A really fun (and cute!) way to shorten a sleeve or pant leg without re-hemming is to add a bit of ruching. You can do this to RTW clothes as easily as clothing you have made for yourself, and best of all—it is fast and easy! The only slightly tricky part is deciding what length…
Tutorials
Tutorial: How to Stay Knit Neck Edges
A common way of finishing simple knit T-shirts is to just turn under the raw edge around the neckline and topstitch or coverstitch the edge. Fast and easy! I have done it plenty of times, and my normal method of preventing gaping around the neckline was to stabilize right up against the cut edge of…
Tutorial: How to tame your gathers
Now that you know how to gather successfully, the next challenge is making sure that your gathers are straight and even when you are sewing big onto little. Easier said than done, right? How often have you ended up with a full skirt stitched to a bodice and the gathers look like Indiana Jone’s snake…
Tutorial: Gather successfully!
Let’s face it, gathering fabric can be a pain. Especially if the fabric you are using is a heavier weight than say, quilting cotton, or if you have yards and yards of it to be gathered for a home dec project. Even on small projects, I have found that young sewists struggle to gather without…
Tutorial: Sew a Button FAST & Easy
Everyone should know how to sew a button onto a shirt or coat, right? It is a life skill! And like many life skills, it can be a total pain the buttrather tedious. But I bet by the time you try this method you are going to be singing a different tune, and you may…
Tutorial: Use a coverstitch to hem knit garments
If you sew with lots of knit fabrics, you have probably run into difficulties creating a nice hem on at least some of these fabrics. The more slippery and light-weight the knit the more challenging it is. My favorite method of hemming knits is to use the coverstitch function on my Bernina 1300 MDC serger. …