how to gather fabric with a serger

Darlings! I haven't had a moment to breathe sew much for myself since I last updated, but I figured I could at least share some lil' techniques I've been learning "on the job." In my freelance work, I often sew multiples of the same thing, so I use those opportunities to try out different ways of executing the same step to see which method is fastest or looks the best. 

Gathering fabric is one of those [obnoxious] tasks that can be done a few different ways, such as pulling on two parallel lines of basting stitches, zig-zagging over a strand of dental floss or string, or using a gathering or ruffle foot on your machine. Those all work fine... when they work. I actually haaaaate gathering fabric because those methods very easily go wrong and can be time-consuming, especially when your threads snap and you have to start all over again. And what if you need really dense gathers, or your fabric is a bit thick? A gathering foot won't do you much good there.

Well, I was recently commissioned to make 10 gathered party skirts for a local startup clothing line, so I had to figure out a way to get fast and consistent results with sewing gathers. OR ELSE. The fabrics I'm working with for these skirts are cotton sateen and silk taffeta, and they have a skirt-to-waistband gather ratio of 2.75-to-1, so they're pretty frickin' poofy and need a lot of gusto to gather. I think 3-to-1 is the determined max limit on gathered skirt poof before it becomes, like, physically impossible to sew and maybe socially unacceptable to wear.

I knew in the back of my mind that sergers could gather fabric, but I had never tried it. So when I did try it, I couldn't believe how much easier and faster it seemed. All you have to do is adjust some settings on your serger and get gathering. Now, of course this method can go wrong, too, as nothing in sewing is fool-proof, right? This technique actually works in an opposite manner as the basting method because you gather the fabric as you serge and then loosen the gathers to fit. This is unlike the basting method, in which you typically tighten the gathers to fit. This means you should test out your gathers on scrap fabric first to make sure it gathers tightly enough on your serger. If the gathers are too loose after serging, it will be difficult to tighten them up.

The first step is to set up your serger for four-thread overlock. The tightest gathers will occur if there are two needles engaged instead of one. Once you have threaded your serger properly, tighten the tension of the two needles (not the loopers), which are typically the two leftmost dials. For this particular project, I needed to gather the fabric very tightly, so I increased the needle tension as high as it would go, which on my Brother 1034D serger is at a "9" tension. After some trials, I found I achieved best results if my left needle is at "9" and the right needle is more like a "7" tension. Your machine may react differently. I left the loopers at default tension, which for my machine is a "4":

Next, tighten the differential feed if you are able to. The serger has two sets of feed dogs, one in front of the other, and the differential feed controls the ratio at which these feed dogs move the fabric under the presser foot. A higher differential feed -- in this case, a "2" -- will move the first set of feed dogs twice as fast as the second set, which gathers up the fabric. Conversely, a lower differential will move the first set of feed dogs more slowly, which stretches out the fabric. Here I've set it to the highest ratio possible:

Now, all you have to do is serge along the edge of the fabric and the machine will do the gathering work for you. 

Here is a video I took of the gathering at work. This is high production value, folks. Oh you're welcome!

Keep in mind that the serger will gather along the edge, so you may need the adjust your seam allowance first or serge so the blade cuts off part of the seam allowance if it is 1/2" or larger. Make sure the left needle of your serged seam does not extend past your desired seam allowance because the threads will then be exposed on your garment and they're hard to pick out neatly. It may help to match your serger thread color to your garment, but I did not do that here (the skirt is lined and I did not want to spend money on four fuschia cones for one project!).

If you are attaching the gathers to a flat piece of fabric, it helps to have marked the gathered fabric and the flat fabric into fourths so it's easier to match up the points and distribute the gathers evenly. Below, I have matched the quarter marks and then I gently loosened and distributed the gathers so they match the length of the flat fabric. If you yank on the serging too hard to loosen it, the threads may snap, so be currful. Lots of pins help secure the gathers.

When you sew the gathers to the flat fabric on your sewing machine, it helps to have the gathered side facing up so you can make sure the gathers aren't folding over or jutting out from the seam allowance. Be sure your needle sews right below the serged seam.

Donezo.

It's worth mentioning that you can do something similar with a regular sewing machine by upping the tension, but the serger helps create tighter, more even gathers because it is set up to sew two parallel lines of stitching with two needles and you can adjust the differential feed as well. I also like that it finishes the edge as you gather so there's less annoying fray to deal with when you're attaching it to the flat fabric. And because it's so fast, if your gathers somehow fall out or get too loose, you can just zip over one section again with the serger. Much less stress than having to rebaste two full lines.

How do you prefer to gather fabric?

archer shirt variation: v-neck placket

Wutsup Internet pals. After my last post, I received some requests for a demonstration on how I modified the plackets of the Grainline Archer shirt to a V-neck. And I oblige! I like this look because the shirt lays flat against your chest while still framing your neck and face in that nice button-up shirt kinda way. It's slightly more feminine, too, so there's that.

This doesn't involve anything too difficult, despite the long post that follows here. The modification involves three steps: 1) modify the shape of your shirt pattern piece, 2) draft separate plackets to match, and 3) shorten your collar stand. I'll also show you how to actually sew on the new plackets. You can, of course, do all this with any button-up shirt pattern, but I'm showing it on the Archer because it seems likely that more of you guys already have this pattern (or are thinking about getting it) than some rando Butterick pattern or something, right? We're all indie fangirls and we know it.

So if you want to get this look, follow along!

PLACKET DRAFTING INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Assemble the front pattern piece of the Archer shirt. If you need to print a new one for this modification, you only need to print pages 2-4, 8-10, and 14-16 from the PDF. Cut or trace your size.

2. Cut along the vertical line that says "Trim Along Dotted Line for Right Front." The original Archer pattern has you fold under and stitch the placket on the wearer's left side, and attach a separate placket piece for the right side. On this modification, both sides will have two separate plackets so throw away that chunk and pretend it never existed.

3. Cut off the desired amount to create your V-shape in the front. Make sure it doesn't cut way below your bust apex (unless u naughty), but remember that there will be added plackets that will provide more coverage. For reference, I made a point 1" inward at the neck and another point 7-1/2" down, and connected those points with a straight line which I then cut off. Feel free to make the neckline more or less open, higher or lower.

Because I was making a sleeveless version, I went ahead and modified the shoulder and armhole, too. As Jen writes in her sleeveless Archer mod post, you don't want a sleeveless shirt that hangs off your shoulders, so shorten that shoulder seam and blend to nothing at the original underarm. I shortened my shoulder seam by 1-1/2". You'll need to similarly alter your yoke and back pieces, too.

4. Before drafting the plackets, go ahead and draw the seam line on the front edge of the shirt pattern piece. The seam allowance on Grainline patterns is 1/2". This steps just helps with the drafting process for accurate measuring of the new plackets.

5. To draft the plackets, place a sheet of tracing paper over the top of your pattern piece (I use Swedish Tracing Paper). Weigh it down then trace that seam line you just drew. Now draw a parallel line 3/4" to the left of that seam line. 3/4" is the final desired placket width I chose, so if you want a wider or narrower placket, adjust as you please. Connect the top of the two lines by tracing the curved outline of the shirt neckline. Connect the bottoms with a straight perpendicular line that matches the hem of your shirt piece.

So, the blue outline on the tracing paper is now the placket piece without seam allowances on the sides:

6. Add seam allowances to the sides of the placket only, since SAs are already included in the top and hem (traced from the original pattern). My SAs are in green in the photo. Stick with 1/2" if you're using the Archer so it remains consistent with the rest of the shirt construction. When drawing your SAs at the top of the placket, the top bit should continue to follow the curve of the shirt neckline. It will look crazy pointy, but that is all trimmed down later after you sew it on. Cut out your new final pattern piece.

COLLAR STAND MODIFICATION INSTRUCTIONS:

While you have all your pattern pieces and fabric out, let's do this mod now before sewing anything. Remember that you removed fabric from the front of your shirt pieces, which makes the garment neckline shorter around. If you're adding a collar, collar stand, or both, you will need to adjust the pattern piece(s) accordingly. I decided I wanted a "mandarin collar," or just a collar stand with no collar piece, so I'm only showing that modification here. The same theory applies if you're adjusting a collar, too: remove length at the center so the shape and pitch of the ends remain unaltered.

First, calculate how much of the neckline you removed from the shirt on each side. Instead of measuring all the pattern pieces and adding stuff together, just think about the original pattern pieces versus your new ones and do some subtraction. On the original Archer, there is the full neckline plus a 1" placket. For my version, I removed 1 inch from that neckline, then added plackets that are only 3/4". So my shirt neckline now has 1-1/4" less on EACH SIDE, or 2-1/2" less total. I hope that makes sense. I tried to create some diagrams but it just made it seem more confusing.

The Archer collar stand is cut on the fold, so changes made to this pattern piece reflect only one side, though the changes will be doubled once the fabric is cut. Since I removed 1-1/4" from each side of the shirt neckline, I similarly removed 1-1/4" from each half of the collar stand at the center back. I marked a line at 1-1/4" and cut there. This is your new "Cut on Fold" line when you cut your fabric.

PLACKET CONSTRUCTION INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Cut FOUR placket pieces from your fabric. Two of them will be your outer plackets and the remaining two will be the placket facings. Cut two interfacing pieces as well. 

2. Fuse the interfacing to two placket pieces.

3. Right sides together, pin and sew the the facings to their placket counterparts. You will be sewing the outer edge, or the outer curve of the plackets. Trim this seam allowance.

Open the pieces and press the seam to the placket facing (uninterfaced side). Understitch this seam in place.

4. Fold together and press, wrong sides together. The understitching will help the placket facing stay put in the back. Double check the width of your plackets now and trim the raw edges to make everything even if you need to. 

5. You'll now be attaching the plackets as one piece to the front shirt edges. That means you'll sew both layers of the placket and placket facing to the shirt, and the seam will be visible on the inside. I decided not to do a "clean finish" (where the placket facing edge is folded over and stitched to cover the separately-sewn placket seam) in the interest of time and in the interest of me not being interested in a clean finish. Do whatchu do.

Pin the right side of the placket side to the shirt edge. The pointy seam allowance at the top of the placket sticks out awkwardly as it's supposed to, but remember it will be trimmed and pressed back in place later. 

Stitch these seams at 1/2" then trim and finish this seam by serging or zig zagging. Press the seam away from the placket. Topstitch down if ya want.

Your plackets are done! I know you can hardly see them in this fabric, but check out how the neckline now looks when the plackets are overlapped. It will open up more once you put it on a 3D body.

Continue constructing the shirt per the pattern instructions, using your modified collar stand. Some other things to note:

• If you need help sewing on the collar/stand, I have a tutorial on that here. 
• If you made your shirt sleeveless and need help finishing those edges, the Colette blog has a nice post on finishing armholes with bias binding, which is how I sewed mine here (except, duh, I sewed mine in the flat, not the round).
• The buttonhole/button situation will be a little different than your standard Archer (there's fewer of them, yay!), but just make sure you place a button at the fullest point of your bust to avoid placket gaping/bra peekaboo.

Any questions? Holler!

narrow hem: three ways

I sew a lot of narrow hems these days, and I've tried so many different methods to make them. The majority of tutorials for narrow or rolled hems (that I've seen) include a ton of measuring, trimming, or exhaustive pressing. Boo, ain't got time for that. What if you could make the narrowest of hems doing a minimal amount of all that stuff, and without a rolled hem foot? Yea, I said it.

A narrow hem has a finished depth of 1/8" to 1/4". The tiniest versions, baby hems (1/8"), are typically used to keep lightweight garments flowy without weighing down the edges, and to keep the hem of sheer fabrics as inconspicuous as possible. Due to the nature of their narrowness and the nature of the fabrics you will likely be sewing them on, these hems can be tricky to fold and sew evenly if you're doing a standard hem technique of measure-fold-press-measure-fold-press-sew. So here are some alternatives.

METHOD ONE: WITH A SERGER

For a 1/4" hem, my favorite method uses a serger for the first step. You can definitely do a similar method with a regular sewing machine, but I prefer the serger because it makes folding the hem easier; the width and sturdiness of the serged stitches help keep the fold perfectly even. You can also adjust the differential feed in case you want to tighten up the edge of your fabric ever so slightly to help with easing in a curved hem.

1. Set your stitch width so the left needle hits 1/4" away from the raw edges, or just within 1/4". Thread color doesn't necessarily matter as long as your fabric's not too sheer. Serge along the raw edge of the right side of your garment without cutting anything off. IF you're using a regular sewing machine, sew a line of stitches 1/4" from the raw edge, or just within 1/4" if possible.

2. Start folding the serged stitches toward the wrong side of the garment the same width as the stitches. Or if you didn't serge the edge, fold the edge under so your first sewn line of stitches juuuust rolls to the wrong side. The width of the stitches does all the measuring for you here. I only do a quick finger press to get the fold going, then immediately start sewing from the wrong side of the garment, using my hands to keep folding the edge before it reaches the presser foot.

Sew right along the folded edge, about 1/16" inward. This secures the first fold and makes a guide for stitching on the next fold:

My thread is darker blue so you can see it. Again, this is the wrong side of the garment now:

3. Fold the edge under once more, the same depth as the first fold. Working from the wrong side of the garment, sew along the line of stitching you created in the last step, folding the hem over as you go. This secures the hem perfectly by catching the top edge in your stitching:

You will have a single line of stitching on the right side, and a doubled line of stitching on the wrong side:

A classy hem, without any tedious pressing OR measuring.

METHOD TWO: WITH BAN-ROL

This little trick needs to be wider known. If you dig on the Internet you can find it in other tutorials, but I thought I'd go ahead and share it here to help spread the word. For an even tinier hem (~1/8"), I like to use the aid of Ban-Rol, also sometimes referred to as Ban Roll. wtf is that? It's a very sturdy starched interfacing used by tailors for stiffening waistbands in pant and skirts. It comes in various widths on continuous yardage. It's loosely woven, despite being stiff, so you can peel away the threads to create a "comb" that helps easily turn your fabric for hemming but will be pulled out after stitching.

The great thing about this method is that the Ban-Rol is reusable so you can make one small investment to have a lifetime of beautiful tiny hems. You can find it in 50-yard packs on Amazon and Wawak, but there's no way you would ever need that much. They sell it by the single yard online at the Sewing Place, Crafter's Vision, Londa's Creative Threads, and B. Black and Sons (edit: and Kenton Trimmings Online, for those in the UK). I'd recommend getting a few yards so you can create different "combs" for different hem widths, or just in case you ever have to hem a maxi-length circle skirt or something cray.

1. Snip into one bound edge in order to get the first vertical thread free. From there, you can start pulling out the threads with your fingers. Keep pulling the single thread until you have a length that matches or slightly exceeds the circumference of your hem:

Keep going until you create a "comb" that is the width of the hem you would like to have. So, this would work for super teeny hems and heftier hems:

2. Now align the edge of the comb with the RIGHT SIDE of the raw edge of your garment to be hemmed. If your fabric frays madly, move the ban-rol inward slightly to stay clear of the fray. Pin if you want, but I've found that the ban-rol doesn't really shift as long as you align it correctly as you sew.

3. Take it to the sewing machine, where you will stitch JUST INSIDE the inner edge of the comb part. You don't want your stitches to catch the still-woven part of the ban-rol. Remember the comb is pulled out of your stitches later, so you should only sew over the horizontal threads:

4. For fraying fabrics, trim the stray threads off now so they don't poke out of your hem later. Now gently flip the ban-rol all the way over to the wrong side of the fabric. This rolls the tiny hem for you without you having to measure all the way around or burn your fingers with the iron. For complete accuracy, you may want to press this part down so the hem is flattened first.

5. Stitch along the edge next to the ban-rol to secure the hem.

6. Now gently pull the ban-rol comb out of the stitches.

~OmG~ what a stable, perfectly minuscule hem you just made. And there's no double stitching to be seen:

Note that you can use ban-rol when hemming in the round. Just overlap it where the circular hem meets. The comb will pull out as usual.

METHOD THREE: WITH WASH-AWAY STABILIZER

I do love the ban-rol method because it creates a very clean and light hem, versus the serged method which may add thread bulk or opacity to your hem. However, ban-rol is not flexible enough to be sewn around tight curves. I have used it on fuller A-line dress hems so it can follow gentle curves, but what if you're trying to hem a rounded placemat or the curved sides of a man's dress shirt? Or something else weird-shaped in a bee print?:

I agree; those bees are CUTE AS HELL.

This method is similar in theory to the ban-rol method, in that you're sewing something to the right side of the garment and then flipping it over to help turn the hem. EXCEPT you're using something that is wide enough so you can trim it to match the curves exactly. And you can't make a comb out of it to remove later. It's essentially like sewing a facing on a garment edge, but you want the seam to roll farther back toward the wrong side of the garment, and you want the facing to disappear somehow.

So, you have some options: you can use tracing paper, which you can then tear off the hem, but you'll leave paper in your hem. You can use tear-away stabilizer, which also leaves stabilizer in your hem. Or you can use wash-away stabilizer, which will disappear after the garment's first washing. None of these are ideal, so it just depends on what type of fabric you're working with and what you have on hand.

I decided to try this sew-and-turn method with Fabri-Solvy, which is a fabric-like wash-away stabilizer normally used for appliqués and such. It comes in a range of widths and lengths, so I thought that getting a sheet that's 20-inches wide and 1-yard long would enable me to customize my own strips to match the curves of a small hem.

1. Pin the stabilizer on top of the right side of your hem. Trim it to match the raw edge perfectly:

2. You can now trim down the rest of the stabilizer to make it easier to handle if desired. Accuracy isn't important here:

3. Sew the stabilizer to the fabric at your desired hem width:

4. Now flip the stabilizer to the wrong side of the garment. This gets a little fiddly because the stabilizer is soft, but you want to make sure the raw edge of your fabric and the stabilizer are butted up against the fold of your hem so it's an even width around. Use your fingers to maneuver the curves into place. You can use the very tip of your iron to help crease the hem, but try not to let the iron touch the exposed stabilizer because it may shrivel and/or start to melt.

5. Sew the hem in place.

6. Trim away the excess stabilizer. You can leave it as is until its first full washing, or you can saturate the hem in water for a few minutes to dissolve the stabilizer still inside the hem, then let dry.

This method is pretty effective, but it can't really be used on fabrics that shouldn't be washed. I also felt like I was using my scissors a lot, which would be annoying on a longer hem. It uses more resources in general since the stabilizer is not reusable,and I would have to buy longer sheets for bigger garments. Still a good trick to know, yes?

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I hope this post introduced you to some new ways to achieve a nice narrow hem. Do you have any other tricks or tips to add? Are there other kinds of materials that could be used instead of ban-rol or stabilizer to help roll hems? Let me know your favorite methods!