Seam Finishing 101 with Cal Patch Chapter 1 - Seam Finishing 101 Overview (lively music) - Hi, I'm Cal Patch. I'm a clothing designer and I teach sewing 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 hem 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 hems 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, pinking shears, a pin cushion and pins, thread, my seam ripper, tape measure, and a marking tool. And we'll be using the serger and sewing machine. 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 pattern'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 scissors that have this zigzagged blade, and they will cut 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 seam allowance and trim 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 grain 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 presser foot. I'm lining 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 stitch. 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 backstitch 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 straight stitch, 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 backstitches, 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.