Embarking on your sewing journey is exciting, but it comes with its fair share of challenges. If you've encountered some hiccups along the way, don't worry – you're not alone. As a seasoned sewist with 15 years of experience, I've made my fair share of mistakes. Today, I'll guide you through the five most common pitfalls beginners face and how to overcome them, ensuring that your sewing projects turn out better with each project.
1. Fabric Choice
The foundation of any sewing project begins with the right fabric choice. Selecting the wrong fabric can derail your project before it even starts. Understanding fabric properties such as drape, weight, and texture is crucial. If you're unsure where to start, consider investing in a fabric swatch catalog to familiarize yourself with different fabrics and their characteristics.
Mistakes happen everywhere, especially when you're learning. If you make a mistake and move on from it, you learn from it.
2. Fabric Preparation
Skipping fabric preparation is a cardinal sin in sewing. Pre-washing your fabric is essential to prevent unexpected shrinkage or distortion after your garment is complete. Take the time to pre-wash and pre-shrink your fabric according to the care instructions to ensure the best results.
3. Ignoring Fit Issues
Achieving the perfect fit can be daunting, but overlooking fit issues can lead to disappointing results. Understanding ease and making simple length adjustments can make a world of difference. Take accurate body measurements, compare them to the pattern, and adjust as necessary to ensure a customized fit.
You don't have to dive right into a full bust adjustment, to a full seat adjustment, to biceps adjustments. If you focus on circumference and ease and also length and proportions, you're going to look great in most of your garments.
4. Reading Instructions
It's tempting to dive straight into sewing without thoroughly reading the pattern instructions. However, this oversight can lead to confusion and frustration later on. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the pattern instructions, techniques, and terminology before starting your project. Research any unfamiliar terms to avoid costly mistakes.
5. Testing and Preparation
Don't underestimate the importance of testing your sewing machine settings before diving into your project. Start by giving your machine a thorough reset, including changing the needle and adjusting thread tension. Practice stitching on scrap fabric to ensure that your machine is properly calibrated for the project ahead. Additionally, getting organized with your sewing project never hurts. Gather all supplies ahead of time, make a sewing schedule, and stay on track with a to-do list will ensure your sewing time is spent effeciently.
What I recommend before anybody starts a new project, is to give your machine a full reset. You want to unthread the whole thing, take out the bobbin, replace the needle, and make sure you have the right thread for your project.
Embarking on a sewing journey is a rewarding experience, but it requires patience, practice, and attention to detail. By avoiding these five common mistakes and implementing good sewing habits from the start, you'll set yourself up for success. Remember, mistakes are inevitable, but they're also valuable learning opportunities.
Ready to Take Your Sewing Skills to the Next Level? Enroll in my beginner sewing course, "Garment Sewing Basics," and gain access to expert guidance, video lessons, and a supportive instructor dedicated to helping you learn. Click here to learn more and start your sewing journey today!
Keep sewing, keep learning, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. Happy stitching!
Want to take a deeper dive into this topic, check out this video!
Video Transcription:
So, you started on your sewing journey and you've had some mixed results with your projects so far. I have definitely been there. If you don't know me, I'm Lindsey. I am the host of Inside the Hem, the channel that you are watching right now. I am a sewing teacher both in person and online, and I have been sewing for 15 years now. Um, so I've definitely been where you are. I've definitely made all of the main common mistakes that every beginner SE makes. So today I'm going to talk you through what the five big on are and also how you can overcome them so that your sewing projects turn out better and better each time with more and more practice. All right, so the very first thing we're going to talk about is fabric poor fabric Choice can start you off on the wrong track with your sewing project from the very beginning before you ever even sew a stitch. There is a lot to learn about Fabrics, both with you know drape but also weight and just kind of how you want to look and feel whenever you're wearing whatever it is that you're trying to make. I made so many great garments out of the wrong Fabric and therefore the projects were absolutely fails. So how do you learn about fabric when maybe you don't live near a garment fabric store, maybe you don't live near Joanne, maybe you don't live near a big city? Um, the best advice I have for anybody learning to sew is that you do have to have that connection between what the fabric looks and feels like and then what the name of that fabric is when you see on the suggested suggested Fabrics on a pattern. At first, they're like completely foreign words. Like, I think I know what cotton is, but if you're trying to make trousers, that's a different type of cotton than whenever you go to make like a lightweight summary dress. So the best way to do that, especially if you don't live near um, you know a big garment district is to get something called a Swatch catalog. They have a couple of these on the market right now. I'm going to have them both linked for you in the description box below, but what these things do is basically these fabric stores source these Fabrics, they put them in some kind of presentation, like a magazine type of thing, picture that and then with the fabric swatch, you get an actual sample of the fabric um, has like the weight, the content, you know, I uh, suggested projects you can make with it, so you can start to build kind of like your own Encyclopedia of fabrics. There's also a really great book that's on the market that, again, has fabric swatches in it. The only difference between the book and the swatch catalogues are the catalogues. You can purchase that fabric as you see it. The book is just examples of those types of fabric, whereas the catalogues are available for purchase right away. If you find a fabric that you love and it feels like what you think you want to make, um, then you can go ahead and purchase that fabric and they're usually very Affordable Fabrics as well. The second part of fabrics is prepping your fabric. You cannot skip the fabric preparation. If you're making a linen dress and you do not pre-wash your linen at least twice, you're going to have a dress that doesn't fit and it's not going to fit in like weird ways. It's not going to shrink equally all the way around. It's going to shrink more one way and a little bit less the other way. So you're left with this like really just odd fitting garment. Um, you have to have to pre-wash your fabrics. Now there are a lot of rules of thumb as to how to do this. I'm going to tell you how I do it. A bit of a rule breaker to some, but I wash the fabric how I intend to wash wash it after the garment is made. And for me, that includes washing it in cold water and tumble drying low. So everything that I make is treated pre-treated that way, except for the obvious things like leather and suede and um, silk and things like that, those obviously get handled much, much differently. But everything else rayon polyester cotton, linen, corduroy, all that stuff gets washed cold and tumble dry low. You have to do that before you sew or even cut your fabric um, to get out any pre-shrinkage and also some fabrics come with like a, I don't know, it's like a treatment on it to make it more stiff. It washes all of that away as well. Okay. Number two is just ignoring fit issues. And I get it. Learning to sew is already difficult enough. Paying attention to fit on top of that is just that's not what we want to be doing. We just want to get to making the garment. Get to the exciting Parts. I get that. But if your garment is complete and you go to put it on and it doesn't fit correctly, that can really be a really big Downer, especially when some fitting issues are very, very easy to address. Number one is the garments ease and that includes wearing ease, which is the ease that you have to have in a garment in order just to move around, like bend your shoulders, bend your elbow, all of that kind of stuff. And then design ease is like all the extra ease that makes a garment really flowy, for example, or makes an A-line skirt have that A-line wearing ease and uh, design ease together are what makes the garment ease. And it's a simple math equation. I have broken it all down in my fast fit worksheet where you can take the body measurement chart information, you take the finished garment um, information you compare the two, calculate the ease and then use your noggin, use your common sense to determine, Hey, this is supposed to be a fitted dress. I don't need 6 Ines of positive ease. I'm going to size down one and you can start to you know, think about your fitting that way. The other super simple way to overcome some really basic fit issues is with regards to length adjustments. This is something that even seasoned sewers forget. So if you are petite, you're going to have to adjust for height. You just absolutely are. If you know, Hey, I'm long-waisted, then you're going to have to adjust for the height of your torso and then also shorten the height of your Rise um, if you are are short-waisted um, you're going to have to shorten your bodices. You're going to have to bring that waist seam right up to where your natural waist is. It is not difficult to calculate these measurements um, and compare them on your pattern piece. It's one of the more simple things that you can possibly do. You're just measuring from the more common points on your body and comparing that to the pattern, slashing straight through the pattern and making it shorter or making it longer. Most patterns these days have instructions for how to do that on the pattern on the instructions. That's already included. I will leave a link to um, a seamwork article. I love the seamwork articles. I'll leave a link to their um, information about how to do this in the description below so that you can start doing that on your very next pattern. Those two things combined are really a great jumping off point when it comes to fit. You don't have to dive right into full bust adjustment to full seat adjustment to biceps adjustments. You don't have to jump into all of that, you know, intense fitting stuff. If you focus on circumference and ease and also length and proportions, you're going to look great in most of your garments. And after you start making a few different garments with those things in mind, then you can branch out into the more complicated fitting issues. Okay. So now that we have our fabric prepared and we have the right fabric, we also have any simple fit issues handled. Now we're going to start going through the actual pattern instructions. And this is another common mistake that beginner sewers make is they do not read through the instructions thoroughly before they start a project. I still do this to this day, even though a lot of the clothes patterns that I follow, I could probably do it without the instructions. I just like reading through to make sure in my head I can imagine okay, they want me to do this and they want me to do that. Yes. That makes sense. Wait a minute. How are we getting here when we haven't even done this other thing yet? I need to look into this step before I get started before I get confused. So you should be reading through the steps uh, on the pattern and or pre-act uh, pre-reading a blog tutorial re uh, reading through everything watching um, all the information that you can find about that pattern, whether it's from a pattern designer themselves or someone like me who does you know their own independent um, soals to help make sure okay, yes, I can absolutely take this on. All of these steps make sense to me. All of this terminology makes sense to me. And if it doesn't, but most of it does, then you can research those certain terms that don't make a ton of sense to you, learn about them, practice them and then tackle the garment. Because the mistake comes into play whenever you get started on this garment, you get to a point where you're confused and then you have paralysis, right? You're like, no, I'm confused. I don't get it. Or you do it and it's wrong and you can't figure out how did I make this mistake to begin with? You're frustrated. You put the project away and you're like, forget it. I can't sew close. We don't want that to happen. We want to set you up for success. So you have to do a little bit of research ahead of time just to make sure that when you finally get down to cut and sew everything, you're not making mistakes that are going to cause you to go into that paralysis or just kind of give up alt together. All right. We're on to number now we are at our sewing machines right. So we, we're ready to go. We're ready to sew. And a mistake that I see people make time time and time again in my one-on-one classes is that we are not testing anything on our sewing machines. We are just using the same needle, the same thread, whatever's in there. And we're just going for it. Um, there's many different reasons why that could be a problem. Um, but again, it kind of goes back to getting frustrated, not knowing what's wrong and then quitting. So what I recommend before any of anybody starts a new project is you kind of like give your machine a full reset. You want to unthread the whole thing, take out the Ballin, remove the needle probably most likely replace the needle, make sure you have the right thread for your project for most garments, by the way, it's uh, a polyester thread. I love the coats and Clark dual duty tons of colors, pretty inexpensive, but still durable and strong and holds up really well. Um, so you're going to do all of that before you turn your machine on. And then once you turn your machine on, you're again going to refer back to the instructions and you're going to see, okay, I have a straight stitch. I have a basting stitch. I have have a blind hem and I have a zigzag somewhere. Those four stitches you're going to want to practice on the fabric that you are going to be using. So you double up your fabric. If it has interfacing, put a little piece of interfacing in there and you're going to test out all of the stitches that you are going to come across while making your project. That is to make sure you can go ahead and get the settings situated. So for my straight stitch on this fabric, I'm going to use a 3.0 stitch length and it has a 5/8 in uh, seam allowance. So I'm going to have my needle all the way to the left and go ahead and jot that down. For my zigzag, I want my zigzag to look like this. So I'm going to set my length to this and my width to that, you know, you're going to write all of those things down so that whenever you get to the actual sewing, you're not having to spend any time thinking about what you want your stitches to look like. This also prevents you from having a stitch that doesn't look good in your garment and not knowing it. This is going to give you a great point of reference, make sure everything's balanced and everything's even before you ever even get started. This also applies if you have a serger, go ahead and get all your serger tensions set up squared away for the fabric that you're using for this project. It's one less thing to think about. And if you do come across a problem, the mistake isn't going to compound itself. Okay, finally, the fifth mistake, common mistake that I see beginner sewers making all the time. And that is not doing the finishing steps on your garment to ensure every single seam looks amazing. I'm talking about pressing every single seam. You sew a seam, you press it. You sew another seam, you press it. This genuinely makes such a big difference in the final look of your garment. And then skipping steps that don't seem important, but they actually are important. It's like building a house and just being like, you know, that Foundation, no one's ever going to see it, let's just not, let's just skip that part. Um, people do this a lot. Um, skipping things like stay stitching, a huge no, no. I get it. It's annoying. It's a step that nobody's ever going to see, but you have to stay stitch. It's going to preserve all of the curves of your garments during all the washing and wearing that you're going to be doing in the life of that garment. Um, never ever skip under stitching, right? Under stitching is so important and again contributes to the final look of your garment. Under stitching is one of my absolute favorite things. I do it in places where I'm not even told to do it just because I love it so much. So I know there is a ton of stuff to learn when it comes to sewing and mistakes are going to happen. Mistakes happen everywhere, especially when you're learning like that's the way that you're going to learn the best is if you make a mistake and then you move on from it, learn from it. Most likely you're not going to make that mistake again. But these five things, if you start implementing them into your sewing right now, the very beginning of your journey, making good habits of all five of these things, then as you go along and you're making new mistakes, you know that the foundation of your sewing is good and the mistakes that you're going to make are just you know, Growing Pains. So I hope this video helps all of you that are out there learning how to sew for the very, very first time, learning how to make garments for the first time. I have a lot of resources linked for you guys um, in the description box below, everything that I mentioned today is going to be there. Um, in addition, I do have an online EC course where I teach 11 basic sewing skills. So everything from darts to gathers to comples. So if the five things that we discussed today are just not enough for you and you need to learn more, more, more, more, more, I've got you covered. These 11 skills that you're going to learn from me are videoed. They are transcribed, um, they are yours forever so you can keep referring back to this for as long as you are sewing. You forget had to sew a dart along the way somewhere refer back to this video, even if it's 5 years from now. So I'll have that link in the description box below um, if you are interested in expanding your knowledge of garment sewing even further. But that is going to do it for me today. You can tell I have one very Rous little pup here. I think she wants to eat or something. So let me go handle that. But you guys keep sewing, keep learning. If you have any questions, leave them in the in the comment section below. Other than that, it's going to do it for me today you guys. I'll see you all very soon. Okay. Okay, bye.
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