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Double Needle Mock Cover Stitch for Knits
National Sewing Circle EditorsDescription
T-shirts, sportswear and other commercial garments made from knit fabrics are generally finished using a cover stitch machine. While you can purchase a cover stitch machine for home use, Holly Willis shows you how to achieve the same finished look using a standard sewing machine.
Cover stitch
A cover stitch is a double line of stitching on the right side and on the wrong side it looks like several zig-zags. This stitch stretches slightly, making it the ideal finish for knit fabrics. A cover stitch, rather than a straight stitch, is used on any area of a garment that will be stretched or stressed, as a straight stitch will most likely break. It is good to have knowledge of knit vs woven fabric in order to know what kind of seam finishes are best to use.
Twin Needle
Having proper sewing needle knowledge and knowing about the different types of sewing needles available can help make sewing projects easier. Holly demonstrates how to achieve the look of a cover stitch using a twin needle on a conventional machine. A twin needle, sometimes referred to as a double needle, is two needles attached on one shank. Twin needles come in various sizes, much like single needles, and are labeled on the needle package. There will be several sizes indicated, one is the needle size and one is the distance between the two needles. Twin needles can be spaced anywhere from 2 to 6 mm apart. When using a twin needle, ensure both the presser foot and throat plate of the machine have a large enough opening for the twin needle.
Threading
When using a twin needle to create a mock cover stitch, two spools of thread will be needed. Holly shows you how to thread your machine for using a twin needle and gives you tips on how to ensure the thread does not become tangled or twisted.
Stitching
Once the machine has been set up and threaded, Holly shows how easy it is to create the look of a cover stitch. She shows how to measure and fold under the edge to be stitched and how to line the raw edge up along the center of the twin needle. She then demonstrates how to ensure your fabric stays lined up while stitching.
If you've been working with knits at all and you're wondering how to finish an edge, you may have looked at some of your t-shirts as a reference, and they've got a double needling effect on the bottom. But if you flip them over, you notice that they got a whole lot of action going on on the back. How do you do that? It's not two straight stitches, because if you were to do two straight stitches, when you pull, they will pop. So, what I'm gonna teach you today is how to do this stitch, which is called a cover stitch, on a machine that is not a cover stitch machine.
On your regular machine with a double needle. So, it's called a double needle or a mock cover stitch. These are really easy to find. You can go to your local craft store. They come, I've got a couple here.
The weight of the needle is on the right hand side, that's 75 or 90, like I have here. And the distance between the needles is in millimeters. So, this one is four millimeters, and this one is three millimeters. You can get them up to six, eight. Be careful with what will work with your machine.
But a four is a pretty standard cover stitch size. So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you how to put these together and how to thread your machine. It is very easy. It's actually the same exact way that you thread normally. You're gonna put your threads on your thread pins, and you should have two thread pins.
Sometimes you have to hunt around a little bit for your extra thread pin, because you have a hole in the top of your machine where that goes. You may have wondered what that was. That is for your double needling. So then you're gonna take both threads just like this and put a finger between the two of them so that they do not tangle. And you're gonna thread your machine as you would normally.
Now, if your machine, right here where your tension plates are, sometimes your attention plates are on the front. If you have a fin there, you're gonna make sure to put your thread on either side of that fin, but then continue to thread just as you would for a single needle. The only difference is you're gonna use the double needle. So again, as you would normally, flat side toward the back. Just tighten that thumb screw.
You'll have to thread manually. All right, once you have it threaded, gonna make sure to pull your tails towards the back just like you normally would. And then we'll go over and get our fabric. I've ironed this under using my seam gauge with a three quarter inch turn. And from here, you're just gonna basically do a straight stitch.
The only thing that's at all tricky about this is that you're gonna feel with your fingers underneath where the edge is, and you're gonna line that up with the center of your foot. So then you're going to just gonna go ahead and sew forward. Again, same as a regular straight stitch, but this time you are actually binding the back, the raw edge of the hem. You may wanna set your stitch length a little bit longer. Three and a half is what I have mine set at right now.
You can do a quick little backstitch when you're done to kind of lock that in. And then, when you're finished, you have this lovely straight stitch, and the back is a zigzag binding that edge. So you have just achieved what a $1,600 industrial cover stitch would do for about $5 or the cost of the needle.
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