Innholdsfortegnelse for Teach Yourself to Sew - Winter 2013 i Threads Magazine

I think I fell in love with sewing the first time someone complimented what I was wearing and I could reply: “Thank you, I made it.” I experience that wonderful feeling all over again every time I complete a project and the results are magnificent. This issue guides you along the sewing path, so you can complete your own projects. It shows you how to get started, what you need, how to drive a sewing machine, and the basics of sewing seams, darts, and edges. You’ll learn about fabrics and interfacings. Commercial patterns are a shortcut to high style—we’ll tell you how to read them. Then, learn how to make clothes without a pattern, with nothing but your body measurements. Find out what you can learn by measuring your favorite…

Threads instructional web videos If you’re a visual learner and like having an expert show you how to perform a sewing technique, then you’ll find Threads’ instructional web videos a valuable addition to your sewing education. A variety of web videos await your perusal at ThreadsMagazine.com/videos, from segments for beginners showing basic sewing techniques to figure-fitting solutions and sewing industry methods of garment construction. Some are only accessible to Threads Insider subscribers, but many are available to all visitors. Invest in a dress form If you want to sew garments for yourself or learn the draping method of patternmaking, then a dress form is an invaluable tool. It helps you get a good fit on garments, evaluate fabric and trim choices, judge garment proportions, and create your own designs. There are…

Interfacing is invisible but all-important. It hides inside a garment to provide invisible support in high-stress areas such as the edges, collars, and cuffs, under buttons and buttonholes, and sometimes inside hems to keep these areas in shape. You might guess that interfacing is associated with the facing, and, indeed, the two get attached during construction of a garment. But let’s take a closer look at what interfacing actually does for your sewing. Interfacing is a fabric whose sole purpose is to be an invisible second layer. It comes in nonwoven, knit, and woven versions; in fusible and nonfusible; in colors from white to grays and black; and in a full range of weights from fine sheers to heavy canvas. There are also standard fabrics that make excellent interfacings, such…

Design photos Study the photos. Look for clues about the garments’ fit, design lines, and alternative styles by mixing and matching garment parts from the different views. Have you ever been seduced by the photo on the front of a pattern envelope? Those photos may not show all the details, but there are plenty of clues on the envelope to steer you toward designs that are worth your time and effort. Take a moment to read the pattern envelope—and the pattern itself—and you’ll avoid all kinds of pitfalls. A close look at the envelope helps you pick the right size, purchase the best fabric (in the right amount) for the project, and predict how the finished garment will fit. The guide sheet, of course, provides step-by-step instructions for cutting and…

You don’t always need a pattern to sew a garment. You can just rip or cut fabric into shapes defined by dimensions written on a Post-it note. It’s creative—and empowering—to sew without a pattern. Here’s how to take basic dimensions and simple fabric shapes and make time-tested garments that everyone loves; they’re known by several names, but we’ll call them a gypsy skirt and a peasant blouse. Once you understand the basic steps, it’s easy to see how you can modify them into a variety of garments. For both garments, gathering is used to create the shape. On the skirt, bands of fabric are gathered together. For the blouse, the fabric is gathered along a cord or elastic inside a fabric tunnel called a casing. Understand gathering To gather fabric,…

For centuries, hand-stitch quality has been admired and judged as the determining factor in assessing the craftsmanship of a piece. Today, hand stitching is revered in all its forms—the finely executed and the most primitive. This is one distinction between ready-to-wear and custom-made clothing. Almost every custom-made garment ends with a few hand stitches, as you sew the hem, attach a button, or secure the lining or facing. Think of this time spent in the final steps as the preparation for your completed creation’s debut. Prepare a portable sewing kit with the things you need, so it’s just a matter of picking up your tools and finding a comfortable place to sit. This is when you prop up your feet and relax. You can gently multitask and talk with a…

1 A guide for hand stitching When I want to sew evenly spaced hand stitches, I machine-baste a line of stitches and use it as a guide. I set the stitch length the same as the hand stitch I plan to use. I pull the machine stitches a few at a time just before hand-sewing and follow the holes left behind. Or, I leave the stitches in place until I finish my handwork. The machine stitches work as a guide for different hand stitches, such as a blanket stitch, topstitch, or herringbone stitch. With this method, I always get perfectly spaced hand stitching. Janice Engle, Aurora, Illinois 2 Easy tailor’s tacks I use an alternative version of tailor’s tacks that holds the threads in place more securely than traditional methods. (A traditional…

The importance of pressing is sometimes underestimated by beginning sewers, and, as a consequence, it’s a step that’s often rushed or neglected. Surprisingly, garment construction requires as much time at the ironing board as at the sewing machine. When you’re sewing, pressing accomplishes more than just smoothing the wrinkles, as we associate with ironing. With ironing, you slide a hot steaming object—the iron—across fabric. In pressing, you lift and press the iron with the purpose of shaping the fabric and often preparing it for the next step in construction. Ironing can stretch fabric as it smooths it; pressing is done in such a way as to intentionally not stretch the fabric. Seams, edges, hems, darts, and facings are all pressed at some point in garment construction to help prepare for…

Adart does a lot for the shape of a piece of flat fabric. Without it, bustlines and waistlines would disappear into a mass of excess cloth. You'll encounter three types of darts: single-ended, double-ended, and invisible. A dart is a shaped tuck that gracefully pulls in and secures excess fabric where the body narrows. The darts you see on a pattern consist of at least one point and two legs. Single-ended darts A single-ended dart is the most common; you see it at bustlines, the waistline, and hiplines, and sometimes at shoulders, necklines, and elbows. This dart has its point in the body of the garment, and the opposite end is caught in a seam. Invisible darts These are rarely mentioned in dart talk, because they really don’t exist. They…

FELT As the story goes, in about 6500 B.C. a man’s sandals were rubbing him the wrong way, and he stuffed a handful of wool tufts into them for padding. A few days passed, and the combination of the friction and perspiration of his foot on the wool turned it into felt. It was good for his feet and good for his wardrobe. Maybe you’ve made felt by accident, too. All it takes is getting a wool sweater into a washing machine filled with hot water and soap followed by a run in the dryer. When it starts this way, as a knit or woven cloth, that’s one type of felting. Traditional felting starts with unspun wool tufts that resemble cotton balls. The wool can be batting (sheets) or roving…

We’ve been wearing clothes for a few millennia, but commercial patterns are relatively new in the scheme of things. Home sewers today have lots of options for obtaining stylish, up-to-date patterns. They can buy commercial patterns or drape and draft patterns like they did before commercial patterns were available. Buy them . . . Browse your local fabric store or online—you’re sure to find something you can't live without. CHOOSE FROM A WIDE VARIETY You can’t imagine how many pattern companies there are—there are the 10 or so familiar companies in all major fabric stores. And then there are the Italian, German, Scandinavian, Japanese, and so on. You can find these pattern companies and more online. Actual patterns can be purchased online and downloaded. Some are even free. INDEPENDENT PATTERNS…

It’s not unusual to run into seams where each side curves in an opposite direction. You’ll see this in princess bodice seams and where an armhole meets its corresponding sleeve. Nevertheless, it can catch you off guard when you’re used to sewing seams that line up perfectly edge to edge. But you can make those curves bend together through your sewing machine like a match made in heaven. One challenge is that curved edges stretch, and it’s easy to pull them out of shape as you try to align them. You need a foolproof way to get them matched and even. Another challenge is that, unlike a straight seam, the cutting line and the seam-line on a curve are different lengths. You know about this from clipping the matched curved…

Sometimes darts are pointed in the wrong direction, as shown above. Sometimes they are too large, and other times they are just in the wrong place. When they don’t fit properly, they often cause a ripple on an edge, such as the gaping armholes on the vest. Moving a dart is one of the easiest pattern alterations in sewing when you understand how it’s done. Fabric can bend around the body, or it can bend over it, but when you ask it to bend in all directions simultaneously, as in the illustration at left, folds or ripples occur at its edge. These folds and ripples are essentially unstitched darts and are the fabric’s way of telling you where darts are needed for fit. HOW DARTS WORK Imagine the shape of…

You can apply a lace trim to almost any garment—from jeans to chiffon tops. It’s an easy way to add charm to either a less-than-exciting top, skirt, or pants you’ve purchased or a garment you’re making. The method for applying the lace for ready-made clothes is the same as for a creation you’re sewing from scratch. Learn the tricks to applying the lace, and then you can add it to whatever you like. Adapted from Threads no. 138, “Quick to Make: See it, Sew it, Love it” by Ariel Price. What you’ll need: • Assorted lace trims• Ready-made top Choose the trims You can sew one trim to the top several times, or you can sew several trims to the top once each. If you’re combining trim, it usually looks…

Now that you’ve discovered us, take a look at what we have to offer online. Q&A Ask the experts With your mentor or teacher at your side, it’s easy to buzz through sewing steps without problems. But when you're home alone and an unfamiliar process or technique comes up and you have doubts about how to approach it, ask the experts. TeachYourselfToSew.com is a spot where people online answer your questions. This is a meeting place for experts and novices to get acquainted and help each other. The experienced sewers love answering your questions, and you'll probably learn several ways to solve your problem. Beginner sewing video series Now in its fourth season, The Teach Yourself to Sew video series has proven to be an invaluable resource of sewing basics…

Many sewing problems can be resolved by taking a few driving lessons. These lessons won’t just make sewing easier—they’ll improve your results. Here’s how to drive straight, navigate turns, take corners, jump bumps, and sew seams and edges that look the way they were intended to. Your success depends on how you use your hands to control the fabric as you sew. Naturally, you need to develop a feel for your sewing equipment. When you’ve sewn on a machine for a time, you acquire an intimacy with the way it accelerates and how it sounds—you become familiar with its vibration, pings, and knocks, and you can hear the difference when it’s not running smoothly. Smooth sewing depends on starting with a machine outfitted with the correct needle and thread for…

Many people have sewn their whole lives without a custom dress form and didn’t suffer a lick. But if you’re lucky enough to have one, it sure is nice. Just imagine making little style changes and fitting improvements on a 3-D version of yourself. Here’s why a dress form is great and how you can make one, with a little help. Minor pattern adjustments become easy and obvious when you’re looking at the actual problem in fabric on “yourself.” Of course, custom-made forms are as useful as commercial versions for all the traditional dress-form functions—draping, visualizing, shaping collars, holding garments during sleeve insertion, hemming, and so on. But none of the fitting benefits are possible if the form you’re using doesn’t mirror, with reasonable accuracy, your body shape and posture.…

When you think about it, it’s impossible to have a garment without edges. Maybe that’s why there are so many different kinds. You can trim an edge extravagantly with fancy braids, or just cut it off and leave it raw to ravel as it will. Over time, you’ll build a portfolio of edges you can use whenever the need arises. Here are three essential edges to get you started: a double-fold edge, a faced edge, and a hand-sewn hem. Turn a double-fold edge This edge is folded and then folded again to enclose the raw edge. Use this treatment on a straight or nearly straight edge, because it’s difficult to fold a curved edge. Though this finish is often used as a hem, it can also serve as a center-front…

Muslin does not have to be muslin. Any inexpensive fabric works. Just pick a weight that’s similar to the fashion fabric you’re using. If you’re sewing a knit, use a knit. Even old fabric you have on hand works. You know how the fear of making a mistake can actually lead to procrastination? Whip up a test garment in muslin, and end your procrastination woes. The fabric you use is called muslin, and the test garment is called a muslin. You can experiment with the pattern and happily make mistakes, without fear of ruining expensive fabric. It might sound like twice the work, but in fact, it halves the potential frustration of sewing blind with your fashion fabric. Once you sew a muslin, you’ll become a convert. Here are four…

Shoulders are like clothes hangers: Every top, jacket, and dress you put on hangs from them. If you want your clothes to look better on you than on a hanger, you need to perfect the fit in the shoulders. Basically, you need to match the garment’s shoulder slope to yours. Find your shoulder slope, then use it Determining your shoulder slope is as easy as tracing your silhouette onto paper—and you’ll have an instant custom-fitting tool. Enlist a friend to help. Prepare the paper Draw a line down the paper’s center. Hang the paper on a wall so that the upper edge is a few inches above the top of your head and the line is perpendicular to the floor. Have a friend draw your outline centered on the line,…

The following pages contain information you’ll reach for throughout your sewing adventures. We supply conversions between yards and meters, inches and centimeters, and millimeters and stitches per inch. You’ll find a guide for how deep to make the hem allowance on a skirt, depending on the skirt hem’s circumference. You can also see how the width of a pant leg determines its proper length. We start you out with advice for choosing the right thread and machine needles. You’ll want to save these pages. Thread essentials Choose fiber by performance. Although matching thread fiber to fabric fiber seems logical, choosing the appropriate thread by characteristics, such as strength, colorfastness, or chemical resistance, is more practical. In general, natural fiber threads like cotton, linen, silk, and rayon (a manufactured fiber made…