A quick, quick, quick video from me showing how to stop bird nesting underneath when you start sewing.This happens especially with patterns like my betta fish and axolotl with top sewn detail. These little bird nests can be a pain to remove without needing to rip out the entire line of stitching and they can make a plush look bad.
This happens when the top thread gets pulled down underneath and tangles up with the start of your stitching. It happens especially to people who use an automatic cutter fr a few different reasons, but those reasons aren’t really important.
To counter it, use your finger to press down on the thread and keep it from getting sucked in. If your machine is determined, you can also use a scrap of cloth to anchor the thread. If you’re cutting giant bird nesting or bird nesting at other times, that’s another issue entirely. This is really only addressing this specific issue that some people run into.
That is so cool I didn’t know that!
I find if I leave my thread in the cutter after cutting this helps sometimes, but honestly this is a lifesaver for a lot of people!
Sleeves are one of the hardest elements of sewing –– most people struggle to insert them into garments, let alone draft/pattern them and I’ve yet to see any tutorial (on tumblr, at least) that really gets how to do it, either. This isn’t meant to scare you; it’s just meant to say that it’s pretty common to have fit issues with woven fabrics, and most people will deal with yeaaaars of mediocre sleeves until they get the hang of it. And sad news right out of the gate: without extensive, garment-changing alterations, you’re not going to fix these fit issues on existing garments. Odds are you need to add fabric in places, and that’s difficult to do around a shoulder without it looking like patchwork.
It sounds like both of you purchased your clothing and had no hand in its creation. Either you commissioned it from someone who has little understanding of tailoring sleeves, or you bought it wholesale or retail and it just doesn’t fit you, but either way, it sounds like a “you’re gonna have to live with it” or “you’re going to have to replace the garment” issue. 😦
But since I am a sewist, I’m gonna yap a bit about what causes these fit issues.
So, some general tips on sewing sleeves:
1. The top arc of a sleeve piece is called a sleeve cap. The sleeve cap determines almost everything; ease, the height, the width, the distribution from front to back, etc. A poorly drafted sleeve cap is very difficult to salvage.
2. What is ease? It’s extra space in the cap (usually an inch or so; less for a knit, around 1.5″ for a suit jacket) and the reason why many people think their sleeves “don’t fit” in the arm scythe. Ease is the biggest part of inserting a sleeve, but plenty of novice sewers encounter a sleeve that doesn’t fit into its arm scythe on a commercial pattern and they just sort of… cram in in. Or take the sleeve in, or cut it down. Sometimes they inset it into the arm scythe without sewing up the side seam first; fine in certain applications, but a fundamental negative change to construction for many garments (like most wovens). Poorly inserted sleeves change the fit of the shoulder astronomically; it can take decent sleeves and make them nightmares like your Tauriel one.
3. “How do I ease a sleeve, Jenn?” Easily. (Ha.) Run a loose gathering stitch line between notches over the sleeve cap. Some people run two lines, one on the stitch line and another in the seam allowance, but I usually just run one sightly off the stitch line. Use this to gently “gather” down the sleeve to fit the arm scythe; you should only be gathering the space between the front and back notches, and you should not have any visible puckers or pulls.
4. Neglecting notches can screw up a sleeve as well. You should have three, plus the seam; a front and back notch, a top notch and a seam. The top notch is NOT centered – it is balanced so that there is adequate space in front and back, with the back requiring more because there needs to be a broader range of motion in the back. (This is also why the backs of armholes are shaped differently than the fronts.)
5. When making alterations to a sleeve, start at the bottom. The underside (between the notches) is the easiest place to add space and take away without messing with the more complicated slope of the sleeve cap; this space should match 1:1. However, this is the place where you’ll end up with problems relating to lifting your arm UP! If you fit the bodice to your side, make sure you’re noting where the seam for the sleeve goes, NOT where the edge of your seam allowance is. It’s easy to look at your fitted bodice and think “yeah, that armhole is high enough” only to discover it’s too low/drags when you attach the sleeve, because if you sew with large seam allowances it can make your armhole look deceptively high.
You’ve probably seen them on commercial patterns, but you should be including them (and using them) on your home-made patterns, too. They’re usually stylized as triangles on the seam allowance of commercial patterns, but a notch on a professional home-made pattern is a “T” that always runs perpendicular to the edge, never diagonal.
A notch is a little mark in the fabric (either an outward cut or a tiny snip in the seam allowance) to indicate where pieces match up together. This will help you line up pieces when sewing.
Ideally, you should never have a seam longer than 12″ without a notch somewhere along the way to make sure you’re good and lined up. There’s nothing more annoying than pinning something and realizing you’ve got an extra inch on one side or the other; having notches means you can match up the notches first and work in the ease based on that.
An important place you’ll see notches? On sleeves, to help you line up back to back (two notches) and front to front (one notch), but also to make sure the ease ends up at the top of the sleeve rather than at the bottom.
Include notches in your pieces as you pattern pattern them, right from the beginning; it’ll make your sewing more accurate and precise at every stage after that.
“I was going to sew it all first. I was going to finish it and THEN iron it.” Nonsense. This is nonsense. I know it. You know it. This is not pressing your seams.
If your iron is not out while you’re sewing, you aren’t pressing your seams. And I, somewhere in the bitter colds of Canada, will know. I will feel a twinge at the back of my brain, an ersatz cosplay sense, and I will straighten up from where I am hunched over my work. I will whisper in a tone so cold it could freeze the earth: “I know who isn’t pressing their seams.”
I dunno about you guys, but I can be a downright coward when it comes to doing permanent things on costumes. Especially the ones I’m really emotionally invested in. My Zidane 2.0 vest has been sitting in-progress for WAY too long, and one of the main reasons for that is because the next step was putting 42 grommets into the leather harness. Grommets = holes, and holes = NO UNDOING. So I put it off, and put it off…
Finally, I found a way to help me work up the courage to push through this part. I picked up some round stickers (which are almost the exact same size as my grommets) and used them to help me accurately visualize how my grommets would look. With these, I was able to put on my vest and place them roughly where I thought they looked like they should be on me. After that, I took the vest off, and proceeded to make adjustments to get more exact measurements between holes and make sure everything was even. Lift the sticker, move it. Lift, move. No holes yet! I drew dots in the center of the stickers to use as a guide for measuring the spacing, and I even used the dots as my target for the hole punching part. Because why not?
Once I was satisfied with the adjustments, I put the vest back on and had another look in the mirror. Happy with that, I was able to move onto the *gasp* permanent hole punching with full confidence that I knew exactly how my grommets were going look. And whaddya know – they came out looking exactly as the stickers indicated!
“I was going to sew it all first. I was going to finish it and THEN iron it.” Nonsense. This is nonsense. I know it. You know it. This is not pressing your seams.
If your iron is not out while you’re sewing, you aren’t pressing your seams. And I, somewhere in the bitter colds of Canada, will know. I will feel a twinge at the back of my brain, an ersatz cosplay sense, and I will straighten up from where I am hunched over my work. I will whisper in a tone so cold it could freeze the earth: “I know who isn’t pressing their seams.”
you know why a lot of people’s early cosplays look kind of saggy or inexactly fitted or puckered along the seam lines
it’s because they didn’t press their damn seams while making the thing
pressing your seams allows you to get a clear idea of exactly what shape your garment is, rather than what shape you might expect or imagine or want it to be. pressing your seams allows you to construct the garment without nasty surprises. it’s the equivalent of blowing away all the eraser dandruff after you remove pencil sketchy lines so that you can see exactly where the lines are and what shape your drawing is before inking. it’s sanding before painting. it’s trying something on before buying it.
pressing your seams isn’t a pointless ceremonial step in sewing, it’s doing yourself a huge and necessary favor.
I’m too cheap (poor) to buy stitch counters for my projects, so I dug out some old safety pins and scrap yarn for make shift markers. If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s macgyvering bull shit solutions.
I see that you pulled out the d6 and paperclip for this one.
fully honest, i just use a long scrap of yarn and stick it between stitches. Depending on the length I weave it through (like just pull it up between the stitches as I go and not actually move the full piece) and I find that works perfectly well as a stitch marker, and you can just count the rows from where it starts or something
So I found this post on Pintrest 25 Sewing Hacks You Won’t Want to forget. Some are obvious (but I never do ayways because I suck) some are really cool, like the above pictured and this photo:
It’s a pretty cool article. If you are relatively new to sewing or are looking for some cool new solutions to problem like dull and lost needles.
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