Transcript

So, now that we have our zipper all pressed, we need to go our fabric. And for this demonstration, I’m just going to mark the wrong side of the fabric so it’s a little clearer to see what we’re doing. So, X is wrong side of our fabric.

So, what you want to do is you want to turn your fabric to the right side. And you want to take your zipper and also lay it right side up. So, that means that your zipper pull is going to be faced towards you. And then, you can kind of flatten your zipper out straight.

And now, if you think about it, your zipper needs to go right sides together. So, we’ll flip this onto the piece. And then, if you’re ever curious to know if you’re doing this right, you can always take a couple of pins and pin your zipper to double check and make sure you’re sewing your zipper on the right way.

So, if we do this, after we sew line, when we zip the zipper up, the teeth are going to pull this way and it’s going to pull all the fabric in, like that. So, we know we’re doing the right thing. I’m just going to unpin this in one spot. We’ll move that aside, because we’ll do one side at a time.

Okay. So, here we have our zipper and that’s where it’s going to go. But we want to line it up kind of nicely. So, I’m just going to line up the top of the tape with the top of the fabric. And I’m going to line up the edge of the zipper tape with our raw edge of the fabric. And I’m going to pin it down, nice and evenly and straight.

And then, you can just pin it down as far as you can go. That zipper pull is always in our way. Okay. Now, we can take this to the sewing machine. So, what we want to do when we sew this is to sew as close to the teeth as possible. So, you’re going to use a zipper foot. We have our zipper foot here and my zipper teeth are on the left. So, I want to go ahead and put my zipper foot on the right.

And then, I’m going to take my threads, put them underneath and towards the back. And now, I’m ready to stitch. So, I’m going to take the whole project and put it in. I’m going to lower my zipper foot. Now, the very edge of the zipper foot is touching the zipper teeth. I want to get it as close as possible, so really squish it up there.

And then, I’m going to take this pin out and we’re just going to sew straight down. Backstitch at the top, and then use your hands to keep the zipper right up against that presser foot. And you can see what’s happening here: the zipper teeth are kind of curling back because they’re pressing up against the zipper foot, and that’s okay.

Take your pins out as you go. And then, you just want to sew down as far as you can get, closest to the zipper pull. So, that’s about as close as I can get because now the pull’s in the way of my presser foot. So, I’m going to reverse stitch, backstitch, and now I’m done.

Okay. So, now we have half the zipper installed. So, looking at it from the right side, you see the zipper pull is facing you. And then, from the wrong side, we have the zipper sewn onto the edge. So, here’s the tricky part. We want to take right side up on the left and now we’ll take our pink fabric on the right, wrong side down, right side up. And we want to lay this zipper right side up. So, we have to try to twist it a little bit.

And so we see the zipper pull is facing us. And now, we always sew right sides together. So, what are we going to do? We’re going to twist this again and we’re going to lay it flat against the second piece, and just pin it in place. Once it’s pinned down, it’s good. You know that’s how it’s going to lay, so now you can kind of move this around to get a better position to pin the whole thing down.

So, get your pins out and we’re going to line up the top of the tape with the top of our fabric, matching our raw edge with the side of the zipper tape. And then, just pin it down as far as you can go. That’s good. So, now let’s take this to the sewing machine. And, if you’ll notice, my zipper is now on the right-hand side, but our zipper foot is also on the right-hand side. We need the zipper foot to move to the left. So, I’m just going to unattach it and reattach it with the presser foot on the left.

Make sure those threads are behind. So, now our zipper is on the right. I’m going to line that up and we’ll do a backstitch, and then I’ll go ahead and start sewing. So, remember, we’re keeping the edge of the zipper foot pressed right up against those teeth. And then, I’m going to go until my presser foot hits the zipper pull, and then I’m going to backstitch.

Okay. So, now we have our zipper in, and if you turn your fabric right side up so everything is right side up. You see this is wrong side with our Xs. We do right side up and we pull our zipper, and you can see our hidden invisible zipper. But, we’re not quite finished yet because we need to finish the seam at the bottom.

So, the last step is to take your project to the machine and you want to stitch from where we left off at the zipper, down to finish your seam. So, this part can be a little tricky. It just takes a little bit of practice. You’ll keep your zipper foot in your machine and now, again, my zipper is on the left, so we’ll need to move the foot again to the right.

Okay. So, make sure you’re starting where you left off. So, we’re starting right at this backstitch at the bottom of our zipper. We have the raw edges of our fabric together and we have our zipper foot in. So, we’re trying to get as close to that stitch as we can.

So, we’re going to do a back stitch and we’re going to go all the way down the seam. And sometimes, it’s happening right now, because this is really bulky, it’s getting caught underneath the foot. So, you might have to just kind of lift things a little and flatten some stuff out. And then, now we have our completed invisible zipper.

Transcript

You want to go to your sewing machine and install a zipper foot. Now, the zipper foot allows for zipper teeth to go underneath the presser foot. So, in this case, I’m sewing with my zipper teeth to the right. I’m going to be sewing on the fabric. So, I want to place my zipper foot towards the left. So, install your zipper foot, pull your threads to the back and then you can start sewing.

When you put your fabric in, you want to line up the zipper teeth to go underneath this raised portion of the foot. And then, you’ll just sew a straight line until you get to bottom of the zipper.

And then, be sure to stop as you go and take your pins out. And then, when you get towards the end, you can use your hand wheel to turn, and then you want to do a backstitch at the end. And that will make sure that your stitching is secure. Then, you can clip your threads.

So, now that we have this side of the zipper stitched, it’s time to sew the overlap portion of the zipper. So, the overlap portion of the zipper is going to just cover the underlap portion, just like that. So, to do this, I like to just turn the zipper towards me and fold under, five-eighths of an inch, which is your seam allowance.

And then, you can just lay your fabric on top of your zipper, just like that. And then, you’re going to want to pin this in place. Now, when we sew this, we are going to sew it from the top down, so you can turn your fabric around to get your pins in this way. And as you’re sewing, you’re not going to sew over these pins, so you don’t really need to worry about taking them out. You just want it to be nice and flat and closed.

And then, what we’re going to do is we’re going to sew to the right of the zipper, down the zipper tape, down the teeth and then just across the bottom here, to make a little cross mark. So, with your zipper foot in. Now, you notice the first step that we did, we sewed with the zipper on the right, but now the zipper is going to be on the left. So, we’ll just need to reposition our zipper foot. So, I just move the zipper foot over to the right. We’ll take our project and put it in underneath the zipper foot. The teeth are going to fit underneath the foot.

Now, if you’re uncomfortable doing this by eyeing it, you can always go ahead and take a marking tool and draw these lines on your fabric. Just test the fabric first to make sure the lines come out, since we are doing this on the right side. And you can kind of feel the zipper tape underneath your fingers as you’re going along so you can sort of guide it by touch.

And then, I can feel that my stopper is right here, so I’m going to go just a couple past and then, with my needle down in the fabric, I’m going to lift the presser foot up, pivot my project. And then, this pin is kind of in my way, so I’m going to take it out; don’t want to sew over that. I should say you also do not want to sew over the stopper at the bottom of your zipper, because that’s metal and will break your needle. So, make sure that you go past the stopper before you go across.

Then, you’re going to lower the foot back down and sew across, just until you get to the seam. And then, it’s only a couple of stitches, so if you want to do it by hand.

And then, once you get to the seam, you can do backstitch, just to secure the stitches, and then you’re done. Okay. So now we have our sewn zipper. We can go ahead and take the pins out. And you can give this a little press so that it’s nice and flat. But here we have our lapped zipper.

Transcript

So, now that we have our zipper pinned in place, it’s time to sew. To sew this zipper, I’m going to use a zipper foot, and I’m just going swap out the foot that I have on my machine for a zipper foot. And this zipper foot, it can be used on the left or the right side of the zipper.

So, I’ll start by sewing the zipper on the left-hand side, so that means that I want the zipper foot secured towards the right. Now I’m going take my zipper up to the machine. And I’ve noticed that I’ve pinned my pins in upside down. Oops. So, this is a great example of what not to do, but it’s totally fine.

Don’t worry if you do this at home. You’ll just take your first pin out, put it in going the other direction. You can take your second pin out, even, and put it in going the right direction. And I wouldn’t even worry about that last pin because we’re not there yet.

So, we’re going to place our zipper foot down. And the way the zipper foot works is there’s a little groove on the left so that your zipper can kind of sit underneath it. So, you just kind of wanna position it so that the zipper teeth are to the left, a little underneath. And then, you can start sewing.

Now, depending on where the zipper is going, I’m sewing the zipper as if it’s going to go into another component of a garment, maybe into a facing. So, I don’t really have to worry about the top of the zipper that much. But, if your zipper is going to be exposed in any way, you want to make sure that you backstitch. So, let’s go ahead and do that.

Great. And now, I just noticed that my stitch length was a little off, so I switched it. And now, we’re just going to stitch all the way down the zipper. Again, taking out the pins as we come to them. And you can kind of feel when you get to the end of the zipper. You can feel the stopper. So, we’re just going to go a little below there. And we’ll go one more stitch, two more stitches by hand.

If you’re getting towards the end and you’re a little uncomfortable with using the foot pedal, feel free, pull the stitches by hand. And then, I’m going to lift my presser foot up with my needle down in the fabric. You do not want to have your needle up. You want to make sure your needle’s down. And then, I’m going to rotate, or pivot, my project so that now I can sew across the bottom.

So, I’m going to put my presser foot right back down. I’m going to remove this pin that’s in the way. And I’m going to sew just across the bottom of the zipper. And, again, this is a great place where you can hand-twist the wheel, since you’re only going a couple of stitches. So, I did my foot pedal and then I did one by hand. And then I’m going to lower this again, and I’m going to come right back up the other side.

And then, reverse at the top and then pull your zipper out. Cut all of your threads. Okay. So, this is looking like a zipper. The last thing you need to do is take your seam ripper and cut open the basted stitches that we made in the beginning. Just be careful when you get towards the bottom. And then, you can use tweezers or just pull them out by hand. And now, we have our centered zipper.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer Wiese from Workroom Social. I’m a pattern maker and designer. I’ve been sewing for 15 years, and I’m really excited to do this basic sewing machine video series for Howcast.com. For the series, we’re actually using this sewing machine, which is the first-ever sewing machine I’ve owned. I learned how to sew on this machine when I was about 14 years old, so I’m really excited to use it here today.

My studio, Workroom Social, is located in Brooklyn, New York, in Bed-Stuy. And at Workroom Social, I teach sewing and screen printing, because I love fabric.

With 15 years of sewing experience and industry training, my sewing patterns are designed for home sewers to really get to see what industry methods are like. My patterns really focus on the good tips and techniques and methods that people in the garment industry are using. And so I hope that you’ll check out my patterns online at workroomsocial.com.

So, now that you know a little bit about me, I hope you’ll join me as I show you everything you need to know to get sewing.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social and today I’m going to show you how to apply bias tape. So, we have our bias tape made. You can either make this at home or you can buy pre-made bias tape at any Notions or sewing store.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is take your bias tape, this would be the right side of the bias tape and this would be the wrong side, and you’re going to lay your bias tape right-side down. Then, what you’re going to do is you’re going to go to the raw edge on the right, which is folded in, and you’re going to unfold it. Then, you’re going to line up the raw edge with the raw edge of your fabric. You can pin your bias tape in place to help you control all this fabric before you start sewing.

The bias tape is quite stretchy, so pins are a good idea when you’re doing bias tape. Okay, so I have my bias tape pinned in place and now I’m going to sew the bias tape on and I’m going to sew just to the right of the fold in the bias tape. So the fold is going to be on the left and my stitching is going to be on the right. We’re just doing a straight stitch. I’m using a 2.5 mm stitch length, and we’re just going to go all the way down.

Okay, now when you come to the end, you can just stop. If you’re using pre-made bias tape, you’ll get it on a roll. You might get a couple yards at once so I don’t usually pre-cut my bias tape. I will apply it, then when I get to the end I will cut off the ends so I’m using exactly what I need.

Okay, so now you can see our stitching is just to the right of the fold so that when we fold this back over, it’s right on that line. Okay, now the next step: we’re going to take this whole thing, the bias tape, and we’re going to fold everything over. From here, we’re going to pin this in place and then sew it down.

Now, there’s two ways that you can think of bias tape. Bias tape can be used on the inside of a garment, so if you pretend this yellow is a neckline for example, the pink bias tape could be on the inside of the neckline so you don’t see it at all. It’s just to clean finish your raw edge. But, you can also sew it so that the pink or the bias tape is on the outside and so it’s a little bit more decorative. Either way is fine. It’s totally up to you, but we’re just going to stitch this down just like this right now, and of course you can use pins. We’ll use pins to hold everything in place since this is pretty stretchy.

Okay, and then we’re just going to stitch right on the edge here. Okay, so this is folded now and stitched down. You take this to the iron and give it a good press. When you did that, if this were the right side of your garment, you would have no bias tape showing. It would just be on the inside. Or, if you wanted to use the bias tape on the outside of your garment then you have a really fun, nice, contrasting edge to your garment. So, that’s how you sew bias tape.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workerm Social.Today, I’m going to show you how to make bias tape. Before I show you how to make bias tape, let’s just talk really quickly about what bias tape is.

Bias tape is a tape that you can make or buy pre-made in the store. It is cut on the bias of fabric. If you take a piece of fabric and you stretch it length grain, it stretches not that much and then cross grain, it stretches more, and bias, or diagonal stretches a ton.

We like to use bias tape for lots of different uses in sewing because it’s easy to work with and does a lot of things because it stretches. Let’s show you how to make it.

You’re going to take a piece of fabric and you’re going to cut on the diagonal, or on the bias. I’m just going to make a straight edge to work off of first. I’m cutting on the diagonal and I’m just going to make a straight line. To make bias tape, we’re going to use what’s called a bias tape maker, which are these tools. What this does is it folds the fabric for you to take the strips that we’re cutting and make them the tape.

You should refer to whatever your instructions say for your bias tape maker for how wide to cut your strips. For me, I’m cutting 2-inch strips, a little less. I’m cutting about 1 7/8ths. I’m just going to line up my ruler to cut my strip.

I’ve cut my strip, which is going to turn into my bias tape. This corresponds with our bias tape maker. If you have diagonals on the ends, you can just cut them off to make them straight. Now it’s time to take our strip and our bias tape maker to the iron.

We have our bias strips cut. Now it’s time to make our bias tape. What you want to do is take your bias tape maker and feed your bias strip through the bias tape maker on the wide end. I’m just kind of going to tuck that in. Then you can grab some kind of tool, I’m using a seam ripper. There’s a little slit right here down the middle. I’m just going to catch that with something pointy and help pull the fabric through until it comes out the top.

Now, once it comes out the top, I’m going to pull it. These little grooves that are on the narrow end that kind of hold the tape in a curved manner. I’m just going to reposition the fabric so that my fabric is tucked in those grooves. You can see now how the fabric is curling. If the fabric wasn’t tucked in those grooves then it wouldn’t curl. I just want to make sure that it’s all set up.

Now what I want to do is just make sure that this is pretty centered. Then we’re going to press this all flat. Right now it’s really curvy, but we want to press it flat so that it’s easy to work with. To do that, I’m just going to, I’m right handed, so I’m going to hold the iron with my right hand, which means I’m going to use my left hand to pull the tape maker very slowly towards the back. As I do that, the tape maker is going to roll the fabric as I iron.

I’m going to start just by pressing down this edge to get it steady. What you can do to kind of help is pin the top portion where you’re starting to hold that down flat so that it’s not jumping up on you. If you’re doing this, make sure your iron is not getting anywhere near plastic head pins or else it might melt your pins.

I’m just going to use my iron. I’m going to pull my bias tape maker. Together, we’re going to iron our bias tape flat. You can see here what the bias tape looks like when it’s pressed. You’ll just continue doing that on all bias tape that you need. The slower you go, the better your results will be. You also want to try and hold the iron close to the tape maker. That’s going to help you get a really nice, flat, even press.

I’ve run to the end of my ironing board, so I’m just going to stop right there. Here you can see this is the right side of our bias tape. This is the wrong side of our bias tape. You can see how stretchy that is. That’s how you make bias tape.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today we are going to talk about fabric puckering. So, sometimes you’re sewing and you think everything is going really well, and then you pull your fabric out from behind your machine and you look at it, and the fabric is all puckered.

So, let’s talk about a couple things that you can do to troubleshoot that problem. First thing is you want to look at your tension on your thread. If your tension is too high, it might be causing the fabric to bunch up because everything is really tight. So, you might want to try loosening your thread tension so everything is kind of just a little bit more relaxed.

Another thing you should try to check if your fabric is puckering is your needle. If you’re sewing with a dull needle, especially if you are sewing woven fabrics, if the needle is having a hard time puncturing the fabric, that might cause your fabric to pucker.

And then the last thing I would say, if you are having a problem with puckering, is to look at the way you are actually maneuvering and handling the fabric in your machine. So, as you are sewing, you want to try your best to let the feed dogs, which are the little teeth that sit on the bottom of your sewing machine, you want to let the feed dogs pull the fabric on its own, at its own pace.

A lot of times, new sewers try to either push the fabric through. Or, sometimes you get this motion where you’re pulling it from behind. You really want to let the feed dogs do all the work and you don’t really want to help the fabric. You just want to guide the fabric so it’s going straight and you’re sewing in a straight line. So, see how you’re sewing and maneuvering the fabric, and hopefully those things will help you fix any of your puckering problems.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social and today we are going to talk about why does my top thread keep breaking? I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, I know I have. You’ll be sewing and all of a sudden your top thread will just break right in the middle of a seam. Super annoying! So I’m going to talk to you today about some ways to troubleshoot those problems.

The first thing you should do is just to re-thread your machine. Just take everything out. Go ahead and pull on your thread, make sure everything’s moving smoothly up there. You can cut the tail off and just start from scratch. That’s going to be the easiest way to troubleshoot this because sometimes things just get a little bit funny. Okay, so I’m re-threaded and now, hopefully, I will be sewing easily without any problems.

But if you’re still having problems, there are a couple of things to check on. First is your tension. Sometimes if your tension is too high, if this were up, I don’t know, maybe I accidentally had it all the way at nine, your thread can get stuck and it can tear. So that’s one reason why your thread might be ripping.

Other things to look for are obstacles. Is your thread getting caught on something? Perhaps up here maybe my thread accidentally got twisted around here, this tension disk, which is used for winding our bobbins, and so that’s putting a lot of stress on the thread and as it’s going through the machine, it just rips. So check for any obstacles that might be affecting your stitches.

The last thing that you should check is the spool itself. Sometimes on home machines, the spool of thread itself can be too heavy, too big, and it kind of gets stuck spinning around the spindle here, and so that can put a lot of tension on the thread and cause it to rip. If the spool is just a normal spool, it’s not a giant spool, you might want to take the spool off and double check this bottom area here and make sure that there’s nothing that’s holding the spool taut while it’s turning. Maybe over time you’re getting a lot of adhesive buildup from the bottom of your spools on your sewing machine and that’s causing it to not move smoothly.

So that’s just a couple of things that you can do to troubleshoot, to try and figure out why your top thread keeps breaking.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I am going to talk to you about thread jams. So, as a new sewer, when I was first learning to sew many years ago, I would always experience thread jams, meaning I would just have these big balls of thread that would get stuck in the bobbin casing and the needle wouldn’t go, and the handle wouldn’t turn and it’s just a disaster.

So, as a new sewer, you might be wondering why is that happening. So, I’m here to tell you. A common problem that new sewers have is that they don’t pull their thread tails long. So, these thread tails are quite long. But as a new sewer you might clip them all the way back here. And when you do that, you have just this little piece of the bobbin thread hanging, and just a little piece of the top thread out.

So, when you start to sew, the bobbin thread, a lot of times, can get sucked back down into the bobbin casing, causing a thread jam.

So, if that happens to you, here’s what you should do. First of all, stop sewing. What you can do is lift your presser foot and kind of pull on the fabric a little bit. You can turn the hand wheel a little bit towards you if it’s moving. If it’s totally stuck, you just want to wiggle the fabric out enough to get in with some small scissors or thread clippers, and just clip the project out.

From there, you can just take some tweezers and you can pop your presser foot off and get that out of the way. And just pull all of the thread out from this hole to get all the threads out. Then, if it’s really bad, you can just take your casing off and open up your bobbin area, take the bobbin out, and use your tweezers to pull all the threads out from the bottom as well. And so, that’s how you fix a thread jam.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I’m going to help you troubleshoot your bobbin problems. So let’s go ahead and look into our bobbin area. I’m just going to remove this case and get into our bobbin area. I open this up and I see here is my bobbin casing.

Sometimes when you’re sewing you might have problems, and the stitches aren’t coming out right, or things are getting stuck, and you don’t know what’s going on. I always recommend taking out the bobbin and the bobbin casing. The first thing you should always do is just re-thread it and start over.

You’ll take everything out, make sure your thread is not knotted or crazy on your bobbin. You can even pull some of it and cut it so that everything is nice and smooth. Then just go ahead and put it back in. Make sure everything is looking good. You can pull this and make sure everything is smooth. You can put your bobbin back in and start anew. If you do this, and you’re still having problems, it may be for a couple of reasons.

One, your bobbin casing, if you notice right now, it’s locked in place. It’s not falling out. Our notch here is in this groove where it holds it all together. If your bobbin casing isn’t all the way in, that could be a problem that you’re experiencing. Another problem is you might be threading the bobbin in the casing incorrectly. I always like to just think of everything logically. What makes sense? Our groove and our bobbin case is going to the left, and our thread is coming out to the left, everything is going to the left. So, when we put our bobbin in our case, our thread should also be going to the left. If you put your bobbin in going to the right so that the thread is going the other way, like this, then things are not able to move as easily. That could be something that could be something that’s causing your bobbin problems. So, we’ll just clip that.

After you do these things and you get everything set back up, if you’re still having problems, one last thing that you can try is to get out a brush. You should’ve gotten a little lint brush that came with your sewing machine, or you can buy a little photography brush and just kind of get in the bobbin casing and dust out all the lint. You can even see I have some lint in here. But never use the spray can air because that will just push all the lint further in. Getting that lint out that may be stuck in the back will also help with any of your bobbin problems. So that’s just a quick way to shoot your bobbin issues.

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Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I’m going to talk to you about sewing machines. There are several types of sewing machines that you’re probably going to look to if you are looking to buy a sewing machine.

For home sewing users, there are mechanical machines, electronic, or often called computerized machines. Above that, there are machines that do embroidery. All three of these types of machines can do everything that you might want to do at home: sew garments, make repairs, do home dec sewing, any of that kind of thing.

A mechanical machine is going to be on the cheaper side, and it’s going to be much more basic. The stitch types might be less, and everything is operated by hand. An electronic or computerized machine is going to use a computer to select all of your functions. Instead of turning a dial to pick which stitch and which length and everything, the machine will have pre-set options and will know what to do, and you can press a button and it will go to exactly which zigzag you want. It will adjust the tension for you and do everything automatically. Those are definitely more expensive than mechanical machines.

If you think you’re going to do any kind of embroidery or something like that, there are embroidery machines. And you can buy discs and stuff with computerized images on them. The embroidery machine will just automatically embroider you a lovely flower, or do some nice appliqué or something like that for you.

Besides those sewing machines, you might also want to consider an overlock machine or a serger. These machines are used to finish the seams on anything that you might sew. Some sergers also are often called coverstitch machines, which is used a lot of times.

Both coverstitch and sergers are used for sewing knits. If you think you’re going to do a lot of sewing with knit fabrics, and that would be like the stretchy, T-shirt kind of materials, then you might definitely want to consider purchasing a serger.

That’s it for the basic types of sewing machines. You can definitely look for any of them online or at your local department stores. Reviews online are a great way to see what other sewers like you have experienced with their machines to try and find the best one to meet your needs.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social and today I’m going to show you how to stitch in the ditch. So stitch in the ditch is a great technique to know and to use. A lot of times you’ll use it when attaching waistbands to skirts, so I’m going to show you today.

Today we have our orange skirt and our blue waistband. The first thing you’re going to do is attach the waistband to the skirt. For that, I’m going to use a 5/8 of an inch seam allowance. I’m just going to put my fabric down at 5/8 of an inch on the seam guide. I’m going to make sure I’m on a straight stitch and I’m going to use a 2.5 millimeter stitch length and then I’m just going to stitch all the way across.

Now we have our blue waistband attached to our orange skirt. You want to take this to the iron and press it. We’re just going to finger press it for this demo. You want the seam allowances on your project to go up into the waistband or whatever it is you’re trying to encase.

Now the next thing you want to do is to take your waistband or other portion and fold under the raw edge and then fold it again so that you just cover that machine stitch. So we’re just going to cover it. Now if this were an actual skirt, this would be pressed under and prepped for you before you attached it. So we’re just going to cover and pin. We’re pinning from the wrong side of our project to make sure that we’re covering that stitching line. But we’re not going to sew from the wrong side. We’re going to sew from the right side.

What we need to do is flip our project over and re-pin from the right side. You can see on the right side here where our pins are coming through. We’re just going to transfer, put new pins in on the right side right up against where the seam is, where the blue and the orange touch each other. Then once you do that you can pull the pins out from the back. So we’re going to pin all the way along. Okay, so now no more pins on the wrong side. All of our pins are on the right side.

Now when we say “stitch in the ditch”, what is the ditch exactly? Well, the ditch is the seam. So we are trying to even pin in the ditch, and this is where we’re going to sew. We’re going to drop our needle so it goes right in between the blue and the orange right there. So we’re going to take this to the machine. Pick up your presser foot, put everything down, and you want that seam, the blue and the orange line, to be right in the middle of your presser foot. What you can do is take the hand wheel and twist it down a little bit and see where your needle’s going to drop. You want it to drop right in between. Once you have that in a good place, then you can start sewing. You’re going to stitch, you’re going to sew right in that seam, right in the middle.

Okay, so once you are finished, you should not be able to see your stitching from the right side of the garment because you’re setting the stitch in that seam, in the ditch, if you will. Here we’ve used black thread on the orange so you can see it a little bit, but if we were using thread to match, you would not see it at all. Then if you flip it on the backside, you’ve caught this folded edge all the way across and so you would have a very lovely waistband of your skirt. And that’s how you stitch in the ditch.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I’m going to show you how to use a double needle on your sewing machine.

Here is the double needle that I’m using, and a double needle is exactly what it sounds like. It’s two needles connected to one shaft and it makes two lines of stitching that are exactly the same distance apart.

The first thing you want to do is take out the needle that you currently have in your sewing machine. I just twisted the screw that holds my needle in and took it out. I’ll put that needle aside. Then I want to take my double needle and put it into the sewing machine. I want to make sure that the flat of the shaft is towards the back of the sewing machine and that on my needle eyes, the grooves on the eyes are towards me. The other thing you have to note when you’re using a double needle is you need to use a presser foot that accommodates for a zigzag. So if I were to use the presser foot that I have in my machine right now, which is for a straight stitch, the needles would hit the presser foot and break.

So go ahead and put your zigzag foot in your machine, and then you can put your needle into the machine. Remember to press the needle up as far as it will go and then tighten the screw that holds your needle in place.

My machine was already threaded, so I’m going to leave everything exactly the way it is, and I’m going to take the thread that is in the hook on the left, and I’m going to thread it through the eye of the left needle. So I’m just going to pull and then I’m going to tuck it underneath the presser foot.

Now for the second thread, you’re going to take a second spool and put it on the second spindle on your machine. For this spool, you want your thread, if you notice here on the first one, we have our thread coming off the back and it’s kind of going counter-clockwise. We want the second spool to be the opposite. So we’re going to put that on, but the thread is going to come off on the front side of the machine.

Then we’re going to thread everything just the same, except when we get to the bottom, you’re going to put the thread through the little hook that’s on the right of the needle, and then you’re going to thread the needle that’s on the right. Then tuck that thread underneath your presser foot. Then you can grab all three of your threads, both these top stitch and your bobbin thread and pull them all so that you can make sure that everything’s moving smoothly.

Now I noticed when I did that, that when I threaded the needle on the right, it got twisted. The thread got twisted around the needle. So that was a good thing to see before I started sewing and all I will do is just clip the thread, take that piece out, and re-thread the eye of the needle. So now I have all my threads. I’m just going to pull, and everything is moving together.

Okay. Great. So now you’re ready to sew. I’m just going to use this piece of fabric. I’m going to line it up with our five-eighths guide on our seam, on our throat plate on the seam guide, and I’m just going to sew a straight stitch on the stitch type. Then the link, I’m going to do a three.

Now we can see our double needle, or twin needle stitch. This is on the right side of the fabric. If you’ll notice on the wrong side of the fabric, we have a zigzag, which allows for stretch. So the twin needle can be used for sewing knits, because it has some stretch, and it can also be used as purely a decorative finishing stitch.

So that’s how you use a twin needle.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social and today I’m going to show you how to gather fabric.

We have our fabric piece right here that we want to gather and the first thing we’re going to do is go to our sewing machine and make sure that we’re on a straight stitch. Then we’re going to turn our stitch length up as high as it will go, on my machine it’s a four; so we’re going to use a large stitch length. Then we’re going to take our fabric and, for this project, we’re going to assume a 5/8 of an inch seam allowance. Knowing that we’re using a 5/8 of an inch seam allowance, the first thing I’m going to do is sew a line at 1/4 of an inch seam allowance, just on the one-ply fabric.

Before I start, I want to make sure that I have long thread tails going out the back because we’re going to use these to gather the fabric, so I’m just going to lay those there. Then I’m going to put my fabric in the machine and, for the 1/4 of an inch seam allowance, I’m just going to use the edge of my presser foot and I’m going to sew all the way across.

When you get to the end of your fabric, you want to pull your fabric out and keep these long thread tails. So I’m going to cut, just in the middle, so that I have a long tail on my fabric, and a long tail on my machine. I’m going to pull that to the back and now I’m going to sew another narrow seam, another 1/4 inch from the seam that I just sewed.

If you add them together, 1/4 and 1/4, you would want the raw edge of your fabric aligned on the 1/2-inch seam marker on your seam guide. I’m going to put my fabric in and then I’m going to sew all the way down again. We’re going to do the same thing we did already. We’re going to put long thread tails and clip our project off.

Now we are ready to gather our fabric. The first thing you should do is separate your top needle thread from your bobbin thread. Then you should tie off one set, so I’m going to tie this set off, which is on top, and you can just make a knot, just a quick overhand knot. Then I’m going to pull it tight down on the fabric. Then, since we have a lot of threads here, I’m just going to clip this because I don’t have to worry about that, I don’t want it to get in my way.

So we pulled the top here and tied it off so we’re going to do the same on the opposite end. I’m going to take the top threads and I’m going to tie them off, just like I did on the other side. Then I’m going to clip those threads. Great! So now I can go ahead and gather my fabric.

To do that, I’m going to work from the left and then from the right, gathering fabric towards the middle. All I’m going to do is hold these tails and pull my fabric in towards the center to make these gathers. Then you can do it from the opposite side as well to make your gathers.

Now if this were going into something, say this was going to be a skirt, you would definitely want to set this down and spread these gathers out evenly. You can see here, they are really tightly gathered and here it’s kind of a little loose so you take your tails and hang on and just kind of spread them out; that made it a lot better. Then you can balance it out from the opposite side as well, just kind of move things along to get them nice and balanced.

Once you have your fabric gathered and it’s in the place you want, you can now tie your other threads off so that they won’t move. You want to try and keep your knots close to the edge so that this won’t come undone.

Then you’ll take your fabric, we’ll make a little waistband. Say this is the waistband and this is our skirt piece, you’re going to pin the gathered fabric to the straight portion. Then you’ll take this to the sewing machine and we’re going to sew our 5/8 of an inch seam allowance.

From our raw edge to our gather stitch here, we have 1/2-inch, so we’re going to be to the left of all of our gather stitches. We’ll take this back to the sewing machine and line it up with our 5/8 and sew across our gathers. As you come up to all the gathering, I like to just kind of pull things down straight before I sew over them, make sure everything is laying really nicely.

We have a lot of bunching here so we’re just going to pull everything down, make sure it’s well balanced and then if something comes a little undone, that’s okay. You have your threads tied so you can just grab it and pull it a little bit to get it to align correctly. Then you’ll just sew off. Now, we can cut all of our threads and take this to the iron and you see our very even and lovely gathers.

And that’s how you gather fabric.

Transcript

I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I’m going to show you how to make a bound seam.

We have prepared our seam with our seam allowance, and the first thing you want to do when you’re making a bound seam is just kind of finger press your seam allowance open a little. You want these seam allowances to lay a little flatter. It makes it a little easier to work with.

Then you want to take some bias strips or bias binding, which you can make at home or you can buy premade at a store. Any quilting, notions shop should have it. The bound seam is also sometimes called Hong Kong Finish if you’ve ever heard of that.

The first thing you want to do is to take your seam allowance that you’ve finger pressed open and take your bias strip and just lay it right on top of one side with the raw edges matching. Then we’re going to sew a narrow seam allowance on this to attach the binding to the seam allowance. Now I’m just going to go in and do it, but if you’re uncomfortable for any reason doing it this way, you can always go in and pin your binding to the seam allowance before you start to hold everything together.

It’s really important before you start sewing to make sure that all of your fabric is pushed to the left. You don’t want to accidentally sew through your good part of your fabric somehow, so just make sure that that’s off to the side.

Then we’re going to do a narrow seam allowance; I’m just going to use the edge of my presser foot as my guide. You’re just going to do a straight stitch all the way down to attach the binding to the seam allowance. Then when you get to the bottom, now, I didn’t premeasure my strip, which is fine, especially if you buy premade strips at the store, they’ll come in two or three or four-yard bundles, so you can just sew what you need and then when you get to the bottom, just cut off the excess.

Now you’re going to want to take this to the iron to press this seam down. You can’t finger press this because this strip, the blue, is sewn on the bias, which makes it stretchy and kind of bouncy. It won’t lie flat just with finger pressing alone, because we’re not going with the way the fibers are woven, we’re going on the diagonal. So we’re going to take this to the iron and press it flat before we do anything else.

So we’ve attached our binding to one side of our seam allowance, and now we need to press this flat. I’m just going to take my garment, my fabric, and move it over to the side and lay the seam allowance down flat, then take my iron and press the binding away from our garment. Notice we’re just doing this on the one side. This seam allowance will be done on its own, so don’t worry about that.

Now what we want to do is fold the binding over and stitch it again. But before we do that, let’s trim this seam allowance down. We don’t need all that bulk. So we’ll just cut our narrow seam in half, leaving about an eighth of an inch on this seam allowance.

Then we are going to fold this under to stitch it in place. You can take some pins and just pin the binding under. When you’re pinning this I like to pin right here in the seam, or close to the seam, and then flip it over on the other side to make sure that you are catching that binding on the back side.

Okay, so now we’re ready to take this back to the sewing machine. Okay, so we have our binding all pinned into place, and we’re going to take it to the sewing machine. You just want to put just the seam allowance; we’re keeping our garment off to the left. You’re going to take the seam allowance and put it under the presser foot. Before you start, I like to use the hand wheel to kind of lower the needle a little bit to see where it’s going to fall. You really want it to fall right in this seam or even a little to the left of it to catch this backside. So I lower my needle, I see where it’s going to land, and I like that, and now I’m ready to start stitching.

Then once you get near the end here, just kind of make sure that the binding is staying tucked under and it’s not coming out, because it’s stretchy, so it has a tendency to want to move around. Then you can pull this out, and we have our bound seam.

Looking from the wrong side of the fabric, the seam on the right is bound and the seam on the left is not finished yet. Then you can see on the back side what this looks like.

Then once you’re finished you can take the whole thing to the iron and give it good press so it’ll be nice and flat. And that’s how you make a bound seam.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social and today I’m going to show you how to sew a flat felled seam. A flat felled seam encases the raw edge of the seam allowance and this is a very common way to finish seams that you see on jeans and on sportswear.

To demonstrate that today, we’re going to need to identify the wrong side of the fabric. So I’m just going to mark my two wrong sides. I’m going to start by sewing wrong sides together. I’m going to sew a 5/8 of an inch seam allowance. So I’m lining up my fabric with the raw edge on the 5/8 guide on my seam guide, and I’m just sewing a straight stitch. I’m using a 2.5 millimeter stitch length. I’m just going to go all the way down to the bottom.

Now, so we have our wrong sides together and our right sides with the seam allowance up. So the next thing I want to do is to just finger press this seam open, so it lies a little bit flat, a little flatter. Then I want to trim one side of the seam allowance down short because we’re going to encase it with the other seam allowance. So I’m going to trim this down and leave about between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch.

Now, to hide all these raw edges, I’m just going to take this larger seam allowance and fold it under, and then fold the whole thing over, so everything is hidden. Then you’ll just pin it in place, and then you can just move up your seam to do the whole thing. Of course, if you’re uncomfortable doing this by eye, you can get your seam guide out or ruler and measure this fold so that it’s all nice and even.

So we have our seam in place, and then we’re just going to go to the sewing machine and stitch close to this fold all the way down to secure our seam. We’ll go back to the sewing machine and I’m going to lower the presser foot and I’m just going to eyeball close to this edge. Now when you’re doing this, you can always use the edge of the inside of the presser foot as your guide for an edge stitch. Or my presser foot has little notches on the right hand side that are also really useful reference guides.

Okay, and there we have our flat felled seam, and this is the right side. This is the wrong side. Of course, depending on your preference, you can always choose to use this seam look for your right side, if that’s what you would prefer, and put this one the wrong side. It’s really up to you. But that’s how you sew a flat felled seam.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I’m going to show you how to make a French seam. We have our two pieces of fabric here that we want to sew together, and we want to sew this with a French seam.

To get a good idea of what that would look like, we should identify a wrong side of the fabric. Here we have our two wrong sides. Now, this is one of the few things that you will sew with wrong sides together. So you want to take your two X’s and match them up, and then you are going to sew a narrow seam allowance. We are going to sew about a quarter of an inch. I’m just lining up my fabric with the outside of my presser foot, and that’s about a quarter of an inch, and then you’re just going to sew a straight stitch, and I’m on a 2.5 mm stitch length.

Then after you sew the wrong sides together, you want to press this seam flat. You don’t need to iron it, but if you just finger press this to get the seam to open a little bit, then that helps this side lie a little bit flatter. Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to take some scissors and we’re going to trim away about an eighth of an inch from the seam allowance, so we’re cutting the seam allowance in half.

Now is the time that we’re going to sew right sides together. So with our right sides facing us, we’re going to lay right sides together, and we are going to do our best to push out this seam so it’s nice and flat. Grab some pins. You can pin it in place to hold it. We have our seam all pinned into place, so now it’s time to sew.

Before we do that though, you should think about your seam allowance, so I’m going to do my total seam allowance is 5/8th of an inch, which is a very common seam allowance, and we sewed the first narrow seam at a quarter of an inch, so 5/8ths minus a quarter is 3/8ths, so to get the total 5/8ths, right now I need to take this back to the sewing machine, and sew a 3/8ths seam allowance. I’m going to line up my fabric with that 3/8ths marker that is on my seam guide, and I’m just going to sew a straight stitch following that guide.

Then when you’re done, you can take this to the ironing board, and you’re going to press your seam to one side because they can’t open anymore. Our french seam encloses the raw edge within this bit. This is the right side of our fabric, and then this is the wrong side of our fabric with our French seam.

Transcript

Hi. This is Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I’m going to show us how to make a double folded hem. The the first thing you want to do is to take your fabric out and grab a seam guide or ruler.

Now, in this example, we have a 2-inch hem allowance. That means there’s 2 inches of fabric at the bottom of our garment that can be folded over to make a hem.

So, what I want do is I want to take my seam guide and get it to 2 inches. And then I want to take the bottom of my garment and measure and press 2 inches.

Okay. Now, once you have this 2 inches folded and pressed, all we want to do is take our raw edge and tuck it underneath into the fold.

Once that’s nice and flat, we’ll just take the iron and press that out. Now, I like this method a lot better than, alternatively, if you wanted, you could measure and fold an inch and measure and fold an inch to get that 2 inches. But I think it’s really easy and fast to fold it once and then just tuck the rest under. So, that’s why I do it like that.

Okay. And then, you can go ahead and just pin the hem in place before you take it to the sewing machine. Okay. Our hem is pinned; let’s go to the sewing machine.

Okay. Great. So, we have our hem folded and pressed and pinned. We are ready to sew now. You can sew this from either the wrong side or the right side of the fabric. As you practice, you’re going to want to switch to sewing from the right side of the fabric, because the stitches that come from this top thread just look nicer than the bobbin stitches.

But it’s totally fine if you want to press it from this edge, from the wrong side, because you can get a really clear view of where this fold is. So, you’re just going to put your fabric right under the presser foot, make sure you’re at a straight stitch. I’m using a 2.5 inch-millimeter, not inch, a 2.5-millimeter stitch length. And then, you’re just going to sew a straight line close to that fold.

Okay. And there we have our double folded hem. From the right side and the wrong side. That’s how you sew a double folded hem.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I’m going to show you how to make a narrow hem on fabric. We have our fabric here and we have our raw edge.

The first thing you want to do when you make a narrow hem is to sew a narrow seam allowance just on the single fold fabric, just on the single ply. I’m going to just use the edge of my presser foot, which is about a quarter of an inch, and I’m just going to stitch a straight line following that raw edge.

Now, this line is going to be used as our guide. What you can do is you want to fold over your fabric with that line on the inside. That’s going to help you make a really narrow and even hem. I’m going to take this to the iron right now, just to press it all flat.

Okay. Now that we have our guide in place, the line that we stitched, we are going to fold to the wrong side with our stitch line on the opposite side of the fold. So, you want it in towards the raw edge. You don’t want this line, for example, on the right side. So, you want to make sure you capture that towards the wrong side of the fabric.

Now, you have this fold that you can use, so you’ll just do another turn. And you can press it down in place, and you have your narrow rolled hem. What you can do is take this and you can pin it in place before you sew. Now, you can see how using this line would be really good if you were doing an even narrower hem. You could do an eighth of an inch.

If you wanted to do this, I’m doing this on woven cotton right now. But if you wanted to do this on a really fine fabric, really light weight silk, I recommend doing two lines of stitching, which really gives you some extra body to fold your fabric around.

Now, let’s take this back to the sewing machine to sew our hem down. We have our hem prepared. It’s all pinned up and now I’m just going to sew a straight stitch right close to the edge here. As you practice more, you’re going to want to sew your hem from the right side of the fabric, where you can’t see the fold, just because the stitches come from your top thread is much nicer looking. But, it’s not a big deal if you want to sew it from this edge so you can really see the edge of your fold and get really close to it.

And there we have our narrow rolled hem. This is the wrong side where you can see the lip. And if you turn it over, that’s the right side. And we have this nice line and a really evenly folded hem.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I’m going to show you how to install an invisible zipper.

So, here we have our invisible zipper and the fabric that we’re going to use to sew our zipper into. The first part of sewing an invisible zipper is to press the zipper. So, we’re going to move our fabric aside. We’re going to open the zipper and flip it to the wrong side, the side with the teeth.

And then, we’re going to roll the zipper out. So, the zipper teeth kind of roll in on the invisible zipper. That’s what kind of hides the zipper. It pulls all the fabric in. So, we’re going to roll it out and then we’re going to press it with the iron so that it will stay flat. And you’ll do this to both sides of the zipper.

You’ll go down as far as you can get to the zipper stop, or the zipper pull at the bottom prevents you from getting all the way to the bottom of the teeth. But that’s okay. Just go as far as you can. Okay. Great.

So, after you press your zipper, you’ll see the zipper teeth are now lying flat; they’re not curling in. So, now we can take this to our sewing machine and sew our zipper in.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and today I’m going to show you how to install a left zipper. So, the first thing you want to do is take your fabric and take your zipper and mark the bottom of your zipper.

So, to do that, I’m just going to lay my zipper where I want it to go. I’m going to take my scissors and clip a small notch right below the end of the zipper stop. Now, if you’re making a garment from a sewing pattern, this information will be on your pattern. So you don’t have to measure the zipper to make this notch. It’ll just come on your pattern pieces.

And then, what I want to do is I want to take my fabric and sew the seam below the zipper. So, I’m going to put my fabric in my machine, lining up the notch that we made in line with our needle. And using our seam guide at five-eighths of an inch, that’s going to be our seam allowance.

So, we’ll get that in place. Make sure that your machine is on straight stitch. And for this seam, I’m going to use a 2.5 stitch length and I’m going to sew my straight line. Now, I’m going to backstitch when I start because I want to make sure that this thread has no chance of unraveling. And then, you’ll just continue down and sew the entire seam. Then when you’re done, you can just clip your threads.

And now, before we start with the zipper installation, we need to take this fabric to our iron. So, now that we have our fabric prepared, we need to go ahead and do a couple of things before we actually put in the zipper. So, you’re going to take your fabric and put it so wrong side is up facing you. And you’re going to take one side of the seam allowance and press it back half of an inch.

So, our seam allowance for this project was five-eighths of an inch. And by turning under this half of an inch, we’re creating an eighth of an inch lip to hide our zipper. So, you’ll just press until you get to the notch that you made on one side. And then, if you flip your fabric over, you see now how this portion is kind of laying underneath this portion because we have this one-eighth of an inch line at the top.

So, now we can take this and put our zipper on and sew our zipper in. So, now that we’ve pressed our underlap side down, we’re going to take our zipper and line it up with that seam. So, this pressed seam, we’re going to put just to the outside of the zipper teeth. And then, we’re going to take our zipper stop and place it just right where that notch is located. And you can go ahead and pin this in place.

Transcript

Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social, and I’m going to show you how to install a centered zipper.

The first thing that we want to do when we install a centered zipper is we want to measure and mark the placement of the zipper in our seam. I’m just going to line my zipper up here with the edge of my fabric. I’m going to mark where the zipper stops. To mark that placement I’m just going to take my scissors and make a little notch right into the seam allowance, like an eighth of an inch or quarter of an inch notch.

Now, if you’re sewing a garment from a pattern your pattern will have this mark on the pattern piece. So you don’t need to necessarily measure your zipper out. You can just make your mark from the pattern.

Now I want to sew my seam from this notch down. Before I install my zipper I want to make sure that the bottom is right, is sewn. I’m going to put my fabric in my sewing machine. I’m going to line up. I’m doing five-eighths of an inch seam allowance. I’m going to line up the raw edge of the fabric with my five-eighths mark, and then I’m going to line the needle up with that notch that I made.

Now, before you do anything, I always recommend going back to check your stitch and length to make sure. If you just came off of sewing a zigzag or something, you want to make sure you’re doing straight. I’m going to select my straight stitch, and then I’m going to sew my seam at a 2.5 stitch length.

Now, since this is going to be the end of the zipper, I am going to backstitch to really hold that stitching in secure. I went forward and back, and now I’m just going to go ahead and finish that whole seam.

Our seam is complete, and you can see what we’ve done here. Let’s clip these threads. We have the bottom of our zipper. It’s going to match here, and then our zipper is going to placed up at the top.

For the centered zipper application we’re going to baste the seam closed first. I’m going to go back to my stitch length and I’m going to select a four, which is my basting stitch. I’m going to put my fabric back in my sewing machine. It’s the same seam allowance, five-eighths of an inch or whatever your pattern calls for, and I’m going to go ahead and stitch down until I connect with the line that I’ve already sewn.

This is what it will look like after our fabric is prepared. We have our seam and then we have our basted area where our zipper is going to go.

Now it’s time to take this fabric to the iron. We’ve prepared our seams and now we’re going to press our seam allowances open. You’ll take your fabric, wrong side face up so that your seam is facing you. I’m just going to take the iron and press these seam allowances open. Now, the seam I’m going to press nicely so that it’s nice and flat. Then I’m going to come up and do the basted area. After you’re done ironing it will look like this.

Now what we want to do is take our zipper and pin it in place on our seam. So we have our notches that we made in the seam allowances, this cut portion, and I’m going to line up the bottom of the zipper with that line and just place it down the middle.

Now, it’s not a great idea to pin on your ironing board, but I do it all the time. When I do, I like to use these rulers just underneath where you’re pinning so that you don’t pin into your ironing board. I’m going to put that in place and center my zipper. Then I’m going to take some pins and just secure the zipper in the middle. You’ll want to pin on both sides and so your zipper is now in place.

Now, when we sew this we’re going to sew it from the opposite side because we want to make sure that we have a really nice looking stitch. We’re going to flip this over and now we’re going to pin again to hold the zipper in place. But, when we’re done we’re going to come to the back side and take these pins out. We don’t want zippers on the underside of where we’re stitching because then you might accidentally sew over one.

It’s important to transfer all the pins from the back so that you don’t accidentally sew over a zipper when you’re stitching. At the same time, I think it’s important to pin first from the back so that you know that your zipper is centered. It’s kind of hard to pin directly from the front because you can’t see what you’re pinning. So this is pinned and secure, and now we’re ready to take this to the sewing machine.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social and I’m going to show you how to use a blind hem foot on your sewing machine.

Before we start, we need to prepare the fabric that we’re going to use when using this foot. I have this piece of fabric and I just want to make a fake hem. We’re going to do a double-turned hem. I’m just going to fold this half up and give it a little press. Then I’m going to take it and fold it again so that this raw edge is enclosed and we cannot see it, and then give it a little press. Great. If you look from the front side, we just have a nice, clean, finished edge.

Now, before we use our foot, we need to prepare this further. What you want to do is take, from the wrong side of your fabric, the side with the fold, you want to flip it over so that your finished edge is on your left and the rest of your garment or your fake edge if you’re doing a test like this, is on your right. Then you want to take your garment and pull it back to the left, so you kind of make this shape here on the edge of your fabric.

Now, from here, we want to measure about a quarter of an inch, so get your seam guide out and measure about a quarter of an inch and we’re going to give this a slight press. We don’t want to press this too hard because we don’t want to make a crease in the fabric. But, as you can see, this is bubbling a lot and so, when we put that through the sewing machine, it’s going to be a little obnoxious.

If you hover your iron across the top so just some steam gets on the fabric, it’s going to just flatten that out a little bit. Then what you can do is get your pins out and pin your seams together to hold everything in place. Now we’ve prepared our fabric and we’re ready to go to our sewing machine.

We have our hem prepared and now we’re going to attach our blind hem foot. When you do a blind hem on a sewing machine, your sewing machine stitches several straight stitches and then it does one zigzag stitch to the left to kind of catch the fabric. On the blind hem foot we have a little gauge on the side that kind of helps align your fabric so that the bite that the zigzag takes only catches the very edge of the fabric.

Take your foot and you’re just going to put it down on your machine, attach it like so. Make sure you take your top thread and put it underneath and both threads to the back. The blind hem foot, because every sewing machine is different, it has a gauge so you can kind of move it to the left or right. You should do some tests at home first to make sure that you’ve got it in a good position.

Right now I’m going to take my prepared piece of fabric and I’m going to put the quarter inch on the right, underneath the foot. Then I’m going to take this little attachment here and put the fold on top of it, and then I’ll lower my presser foot. What you want to see is that the attachment I have here on the right is actually sitting underneath the fold on the left.

Before you start stitching, make sure you go to your stitch selector and select the blind hem stitch. On mine, it looks kind of like mountains and valleys. You want something that’s kind of got a couple of things going sideways and then up in a triangle, and then sideways again. Then you should pick your stitch length; I’m just keeping mine at a 2.5. Then you are ready to stitch.

I’m going to do a couple of stitches and then, when I get to my pins, I’m going to stop, pause and take my pins out because we don’t want to sew over our pins.

When you’re done, just pull your project out, clip your thread tails and now, from that side where we just hovered the iron for a little bit of steam, this is what that side looks like. Now, when you unfold this, this is what your blind hem stitch looks like. Now we’re going to take this to the iron, press it flat, and it’s going to look really, really professional.

Okay, now that we’ve made our stitch, we just want to press this out so it’s nice and flat. We’ll just go to our fabric; if you’re pressing on the right side of your garment, make sure you do some tests first to make sure that the iron won’t create a sheen on the fabric. We’ll go to the back and just give it a nice little iron. Then here’s your blind hem stitch.

Now we can see all the little bites that our sewing machine made when it did that little zigzag over to do the blind hem stitch. But, if you match your thread to your fabric (for us blue), you really hardly notice these stitches at all. So it’s a really nice way to finish a garment for a really professional look.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social and I’m going to show you how to use a buttonhole foot. This is a buttonhole attachment and it’s used to make buttonholes in fabric. My buttonhole attachment is an automatic one-step process, and what I’m going to do is the first thing I’m going to do is push this lever back. This attachment makes the buttonhole to the size of your button. You’ll need a button to use this foot, and you’ll just take your button and place it in this area and then you’ll slide the foot back so that your button is firmly in place.

Once you have your button in place, it’s time to attach your foot. You’ll just slide the presser foot underneath and lower the shank so it snaps into place. Now, since we’ve attached the foot to the machine, but we have our thread here on top going through the needle, we need to pull this thread down underneath the foot, which is a little bit challenging with this big, clunky attachment. So I like to just get something a little pointy and you can just push the thread down and lift your presser foot up a little and catch the thread from the bottom. Now I have my thread here. So we have our top thread and our bobbin thread both going towards the back of the machine.

Now, when we’re making the buttonhole, the buttonhole is going to go from front to back with your machine, so not side to side. You have to think about that as you’re making your buttonholes. How do you want them aligned on your garment? I’m going to slide my fabric under here and I’m going to make a vertical buttonhole and I’m just going to put my presser foot down. Now if you are doing this on a garment, you want to make sure that you mark your buttonhole placement on your project before you get to this stage.

Before I start, I’m going to pull my buttonhole lever down, and it’s going to come and hit the attachment right here at the back. Now it’s time to select your stitch type and stitch length. On your sewing machine, you’re going to just go to your buttonhole type, and it’s usually indicated by a rectangle. Then you’re going to go to your length and you’re going to select the buttonhole length. Then you’re just going to sew. So the buttonhole will adjust automatically to the size of the button that we put in here, so there’s really nothing to worry about.

You can see what’s happened here. First, the buttonholer starts with the bar tack end on one side, goes up one side of the buttonhole, it’ll do the bar tack on the other side, and then down the other way.

Okay, so we are back to where we started. You can go ahead and pull your fabric out, clip all of your threads, and now you can see our buttonhole. Now before we can insert a button into the buttonhole, we have to cut the buttonhole open. You can use a seam ripper to get the buttonhole started. You can use it to open the whole thing. I really like these little thread snippers. So you can use that to just clip through the opening, or you can get a buttonhole chisel that you can use to stamp out the middle of the buttonhole. So there’s our buttonhole.