with just a very narrow, maybe three-sixteenths inch turn. I'm going to put a stitch right along this fold. Check where the needle is. Yeah, it's right as close as I can be, pretty much. About a sixteenth of an inch away from the fold. (whirring) I need to trim away the extra seem allowance, as close to the stitching as I can get. So I've got my little sharp snippers. Trimming this away is going to make your little rolled hem as fine and delicate as we want it to be. If you leave this, it's going to add a little bit of bulk. Be careful because it would be easy to cut through to the outside of your garment. Now I'll fold it one more time over. And let's give it a little finger press. I'm not going to pin it, but if you feel like it will help you, go ahead. This time I'm trying to sew close to that left side edge But ideally, this is a very narrow, little rolled hem, so you might almost be stitching just in the center of it depending on how small you're able to make it. And you do have that original stitch line. You might be stitching on top of it. It doesn't really matter, it's not necessarily a guideline for you. And it doesn't show from the outside, that first stitching, only the new stitching will show. So use it if it helps you, but you can also just ignore it. (whirring) Here it is finished. You can see two lines of stitching from the wrong side, but on the right side you have just one nice, neat row of stitching with a very fine, delicate hem. The last hem I'd like to show you is the blind hem. This one is often a surprise to people that they can actually do a blind hem by machine on their sewing machine. But most people do have the stitch, they just don't really know what it's for. And a blind hem is a really nice finish on a tailored pant or skirt, it won't show at all from the outside. So it's the cleanest, most minimal finish you can do. The preparation for this hem is to press up. And you really do want to use the iron and press this one, because it's pretty hard to do without pressing. I've got about a half inch turned first, and then a wider amount. We've got about an inch or an inch and a quarter. I'll want to put some pins to hold this in place. I'm gonna place the pin so it goes in and out a little bit away from this edge, because I need to still be able to flip this back and access this quarter inch or so of the second fold. And I need to be sure to place all my pins that way. Every machine has a set of symbols that illustrate the different types of stitch. You are looking for the one that looks like this. It's actually a straight stitch combined with a zigzag, and that's what's going to give us our blind hem stitch. So on this machine it's letter f. I'm going to change the machine setting to f. And our stitch length at two and a half should be fine. We might also need to increase the width. Some machines are preset with their length and width once you select your stitch, so you'll just do what's necessary for your machine. This stitch is really all about that setup, like I showed you. So now we're flipping back the folded

© Cal Patch and Creativebug Inc., 2020 5 hem to access this little underlip. And that's where our stitching is actually going to take place. Make a few straight stitches, let's see how many. That was two, three, four, and now I can see the needle's moving into a zigzag. So my goal here when they needle lowers on the left, that it's just going to catch into the fold. Maybe just getting one or two threads of that fold. Taking a little stitch, and then it's gonna come back over and repeat the straight stitches again. So it definitely takes a bit of playing around with your adjustments and your position. One, two, three, four, whoops. Five went over and I think we might have missed that one. You definitely want to practice this stitch on a swatch before you go to your final garment, because it is a little bit tricky. But the results are worth it. Once you get the positioning right, you won't have to keep adjusting. But it can take a few repeats to make sure you're really in the right place. So this time the zig is again biting right in, I think it caught, it can be hard to see. (whirring) These last few are actually going a little farther into the fold, which I'm doing on purpose, because I want you to see what happens when you go a little too far into the fold. This is our last zigzag, and we can take a couple back stitches. From the backside you see that we had the straight stitches alternating with a zigzag every fifth stitch. And ideally we just caught a bite right into the thread or two of that fold. A few places I did miss it, and that's probably going to happen to you. And at the bottom I actually went a little too far in, and I'll show you what that looks like from the outside. This is the right side. And I did catch most of the stitches. In an ideal scenario, once you've practiced, you'll get these nice, tiny stitches. Those are when I just caught that one or two threads of the fold, and if those stitches were purple you can see that they would basically disappear right into the fabric. I did miss one or two. If you do that it's not going to be a big problem, as long as you don't miss more than that. If you do, you'll just have to go back and try it again. These stitches are a little bit bigger because that's where I went a little bit over the fold. A little press will get rid of that crease. It's a really clean and minimal way to finish fancy garments. Seam finishing and hemming are really important parts of your design process. Choosing them wisely is the key to sewing really well-constructed clothing that will last a lifetime.

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