Sewing Quick Tips

If you don’t have quite enough fabric for your pattern layout, try placing some of the pieces on the cross-grain (perpendicular to your fabric’s selvedges).

Just keep in mind this may cause your finished garment to hang differently. Fabric cut on the cross-grain tends to feel a bit stiffer, therefore your fabric may not drape as fluidly. Examine the design of your pattern to decide if this matters to you.

For more about fabric grain, see How to Straighten Fabric Grain.

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Do you have a garment that came out beautifully, but a buttonhole that didn’t? And to try to re-sew it would mean ruining the garment?

Try this fix: Cover the buttonhole with a patch of fabric – folding under the edges, then topstitching it to your garment. This will allow you to re-sew the buttonhole.

If you want the patch to be less noticeable, use the same fabric for the patch as your garment. Or, if you’d like to make a design statement, use a contrasting fabric for the patch. And you can cover just the botched buttonhole or you can cover all of your buttonholes so the fix looks planned.

Or, instead of sewing single patches of fabric to each buttonhole, sew a long strip of fabric, ribbon, or trim all the way down the outside of your garment, covering all of the buttonholes. Then re-sew the buttonholes.

For more great sewing information, visit SewingSupport.com.

To strengthen ribbing that’s weak or has stretched out of shape, treat it like a casing and insert a piece of wide elastic through it.

Cut a vertical slit through the wrong side of the ribbing. Insert the elastic through the ribbing (attach a safety pin or bodkin to the end of the elastic to make insertion easier), then sew the ends of the elastic together. Slipstitch the ribbing closed.

For more great sewing information, visit SewingSupport.com.

If you have some wonderful plaid fabric you’d like to use, yet you don’t feel like going through the work of matching the design at the seams, try turning some of your pattern pieces on the bias (the diagonal) – assuming you have enough fabric to do so.

So for a shirt, you might try cutting the yoke or the sleeve cuffs on the bias. For a jacket, you might try cutting the sleeves or the pockets on the bias.

Not only will you save yourself a little time, but you’ll end up with a garment that has more visual interest to it than if cut traditionally.

For more great sewing information, visit SewingSupport.com.

Do any decorative stitching (such as pin tucks) on a section of your fabric first, then cut your pattern pieces from it. This will ensure that the decorative stitching doesn’t change the shape of your garment pieces and that your finished item will fit properly.

For more great sewing information, visit SewingSupport.com.