Tricky Fabric Stitching Techniques

Specialty fabrics can be tricky to stitch, but all you need to know are a couple of tips, and it opens up a ton of new possibilities. Knit fabric isn't technically what you would call a specialty fabric, but there are some tips to working with it that'll make things a lot easier. And knit fabric is so great for stitching garments, you definitely don't wanna miss out. So the first tip for working with knit fabric is to use a ballpoint needle which comes in different sizes, and the point on the needle is just a little bit rounded so that instead of piercing the fibers, it just sort of nestles between them which helps these seams keep their integrity in the long run. And when you're cutting out your knit fabric pieces, you definitely want to make sure, if you're stitching a garment, that the stretch goes around your body.

And when you're stitching the seams that go around your body, you wanna use a zigzag stitch instead of a straight stitch, because the zigzag stitch has a little bit of stretch to it and it'll move with the stretch of the fabric. So you can see how that has a little bit of give, and will stretch along with the fabric. So everything else with working with knit fabric is super easy. The edges don't ravel so you don't really even have to hem them, which is great for quick and easy garments. Next is sequined fabric which is very scary to work with, but it doesn't have to be.

There are two main types of sequined fabric, the type that has the sequins all stitched on one by one, and the type that has these sequin-type dots glued onto the fabric. And this type is a little easier to work with. You just might want to use a titanium needle which will keep the glue from the dots from sticking to the needle. And everything else is really easy. You can stitch through these sequins, they're very soft.

So you can stitch through those. But this type with the sequins stitched on is a little bit trickier. Before you sew any seams, well, before you cut out the fabric first of all, you definitely don't want to cut through these sequins with your good fabric scissors because it'll dull your blades or nick them. So either use craft scissors, or just try and be careful and sort of cut around the sequins. And once you've got your pieces cut out, you wanna remove the sequins from your seam allowance.

So I just removed the sequins from this edge here. You don't wanna stitch through sequins because your needle might break or bend or dull, definitely. Or you might break the sequins which you don't wanna do either. So remove the sequins from the seam allowance, and then once you've got that stitched on, if you find that you removed maybe too many sequins you can go back and hand stitch them back on next to the seam allowance, right there. And that will make stitching sequined fabric a lot easier for you.

Next, I wanna talk about leather, which comes in a variety of different weights and colors, real leather, full leather, pleather, vinyl, oil cloth. A lot of the tips for leather go for oil cloth as well, or laminated cotton. Anything that has that sort of sticky, shiny surface. So when you're stitching leather a leather needle will come in very handy. It's made specifically for leather and it'll just make your life easier.

And leather doesn't have a grain line so you can cut it any direction you want. And when you are preparing your leather to stitch, pins and needles will make permanent holes in the leather. So you want to pin in the seam allowance or you can hold your layers together with binder clips, or paperclips, anything like that, that doesn't pierce the fabric. And when you're stitching with some types of these fabrics, you might find that this shiny sticky surface sticks to the underside of the foot and doesn't wanna feed through very well. So you can purchase a PTFE foot or a Teflon foot, they're the same foot that goes by a couple of different names, which just has a nonstick surface on the foot underside which helps feed these sticky fabrics through.

Or you can put a piece of matt scotch tape on the underside of the foot which will also help those fabrics slide through easier. And if you find that the fabric is getting stuck on the bed of the machine, you can put another piece of fabric over it, or put some baby powder on the bed on the machine to help glide those through. So, like I said, the same sort of tips go for leather, oil, cloth, vinyl, and fabrics like that. Next up we have open weave fabrics, which is fabrics like lace, netting, tool, even some open weave knits, crocheted fabric, things that have wide gaps between the fibers in the weave. So when stitching these fabrics you might also want to use a zigzag stitch for these, which just helps catch all of those open areas.

Instead of just a regular straight stick. And you use a narrow zigzag stitch for your seams so that they'll still be able to be pressed open. And when stitching open weave fabrics, using French seams can be very helpful. French seams are a great way to conceal raw edges without having them be seen through this sheer fabric. So to stitch French seams we wanna stitch, if you're using a half inch seam allowance.

I'm going to change back to a straight stitch. You want to put your fabric with wrong sides together first, which can be a little confusing, and especially with these netting and lace, the right and wrong sides might not look too much different. So you want to make a note to yourself which is the right and the wrong side, and put wrong sides together first when stitching French seams. And stitch at a scant quarter inch. I'll just go halfway down to show.

And then, turn the fabric. Now we've got right sides together. So if this is the wrong side of the fabric we're going to stitch the seam again, using a quarter inch. So you wanna stitch the first seam at a scant quarter so that when you turn it and stitch out a quarter again, you make sure to encase all of those raw edges. And there's our seam.

So our raw edges are encased. And if you see the seam through the right side of the fabric, it looks nice and pretty and enclosed. And the same thing goes for sheer fabrics like chiffon and organza, so that your seams are nice and pretty and encased. And when you're stitching with chiffon and organza, silk pins come in handy as well. So silk pins are just a little sharper and a little bit smaller than regular pins so that they would go through the chiffon or organza without snagging them.

And when you stitch these open weave fabrics, if the weave is very open and you find that the needle is having a hard time catching the fabric to begin with, you can place a piece a piece of tissue paper under the seam to help the feed dogs grab onto it. Just gives a little bit of stability to the fabric. And then when you're done stitching the seam, it just tears away. And this is just pattern paper, but you can use tissue paper that you use to wrap gifts and things. So that just tears away nice and cleanly.

So that's open weave fabric. Next we have fur, which is really cool, it comes in a ton of different patterns and colors and pile lengths, it's great for Halloween costumes. So when you're cutting out fur fabric, you want to use the with-nap layout if you're using a pattern, and if you're not, you just wanna make sure all of your pattern pieces are going in the same direction because we've got this nap, so we don't want a piece going this direction and a piece going this direction because the light reflects differently and it'll look a lot different. When you're marking on fur fabric, you wanna mark on the wrong side because you won't be able to mark on the fur. Mark on the wrong side so that you can see it.

And when you're cutting fur fabric, you don't want to cut just straight along, because you're just gonna give your fur a haircut and you're gonna get all these fuzzies. You wanna cut through the backing fabric only. So you can try and kind of brush the fabric up and away from the backing, and just snip through that way. So that the cut edge of your piece has the fur all intact, and not sheared off. And when you're sewing seams on your fur fabric it can get a little bit bulky, so you might wanna use a heavier weight needle, and stitch slowly.

And when you're done stitching your seam, you can just sort of brush all that fur out of the stitching. And it really helps to conceal that seam. So there you have it, I hope some of these stitching tips will help you when working with tricky fabrics.