Sewing Additions & Different Fabrics

Image Source: Thrifty Fun

The fundamental basics of sewing are pretty straightforward. However, there are quite a few sewing additions that you are bound to come across in your sewing projects whether it’s adding buttons and zippers, or sewing different fabrics like faux leather.

Below we’ll dive into all the common sewing additions and useful information to go along with it.

How to Sew Faux Leather

You’ll come across many different types of fabric, some easier than others to sew. Faux leather is a popular fabric and is much easier to sew than traditional real leather is. That being said, there are still a few challenges involved when it comes to sewing faux leather.

Challenges

• Faux leather can be a bit sticky when trying to sew on it
• All holes on faux leather are permanent
• Faux leather is a more demanding fabric to sew on and will wear your needles out a lot faster than other fabrics.

With a few simple techniques, you can easily work with all these faux leather challenges and create beautiful faux leather sewing masterpieces in no time!

Image Source: Pinterest

Measuring and Cutting

Everything is permanent on faux leather. That means every pin, every needle poke, every cut, is all going to make a lasting mark. This means you have to be extra careful when it comes to measuring and cutting.

It’s recommended for cutting and measuring, you have pattern weights, a cutting mat, a very sharp cutter and a ruler present and have your fabric right side up. Put the desired pattern on the fabric and use the cutter and ruler to cut into a straight edge.

Sewing Tips

1. Replacing your sewing machine foot

Since faux leather is such a ‘sticky’ fabric to work with, one way to go about that is to replace the machine’s pressure foot to something made for that type of material. A tractor style foot works great.

A non-sticky pressure foot will help make a smooth sewing experience when working with faux leather.

1. Use Strap Wax

Another way to get around the stickiness of faux leather is by using a strap of wax. All you need to do with the strap of wax is put it under the machine’s regular pressure foot. This will help prevent sticking and any accuracy issues.

1. Using a Sharp Needle

You are a lot better off using a sharper needle when working with faux leather. Using a sharp needle minimizes the hole size and since all holes are permanent, if you do make any mistakes, it’ll be less noticeable.

1. Using a New Needle

Just like using a sharp needle, using a new needle will help with the hole size, but since faux leather tends to wear out needles quickly, having a brand new needle will hopefully allow you to not have to stop mid-work and replace it throughout the project.

1. Longer Stitches

You can use either the zigzag or a straight line stitch when working with faux leather. However, the length of your stitches should be on the longer side because stitches that are too small can damage the material and weaken the seam over time.

Smocking Technique

One of the most popular sewing techniques is smocking. Smocking helps achieve a gorgeous embroidery effect on your sewing project by making very small pleats by gathering part of the fabric. It’s often accompanied by flowers or other embroidery details.

A part of smocking involves the fabric gathered into small pleats and stitched using long stitches on the back of the fabric and very small stitches in the front.

Image Source: Leafy Treetop

Smocking Technique and Fabric

You can use the smocking technique on just about any type of fabric. However, ones that have a smooth, even texture like plain cotton, satin, poplin, cotton blends, lightweight denim, are all great options for smocking. If you’re just starting out with smocking, it’s best to stick with something simple like cotton fabric until you get more comfortable.

As you would imagine, since you’re gathering the fabric, you’ll be using a little bit more fabric than a traditional sewing stitch and will require more fabric as your final piece to fit. The standard idea is taking twice the width of the final piece as the extra cloth, but it all depends on how tight your smocking stitches are.

You should also consider what happens when you wash or when your fabric shrinks. If you don’t take this into consideration, it can ruin all your hard work. Pre-washing your fabric may make it more difficult to do smocking, but is definitely worth it.

Once you have washed it, find the lengthwise grain of the fabric and gather the cloth according to that.

Thread

When it comes to smocking, you can use just regular embroidery machine thread for most smocking jobs. If you are smocking on cotton, it’s best to use a cotton thread and if you’re smocking on linen, use a linen thread.

With colors, we recommend just starting simple and don’t overdo it. With just a few colors, you can create a beautiful, cohesive looking design without getting too complicated.

Gathering the Fabric

There are a few different ways you can go about gathering the fabric for smocking.

1. Using your sewing machine

This is by far the easiest approach as all you need to do is baste the stitches to gather the fabric. However, although it’s the easiest method, it’s not the most accurate as the pleats don’t always turn out to be even.

1. Hand gathering

Can be a very accurate way to gather and ensure that the pleats are even, but can be very tiring when working on large projects.

1. Using a pleater

A pleater is the best approach as it’s specifically made for pleating. It’s just as easy as using a sewing machine but delivers more accuracy as hand gathering does.

1. Smocking Transfer

This is a paper that is covered with a lot of dots with even spacing between them. This paper is used to help you gather even pleats by transferring it to your fabric using heat.

You can find smocking transfer paper with dots a variety of different distances apart to allow you to get the pleat length you desire.

Sewing Additions

Elastic

Image Source: Pinterest

Sewing elastics is a common step in a lot of sewing patterns and usually online involves a hem and a straight stitch, both are easy to do on a sewing machine.

Before you add the elastic, you have to create a casing for the elastic to be placed. Similar to how you would hem, you should fold your fabric, but with the wrong sides in contact with each other. Fold the fabric about an inch or so and then fold it again by repeating the process. Then seam the folded part.

You should then sew a straight line, once that’s done, you can add your elastic.

You need to make sure your casing is large enough for the elastic to fit in before sewing. To do this, simply put your elastic on the fabric before sewing and pin the seam around the elastic. This way you know for sure that the elastic will fit through once the fabric is sewn.

You can also use a safety pin to pull the elastic through the casing. Insert a safety pin to the end of the elastic and pull it through by pushing on the safety pin. You should hold the other end of the elastic as you don’t want that to get pulled through the casing. Keep pulling through the end of the elastic until it’s out the other side of the casing.

Also, when sewing, it’s important that you only sew over the fabric and not the elastic.

Zippers

Zippers are another common addition to a sewing project and they’re not too difficult to add. With that being said, there are a few different steps that need to be followed to properly sew a zipper on which we’ve listed below for you.

Image Source: Thread Magazine

1. Choose the Right Zipper

 

There are so many different types of zippers out there. To make things easy on yourself, we typically stick with just simple, polyester zippers, unless we have specific project needs.

When shopping for zippers at your nearest craft store you will see there’s a variety of different zippers ranging from length, size, color, etc. The only criterion that’s really relevant when choosing a zipper is getting the correct length. Otherwise, everything else comes down to personal preference.

1. Adding Your Zipper

When you’re ready to sew on your zipper, you should start with it opened up. There are two different ways to go about adding your zipper, the centered application, or the lapped application.

We commonly use the centered application ourselves, which is exactly what we’ll go over below.

To get started, remove the pressure foot and replace it with the zipper foot. You should keep the zipper foot on the side of the pressure foot and not directly in the center of where the pressure foot was. Place the zipper on the same side that you have placed the zipper foot.

When you have everything aligned, you can start sewing the zipper on the fabric. First, baste shut the area where it will be sewn and the area the zipper will cover. The rest of the seam needs to be attached using a regular stitch. We recommend using a pin to mark where you want your zipper to be.

Sewing a wide seam of at least an inch is ideal for this.

Once you are done sewing, you can place the zipper perfectly in line with the seam and sew on one side of the zipper, moving on to the other side once you’ve completed it.

Once your zipper is properly sewn, you can turn the zipper over and using a seam ripper to get rid of the temporary basting.

Adding zippers properly may take you a couple of goes before you get it down correctly – and that’s okay! Sewing is all about practice and patience and this is especially true when it comes to adding zippers.

Buttonholes

Image Source: We All Sew

Whether you’re making clothing or not, a lot of projects actually require buttonholes which makes it an important sewing skill to know.

Luckily, sewing buttonholes aren’t that difficult and most sewing machines do the work for you.

These sets may be different depending on your sewing machine…

1. Locate the top line of options, which is basically just different buttonholes.
2. Find the sensor option if your machine has it.

This function basically sews the buttonhole for you, all on its own.

1. Place the button to be sewn into the back of your machine’s buttonhole foot. Pull the buttonhole foot back into the machine and lower the lever.
2. Switch the machine on and your buttonhole will be sewn right before your eyes!
3. If you don’t have the sensor option, use some chalk and mark where your button should go, pin your button-down and sew from there.
4. Once your buttonhole is done, you should put the buttonhole foot back in place and keep lowering it until it’s resting on your fabric.
5. Sew normally in the length that you want the buttonhole to be of.
6. Sew in reverse mode after you’ve sewn the length and you will be brought back to your original starting point.

You can make some additional adjustments like changing the width or creating tighter stitches during the sewing process.

Appliques

Once you learn how to sew buttonholes, sewing appliques are fairly easy. Both require the same stitch, a Satin stitch, or a very close zigzag stitch. That being said, many beginners can find appliques a little bit challenging so it’s important to be patient when working through it.

Image Source: Fabric

What is an Applique

Applique is when you put a piece of fabric on another, large piece of fabric and sew it together. The fabric is usually attached to the other fabric using the zigzag stitch.

How to Applique

To properly sew the fabric, you need to make sure you sew a very tight stitch and then place the fabric under the pressure foot where the edge of the fabric that is going to be sewn together is almost directly under the pressure foot.

Once the fabric is properly set up, you can begin sewing all the way through the edge of the fabric and that’s it!

Once you’ve practiced a few times, applique can be extremely easy. That being said, it’s important to note, if you’re using a piece of fabric on the thicker side, you will probably need something to guide you while you pull the fabric along.