Dear readers, thank you for visiting. It’s time for a monthly dose of sewing tips on The Sew Everything Blog!  I’ve included a form again for your own sewing tip to be included in a future post in our ongoing Sewing Tips Series. Of course, if you have a website or blog, I will link the tip to it.

So here are my tips for this month:

1. Do not let the fabric fall over the cutting or the sewing table while working with it. This is the quickest way to stretch your project out of shape.  This is especially true of knit fabrics. The fabric must all be on the same level. If the project is large, use an additional table to extend the surface.   
2. Use one of the decorative stitches on your sewing machine to understitch. I must credit Nancy Zieman for this one since that is where I learned of this idea.  For new seamstresses unaware of the understitching concept, it is a line of stitching on the facing of a neckline or armhole close to the edge. Its purpose is to keep the facing from rolling out to the outside of the neckline or sleeveless armhole.
3. When there is no walking foot available: to sew two fabric edges together where one is slightly longer than the other, also called easing, sew with the longer length on the bottom. The feed dogs always do a good job of easing. If the difference between the two edges is more than the feed dogs can handle, that is a whole other sewing tip…
4. Did you just eke out a pretty good wearable from just one yard or less? Kudos to you! Here is one trick I used with just one yard of expensive silk crepe de chine. I made a bias top which would have been shorter than I wanted after hemming. Well, I added a bias silk organza strip at the hem and kept its raw edge as is. That gave it some length and I love the lightness of this top. How did I get a whole bias top from one yard? I repeat, that’ a whole other sewing tip.   
5. Final sewing tip for today:  Pick your sewing battles! If you can take the easy way out, please do not show bravado by taking the difficult route. It will surely result in an addition to your unfinished pile, or worse, give you a case of the sewing block. Ask me how I know. More about this project in a later post.

Hope you will submit your sewing tip! And, I hope you enjoyed this post. Be sure to write your feedback in the comment section below, since I love to see what you think!  Thank you!

Samina