- Don’t pull your fabric through your machine as this will cause a pulling and gathering of the finished seams.
- Polyester thread will stretch while being sewn and then relax back once the seam is finished which causes puckering and gathering in a seam.
- When sewing with polyester thread, wind it slowly when filling a bobbin. Winding polyester fast onto a bobbin stretches it and then when it’s sewn into a seam will relax and cause puckering and gathering.
- Directional Sewing and Cutting: (The following tip applies to both cutting fabric and sewing the garment.) If you are sewing on the bias (where the weave of the fabric is on an angle), sew with the grain, not against. In most cases this means sewing up from the hem so that you are not stretching the bias as you go. In the olden days (prior to the 1980’s) the patterns would have arrows at the shoulders, at the bottom of the pattern, etc, to remind you to sew with the grain and what the grain was, not against. It also was at the neckline to keep us from sewing AROUND the neck and stretching out one side as we went up the other.
- If you’re not going to finish a rounded cut edge immediately, stay stitch it to prevent it from stretching. This applies in particular to neckholes.
