Simple Gifts to Stitch 30 Elegant and Easy Projects

Things to Know Before You Sew Before you begin, read through the suggestions below to help make your sewing experience go smoothly. 1. Spend some time in fabric stores looking around and collecting swatches that strike you, even if you have no particular project in mind. Keep a box of fabric swatches for inspiration, and turn to it when you're planning a project. In a perfect world, all the swatches would be marked with the price, the width, and the store they came from. If that's asking too much, just storing them all in one place is a big step in the right direction. 2. Wash the fabric before you embark on your sewing project. Many fabrics are treated with a chemical "sizing" (a water-soluble finishing agent used in the manufacturing process) that you want to remove, and many fabrics shrink when washed. The fabric will just end up shrinking after you've spent all that time sewing it perfectly. Trim the raw edges with pinking shears before washing, to prevent the threads from becoming a tangled mess in the dryer. 3. Iron the fabric before cutting. This will help you to measure and cut with accuracy. Use a press cloth and adjust the iron temperature as needed. Fabrics like linen and cotton require steam or a misting of water with a spray bottle to remove the creases. 4. Use a press cloth when pressing with an iron. A small square of muslin or another lightweight cotton makes an ideal press cloth. It should be thin enough to allow the steam and heat to move through it to press your fabric, yet provide enough of a barrier to prevent the fabric from getting scorched or stained by a dirty iron. 5. Use a clean iron when pressing, even if you are using a press cloth. Irons pick up dirt and residue from fabrics, and you might occasionally melt something under your iron! Clean the iron with iron cleaner and a cloth, available at housewares stores. 6. Measure twice, cut once is a golden rule in carpentry as well as sewing. This rule cannot be emphasized enough. Once you measure and mark the fabric, do it again! It is also a good idea to keep a sewing notebook to jot down the measurements and cut-sizes of projects for future reference. You may want to make them again. 7. Use a rotary cutter instead of scissors. Now that I have discovered the rotary cutter, I almost never use scissors. A rotary cutter is used in conjunction with a cutting mat and a ruler, and will give you the straightest, most precise cuts. It is especially useful when cutting a fine, slippery fabric, and when you need to make long, straight cuts in fabric. 8. Use a clear quilter's (acrylic) ruler and a cutting mat in conjunction with a rotary cutter. It is ideal to have a few different ruler sizes, but 6d 24d (15 61cm) is a good basic size. Using a clear ruler allows you to line up the ruler marks with the lines on the cutting mat, making it very easy to measure and cut right angles. The clear ruler and cutting mat also lets you trim excess fabric on a seam allowance in seconds. Cutting mats come in a variety of sizes; a large one is ideal. A 36d 24d mat will measure a yard length and the diagonal lines enable you to cut fabric at a perfect 45-degree angle. 9. Always pin in the same direction, the one that allows you to pull the pins out from the fabric just before stitching over them. I can honestly say that I often stitch over the pins, but this is not recommended. You will hit a pin every once in a while, and when this happens, the needle may become bent (if it doesn't break entirely) and result in irregular stitches, so beware. As a rule, I always pin perpendicular to the stitch line, with the pins pointing in toward the center of the fabric. On occasion, it will make more sense to pin along the stitch line; in those cases it will be obvious. There are several types of straight pins out tWorrall, Jocelyn is the author of 'Simple Gifts to Stitch 30 Elegant and Easy Projects', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307347565 and ISBN 0307347567.