Sewing Tips

Why I’m Obsessed with Thread Snips (And You Should Be Too!)

If you’ve ever taken one of Danielle’s sewing basics week 1 workshops, you’ll already know that she can’t stop talking about thread snips! It’s one of those tools she mention every single time, because honestly, you’ll use them constantly.

[Read more…] about The best little tool – Thread Snips!

One common question from our students is: “How do I get better at sewing straight?” It sounds simple, but it’s one of those foundation skills that makes a huge difference to the finish of your garment seams and hems.

Sewing straight isn’t about perfection, it’s about a few key habits and techniques that make everything feel more controlled and consistent. In this post we go through our tips to help you stay straight on your seam allowance.

[Read more…] about Simple steps to sewing straight

The edges of woven fabrics will fray unless they are finished or covered by a lining. Fraying is the ravelling of fabric edges that occurs. Some fabrics will fray more than others.

Some of the most common methods you can use to finish the edge of your fabrics to prevent this fraying include: trimming with pinking shears, overlocking, binding, constructing French seams and overcasting.

[Read more…] about Prevent your fabric from fraying

Have you seen the note on the fabric requirements: *with nap or *without nap? 

“Nap” means that the tiny fibres lie in one direction on the surface of a fabric.

[Read more…] about With or without nap?

When you are following sewing patterns, you may come across the instruction to stay-stitch an edge (often a curved neckline is stay-stitched), but what on earth does that mean? We are here to help!

[Read more…] about What is stay-stitching?

Thread Den suggests a fat quarter as the fabric requirement for the week 1 workshop in our Sewing Basics for Beginners Course. So, what is that and what does that mean?

A fat quarter is a pre-cut piece of fabric especially popular with quilters. It is an economical way to purchase small fabric requirements that have become standardised. Most fabric stores that cater to quilters will have a wide range of fat quarters available either in bundles of complementary colours and designs or sold individually.

A fat quarter is usually:

• 50cm x 50cm square (approximately)
• 100% cotton plain weave fabric
• Cut on the straight grain and including the selvedge on one side of the square

A fat quarter is cut by; first cutting half a metre of quilting fabric off the bolt (producing a rectangle), then cutting that directly in half (achieving a square).

The size of the square produced is not exact because:

• In the USA the first cut is half a yard (45cm) not half a metre (50cm)
• The width of a bolt of fabric varies

Image from The Fabric Fox UK.

For best results, wash and press your fabric before class. You should launder your fabric exactly how you plan to wash and care for your finished garment.

Fabric should be pre-washed to pre-shrink, to remove the chemicals from the manufacturing process and wash out any dirt. Have you noticed how much softer your fabrics can feel after washing? That is due to sizing. Applying a sizing agent (a bit like starch) improves the strength and helps the fabric resist the mechanical stress applied through the manufacturing process.

Most fabrics from natural fibres shrink when you wash them. Cotton fabrics often shrink around 5%, however, shrinkage up to 10% is not uncommon.

Super quick and in some pics, here are our top bobbin threading tips:

Avoid layering up threads on your bobbins. When you get to the end of the outer thread (white in our picture), a knot can easily be created as the needle thread tries to pick up the end of the white thread and the beginning of the yellow thread all at once.

Don’t leave a long thread tail after loading up your bobbin. Each time the machine rotates the needle thread around the bobbin, it will try to pick up both the working end and the tail end of the thread. Instead, snip off the tail thread close to the bobbin.

The thread in our picture isn’t neat, the threads crisis cross each other which will encourage skipped stitches. Double-check your manual to ensure you are threading up correctly to perfectly fill a bobbin with thread.

If your thread feels squishy on the bobbin or you can easily separate threads like in our picture, you will likely be missing a tension guide when threading your bobbin.

If you are following all the guides on your machine and pulling the thread into the bobbin thread tension guide you should have a good-looking bobbin, ready for a great session of sewing!