Make Your Own Clothing: Introduction to Garment Construction

1. Trailer: How To Make Your Own Clothing, An Introduction to Garment Construction, with me, Joshua Mckinley. We'll be learning all about garment construction. I thought it was a great way to invest in your wardrobe. Hence, I thought our project would be amazing to do a vest. It's a beautiful unisex piece and it goes great over any t-shirt, under any blazer. It's something easy that we can all understand and learn these sewing techniques through. Everything comes with baby steps, so take your time with this class or anything in life. You can't become a master overnight. I'm so excited to see what you have in store, whether it's a vest, whether it's a pair of pants, whether it's a coat, a jacket, a t-shirt, a tank top, I'd love to see it. 2. Block Patterns - Part One: Since today we'll be learning all about garment construction, I thought it was a great way to invest in your wardrobe. Hence, I thought our project would be amazing to do a vest. It's a beautiful unisex piece and it goes great over any T-Shirt, under any blazer, and it's something easy that we can all understand and learn these sewing techniques thorough. Since you've enrolled in the class, you can see that I've already added a very simple block pattern for a vest, and you can choose one of two things. Print this out and go through the next steps of piecing it together with me or work from an existing pattern that you already have. Basically, what we're trying to achieve here is learning the garment construction techniques that I'm going to teach you today. Now, if you're with me and you've printed out the block pattern that I've given you, we're going to start to piece it together. If you already have your pattern, sit back watch and see how you can manipulate your current pattern the way I'm going to do here. As you can see I've numbered them one through seven. So, we're going to start to put together the front of the vest. The pattern pieces already have seam allowance included in them, which this is the typical medium, but what you can do is add that extra seam allowance when you're cutting your pattern. So, let's start with pieces one and two. Make sure you have some scotch tape on hand, don't use glue or gum or ear wax, scotch tape. We're going to tape all the pieces together first before we actually trim the pattern piece itself. It will give you an idea of what it's going to end up looking like. Now since the seam allowance is already included just make sure your lines and pivot points are matching up correctly. I've already notated the side seams, the grain line, center front, and shoulder seams on these pieces. As you can see, the front piece is already taking shape. One through four makes up the front pattern piece. So, make sure you have that taped nicely. It's also crucial to flip this pattern over and make sure you just tape the opposite side as well. So, once we cut it out, it entirely stays together. As you can see, pattern pieces one, two, three and four make up the front of our vest and you can see it's notated at center front, the side seam and also the shoulders seam. As well as the grain line which we'll get to shortly once we begin cutting. But let's move on to the back pattern pieces before we cut that out. The back pattern pieces are number five, six and seven. Once again, match-up your pivot points, the seam allowance and tape these down as well. Pretty self-explanatory. Sometimes this can be the long part of this but the creative part will come very shortly. Once again remember to take the back pieces as well just so when you cut it out everything stays together properly. As you can see, you've your back pattern piece put together, the side seams grain line, shoulder seam and also the cut unfold. Now, if we go back to our front pattern piece, we'll begin to cut out. Just follow basically the half inch seam allowance that I've allotted. However, if you do need a little extra, you can always add an inch on either side seam just to give you that actual room to play with or if you're still a little unsure, add an inch for the seam allowance just in case you're someone that likes to sew ones or try things and it just gets a little nervous about maybe cutting too close. This is something that you can really play with, sample with and nothing is perfect to begin with. So, this is really about learning and just understanding the techniques I'm going to be teaching you. 3. Block Patterns - Part Two: Let's focus back on the pattern and we'll begin to carve our patterned piece via the seam allowance. Another tip when you're cutting. If you go back to your childhood, we'd always going cut like this in the air. Everything always ended up being a little shaky. I mean, I can still cut pretty straight just because I've been doing it so well. But when you're actually cutting out a patterned piece or fabric or anything in general, this is an arts and crafts. You actually want to lay it on the table and have your scissors connected to the table as you cut. You're going to get a much cleaner cut and a much cleaner line. A little trick that I could tell you is, as you're cutting, don't cut into it. Actually, cut and pullback after you snip a little bit. So, it's like a cut and then a pullback, a cut and then that's when you can pull the pattern towards you. But if you just try to go at it really hard, you're going to end up with that kind of zigzagged, and almost looks like your dog ate your homework. Work with the paper, turn it as you go. As you can see, now we have our entire first vest piece. You can already see that the kind of makeshape. I will just go to the back and cut that as well. Now, as you can see, we have our back piece for five minutes or five, six and seven, excuse me. Together, we can lay this out and now see that our vest is taking shape from the front and the back. Now at this point, with both your patterned pieces together, this is where you can get a little bit creative. If you want to add in a style line maybe have a different fabric in terms of a yoke. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to add in two style lines, one on the back and one on the front just to play with fabrics a little bit and the combination of them. So, the easiest way to do that is look at reference photos if there's something that you've seen on the runway or in the stores that you love that have different fabrics combined or if there's a design you like. This the part where you can truly like research what it is that you want to design. Now, if this step isn't for you, you can basically just use these two pieces, and we'll be able to cut the fabric. But for the people that want to add in a style line of two, I'm going to show you that right here. So, you can grab your pencil and have a ruler. For me, I'm going to take my front piece and I think it'd be great to potentially have a yoke from the front and back, that's a different fabric. So, if you want to measure on yourself how many inches down you want. But you know, normally given, I think four inches is good, four to six depending on that. Now here, you can either have a straight line across, you could go diagonal, and I think I'm going to do a slight diagonal. So, I find that four inch mark that I put. Just find the angle that you're interested in. I'm not going to be too drastic. I might have a little Western flair to it. But as you can see, I've added in a style line right here and what might be nice is to take potentially a colored marker just so you know what piece that is. You can lightly. So here now, you can see, this is just to notate that that's going to be a separate fabric and patterned piece. Now if we make our way over to the back, we can also do the same better. Take your pencil and your ruler and decide how many inches down you want a yoke to be. Once again, I think four is a great number you can keep it consistent. It really helps to balance the garment but you have to look at proportions as well. So, I'm going to do four inches and this one I'm actually just going to go straight across the back. Once again, the easiest way to see that piece, take a marker and just get at those same lines, so you know, one, that it's a different fabric. Two, that it's a style line. You can see that right there as well. So, that's going to be our style line, but different fabric as well as the front and then we have the back patterned piece as well. 4. Block Patterns - Part Three: Before we proceed, we're going to add in a facing. Well, facing is normally two and a half, three inches, three and a half depending on how big the garment is, but with this vest it's a little small. We're just going to probably add in a two, two and a half-inch facing, and that's we're going to demonstrate on the front of this garment. I think it'd be great to add in a design element that's a bit inverted rather than reverted. So, what we're going to do is from your set of frontline, go in two inches and follow that entirely up the vest. From the neckline all the way down to the center of front seam, all the way down to the center front. So I'm back in those lines. Also, we're going to tape this into the back as well. So, two inches down from the center back to two inches from the shoulder, and really maneuver your ruler along the seam allowance edge so you can get your lines. As you'll see, you're facing starts to take shape. The best way to do this is to through in those straight lines with you pencil. Now, this one is around the curve, so you're going to have to work with your little details that you made. The best thing to do here is to get a styling design ruler or something that has a curve surface. So, what you're going to do is you're going to lay that on your pattern piece and match up with the center front meads as well as where you start to get into the neckline, and just add in through and a nice curved line as well. So I'll take a marker just to show you what that line will look like for your facing. It's great to have all your rulers on hand, so you can pick up and maneuver which one's you need at which point. As you can see, this black line now makes up the facing piece that we're going to cut separately than the actual fabric. Once again, go into the back and do the same. You can play with it and manipulate as well. Once again, now you can see our back piece facing as well down in the black line. So from here, we are at set, we're on our way. Your next step is going to be to cut on those style lines, and it might be best now if you make yourself a little note on each side of that. Do a little plus sign half inch, plus sign half inch. That's just to give you a mental note that once we cut this, when we lay it onto the fabric, we're going to have to add that half an inch seam allowance to bring it back to this original shape. Plus half inch and you plus a half inch. It's just something that it's going to give you that mental note. So then, what we'll do from here is we're going to cut along our style line to get that pattern piece. So that is now going to be the front piece and top piece of our front pattern. Then once again, along the back, cut along your style line wherever it may be, and then you also have your back pattern piece. So, what's great about this is now this is your front piece and your back piece, and this is going to create one fabric, and then we'll have our back pieces as well. So the next stop, we're going to move into fabric. 5. Fabric Cutting - Part One: So, now that we have of all of our pattern pieces cut out, I've chosen three fabrications to work into. I've chosen a really great line green and gold jakarta for the base fabric, which will be for our two main pieces, then I've also chosen to this grey psychedelic floral, which is going to be sort of two stylized pieces about we cut out as well. So, the yoke and the front piece yoke, our two main pieces for the main fabric, and then the leopard will come back too and the leopard is going to be for the facing that chose. Take note though, these are both woven fabrics while this is a knit. But I thought the combination of the two is very signature to what I do, but of course have fun, choose fabrics you like. It really kind of play with them and see what's going to work for you and sometimes the best way to do it is also just to make a quick little sketch for yourself and notate which fabrics are going to go where, so you can get a mental image of really what it's going to look like in the end. But I think it's imperative that we start with our base fabric first and we'll come back to our two yoke pieces and then eventually the facing shortly. It's imperative when you roll out your fabric to realize that there is a front and a back. Now sometimes you could use either way, if you like a certain look on the back or the front, choose what you'd like. Well, what do you need to notice, is that there is a salvage running here. Your grain line on your pattern will run parallel with the salvage. Basically unfold your fabric. So now really the salvage is perpendicular to yourself. So what we're going to do since we need two front pieces and one back piece, what we're going to do is cut this. Since the back piece is cut, I'll fold. Make sure you layout your fabric, and you can do what I call as the cat scratch, just to get your salvage to line up straight. What's great about this is since it's being the center back pieces cut on fold and then there are two front pieces, you can basically cut both at the same time and I'll show you how to lay that out. Once your fabric is folded and you create a nice seam, you can grab both of your pieces and what we'll do is we'll start with the back piece first and since it's cut out on fold, you line that up which ironically your fabric is already on the fold. So, line that up and make sure that's placed here. Now I always like to use wades, which they're really heavy, hard to get but this is a great way to cut it. But for this example, I'm going to actually just use pins so we can get a better idea of how this is working. So, pin your fabric to the pattern piece and make sure it's pretty stable because you don't want your fabric to be sliding around while you're doing this and remember as we noted, if you have that half inch on the top of here so, be sure to allot for that when cutting. Now the best thing to do here is just to slightly slide your fabric down on your table and place your front pattern piece which is cut twice. So, now this still fits in the same dimension but this is just cut and fold then we'll be cut into two pieces of this. Once again, go back to pinning or if you feel comfortable using the weight system, you can do that as well. I think for this example in fabric, it's nice to have it entirely pinned so things aren't shifting around. Remember to pin entirely around the circumference of your pattern piece in the seam allowance given. As you can see, we have both of our pattern pieces in this fabrication pinned and ready to be cut. 6. Fabric Cutting - Part Two: Once you have both pattern pieces in place pinned, then we can begin to cut. Feel free to work around the pattern piece. You don't have to cut it in one formation. Make it easy for yourself. There you have it, our front panels. Now move on to the back. Now remember we have that plus a half inch. So, make sure you allow for that. By all means you can true that in or you'd be able just to eyeball it and add the little half-inch as you can see there, the plus one half. Once again, we have our back piece that was cut and fold which makes our entire back panels. Now, we have both our front and back pieces cut. We're going to set that off to the side so we can work on our yoke pieces. Now, for the yoke, I also chose a woven floral. Once again, you can see that this has a selvage which is very easy to read, since it is in all the colors and components that make up the entire print. So, once again, lay that salvage perpendicular to yourself and cut this and fold again. We have a back piece which is cut on fold, and we'll pin that as well. Now we'll take our front yoke piece and also lay that down, we'll be cutting two of this. Pin that as well into place. Once again, remember your notation of the add a half inch on that front piece, but we'll be able to cut now. Then we have our piece plus the half inch that we also allotted for. A half inch as well on the back. Now we have both our front yoke and back yoke cut as well. The back is also on the fold like the last piece. Make sure you're following the grain line on your pattern with the selvage which is very easily notated in this fabric because it is the colors and the components of what is into the body of the fabric, cutting parallel with your grain line 7. Fabric Cutting - Part Three: Now, the best thing to do at this point, is we can go through and unpin our pieces. Because now we're going to have to cut our facing, which entails a bit more scotch tape and cutting that, and then we are ready to sow. For the facing, you won't actually need the back cut piece. So, that we can put up to the side. So, once again, we're removing all of our pins from our pattern pieces. So, you're going take your front pattern piece again with your front yard piece, and we're going to retake that as originally was. You can line that up together, grab your tape and retake that together, flash to where your line is. So, now as you can see, we have our front piece back together, and we have our back york as well. As you can see, we're now going to cut out the facing on both the front and the back, following the black line that we've drawn in for ourselves. We're going to be cutting into the pattern on that black line to get our facing pieces, which will cut shortly out of the leopard fabric. Now, we have our front facing, which is going to go into the leopard. But, let's also cut the back piece as well. Perfect. There you have your two pieces, your back facing and your front facing. So now, what we're going to do is we're going to grab our final fabric, which this is actually a net where the other two are woven but, I'm choosing to work into it, because I think that it will add a nice color juxtaposition, and fabric feel to it. So, with both of these, this is the back facing piece, this is cut unfold and the front is cut too. So, once again, we're going to find our straight grain of the fabric, and that's really easily seen on this one because of the print. We're going to cut that and fold. Once again, give that the cat's scratch. Just helps to get the fabric into the natural state that it wants to go. Never try to force the fabric to do something it doesn't want to do. It's like a good tip, try to torture your fabric. We are going to lay our front facing and also our back facing. Once again, we'll retry our pins, and pin this into place. So, we have our front piece in place and now, we'll also place our back facing piece on the fold again as well. Now that you have both in place once again, we're going to cut it. Then, knit likes to move around a lot. So, I suggest really making sure you have it nicely pinned. We have our front facing, and now, we're going to cut the back piece on the fold. Well, now that we have both of our facing pieces, front and back, and the cutting is done, so let the sewing begin. 8. Flat Felled Seam Part One: Now, it's imperative after cutting your fabric that you give everything a really nice press so the fabric has time to adjust to the natural state that it wants to sit at. So, I'm going to start with our floral pieces that we cut, and we're just going to give those a nice press as well, and give it some good steam so it can really lay flat. So, what we're going to do next is we're going to take our back pattern piece along with our front floral piece. What we're actually going to do is use the wrong sides of the fabric and pin those together. For this first seam, we're going to be doing a flat felled seam. So, the way you do it is you pin the wrong sides of the fabric together first and then we'll take the front pieces, and once again we'll pin the wrong sides together. So, what we're going to do is we're going to stitch our first straight stitch. Most of these stitches are going to be straight stitches that we're working to get these five stitch techniques. Now, I'm demonstrating all of these stitch techniques on this one garment. However, if there is one that you like or you're enjoying using, feel free to use that throughout the entire process. Now, we're going to do a half-inch straight stitch. It's always nice to backtrack as well so you can attach your fabric so it doesn't end up frame. Cutting a thread. All right. So, after we sew our first half inch, we're going to come back to the iron, we're going press that seam out, then what we're going to do is we're going to go into our body fabric and we're going to trim away the fabric to a fourth of an inch or an eighth of an inch, however close you can get. You have to do this gently to not get the other side of the fabric. Now, as you can see, you can either have an eighth or a fourth of an inch, but you're still going to have the original half-inch of your floral fabric and or whatever fabric you've chosen to work into. So, we'll press that out. We will also do the same on the front pieces trimming. Once again to reiterate the steps, you sew that half inch first and then choose the base body fabric to trim away to a fourth, all the while continuing to press. Because like I always say, you don't have to be the best sewer, you just have to press well. So, we'll start with our back piece now. What we're going to do is we're going to open it and we're going to press our floral fabric into our base fabric. Give that a nice press and we'll also do that to each of our front pieces. You might have a little fabric that's hanging over, but we'll be able to adjust that and trim that out. So, don't freak out if there is a little bit of a hang over. 9. Flat Felled Seam Part Two: Now with that half inch flap, you can see we have the trimmed one-fourth or one-eighth, as close as you can get. What we're going to do is this is the good time to pin. To achieve this flat felled seam, what we have to do is take this half inch seam allowance and fold under a fourth of an inch. Now I know this is insane, but it takes patience and small hands, which I don't have. So, what you're going to do is you're going to go in and continue to fold under that raw edge and pin down creating a finished seam. We'll do that for the back pieces and also the front pieces. You can actually go back to the iron, instead of actually pressing, we're just going to give it a light steam to slightly set the seam into place. You can give it a little patch. The way we finish this is actually with a top stitch. A top stitch about one-fourth away from the edge, which catches the seam allowance that we just hid underneath. Flap floats can be at any width. It all depends on how much seam allowance you have left, it could be an inch flat felled seam, it could be three-fourths, half inch, inch and a half. It's really up to you. It's just all about leaving that seam allowance but as per this pattern, it's a half inch seam allowance. So, we're having a very, very tiny flat felled. From there we just stitch on that folded edge and slightly working your fibre through the machine and trim your threads and then you go back to the iron and we'll press this seam out. Also take note, it's good to press on both sides of your fibric, front and back. What's great about this seam as you have a beautiful top stitch on the outside of the fabric, but you also have such a beautiful finish on the inside. Garments should be as pretty on the inside as they are on the outside. Now we're going to do that same seam on our front two pieces as well. So, we can set our back piece side and we're going to be the same flat felled on the front two pieces. 10. The French Seam: Now, what we're going to do from here is we're going to take our back piece. This is now going to be a sampling of a French seam. Similar to the flat felled, but done a little bit differently. So what we're going to do is we're going to take wrong side to wrong side. So basically, your first stitch is going to be on the right sides of the fabric. We can pin these shoulders. It's a half-inch seam allowance, so we're going to do half-inch stitch on this. Then we're going to press this out as well. Put that up here. Give it a nice press. Now, a French seam is basically encasing a seam within a seam. So, once you press those out and have a really nice flat seam, what you're going to do is you're going to actually trim a fourth down close to the seam. So you want to leave a fourth of an inch. So, you're basically taking your half inch seam allowance and cutting in half now. Do a hot back on the machine. Just give that one more quick press after pinning it. Now, what you want to do is take you're front two flaps and fold those over, then you're going to want to press that. We'll do this in steps. So, flip over and press, and also on the other side, then we're going to entirely turn the vest inside out. You're basically encasing that raw seam into itself, which makes up a French seam. So now, fold on your seam line. You can give it a little crease with your hand which is always nice, and then press that as well. What you're going to want to do is now pin that. This fabric is working really well with me because it presses really nicely. But you might have trouble depending on the fabric that you choose, so make sure it's a woven that presses nicely, anything from a denim to a wool, just something that's really going to hold it's own shape. So now we have one more seam to complete the French seam. After these are pinned, now our raw seam is encased in the other seam. We're going to do a fourth of an inch stitch. So basically, if you place the foot of your sewing machine right along the folded edge of the seam and stitch, it will encase the seam that we just cut. Now, as you can see, we have an entirely encased seam within a seam, which is a really beautiful finish. You actually see this a lot of lingerie and chiffons, but It's also great to do it in something that's a bit more sturdy and woven. It's a really easy and clean way to finish a seam. So we'll press that out and then we'll flip this open and we'll press towards the back of our fabric. You can always pull a little on the front just to get that seam really crisp. Then once again, clean and beautiful from the outside, but also well crafted from the inside. Just such a clean finish, just like the flat felled, the French as well. The flat felled however is flush with all the fabric. However, the French seam just leaves a little lip here. Now, if you wanted to, you're more than welcome to stitch it down. It's just one more stitch that you'd have to do. But I think for the process of this, it's nice to see what a French seam actually is, which is a seam within a seam. 11. Tailored Edge Seam: We just completed our flat felled seams and our french seams. I remember earlier how I was mentioning, you might have a little bit of that overhang and that could be on everything that we did. So, what we're going to do right now is we're just going to slightly go in and trim away those little overhangs. As just normally, just a slight little snip and fade it back into your seam allowance. You just go around your entire piece will trim away those little overhangs and fade them back into the seam allowance. Now you're back in good shape but we're going to set this aside for now and we're going to pick up our facing pieces, still facing with the lapper that I cut and we're not going to get too tricky with these seams. Just basically straight stitches. So what you're going to do is lay out your two front pieces, that so, and then take your back piece and lay that and these pieces and you're going to pin again. Right sides of fabric together. Have them seam to connect these two pieces together and trim away, go and press this open. I always press them flat together first and then from there you can open it up and press the seams open on your facing piece. So there you have that now, your entire facing piece together with both of the shoulder seams pressed open. After you press open your shoulders seams on your face and what we're going to do here is called a tailored edge seam. I'm going to give you a little kind of easy way to do it but it's almost like a mock tailored edge seam. But what are you going to do is you're going to find the outside edge of your facing. Which is not where the point is. So this is the outside edge. What we're going do is we're going to fold that in about a fourth on the machine and just give it a stitch all the way around. Now, you can go in and you can pin this one fourth or you can just slightly roll it as you go under the machine which is pretty easy once you can just get the first little roll together and you're just going to give it a fourth of an inch top stitch. Saw that all the way around. As you go, keep rolling it about a fourth of an inch and giving it a tough stitch. May get a little tricky on the curve of the back but just take your time, slow down your machine and just slightly work the fabric in. Once you do that, turn your thread. We're going head over to the iron and press that out. Now you already have as you can see as you are pressing, a clean finished edge which once we attach it to the main body piece is basically a mocked tailored edge. Now you can see you've a really beautiful clean edge with a fourth of an inch stitch 12. Finishing the Armholes: So, we've finished our entire facing now. We have two more seam detailings to learn. A Hong Kong bound and the tailor stitch which is going to be for the hem. But first, we're going to finish the armholes quickly. The best way to finish the armhole is prior to actually doing the side seams together which is a quick little easy trick. So, what we're going to do is we're going to fold back a fourth of an inch and do a top stitch and we'll do that on both sides. Let's keep those over there. And just do a fourth of an inch top stitch around the vest. We're going to do that on both of your armholes. After we finish this one, we're going to press again and then do another fourth inch top stitch which in many ways it's constructing a baby hem, just kind of in and untraditional way. But it has a nice element and kind of another seam that we haven't talked about. Once that's done, you're going to go back to the armhole. Since you can see here you have the raw edge with the top stitch, so you have the raw edge and the top stitch. You're going to actually encase that in itself. So, you're going to fold it to a fourth and encase the raw edge there, creating a mock baby hem. Basically, stitch on the same line that you just stitched. One down. The same thing with this one where I'm encasing the raw edge, flipping that and top stitching on the same stitch line that we just did. Once you've done that we'll go back and press, trimming away any loose threads in the process and now you're finished with the clean armhole. 13. Hong Kong Binding - Part One: So, now that we've finished the armholes, finished the facing, the garment looks great. We're going to continue onto the side seams. So, what we're going to do is pin the right sides of the fabric together, so the inside of the garment. What we're going to apply to our side seams is the Hong Kong binding. So, what you will need for this is some of the binding tape that you can get at your local retailer. But if not, if you want to skip this step entirely, just use one of the other seam finishes that we have already worked on, so you could do a French seam, you could do another flat felled seam. Either way, this is just to give you one more option of a way to finish things inside a garment. All about the construction. So, I'm just trying to cover most of the basics that are some of the easiest and find ways to finish a garment. So, what we're going to do is pin those together. We're going to sew at that half-inch seam allowance that we have. We also sew that half-inch on our other side seam as well. What we'll do is now, we'll press these seams. If you feel that you sew it a little more than half an inch, a little less than half an inch, it's all right, you can always trim away. If you sew more or with this seam, it'll be all right if there is a little less. I'm going to actually trim away just a slight bit, just to not create too much bulk. But in terms of binding that you can look for, Wright is a major brand that a lot of stores carry and you can get it in so, so many colors, and its bias tape, single fold, double fold, extra wide fold, really buy whatever is going to work for you. Grab your binding tape, and it comes pre-folded with two little flaps. Normally, comes folded like this, so fold it open and then there's two flaps. We're going to press open one side of the binding. So, once again back to your iron, press open that side. Do this for both of the sides seams. Now, I'm doing a one-sided Hong Kong Binding seam but you are more than entitled to do both sides of your seams, which is another way then you've possible seen it done before. But what you're going to do, is you're going to align this binding up with the edge of your seam allowance. So, flush with your steam allowance. You can pin the entire way or you can start off with the pin. I'm just going to pin this one the entire way to give you an idea. Now, what you're going to do is sew a fourth. So, have your foot of your machine flush with the seam allowance and the binding tape. Sew fourth and you're also going to do that on the other side seam. Trim your threads, then making your way over to the iron, and pressing that. Now, what you're going do is, once you press it, you're going to press the binding open. So, we're going to press flat, and then we're going to fold the binding and press that as well. What I like to do from here is go in and do a top stitch on that binding. If you can get it tight, an eighth of an inch is perfect, it's basically just a quick little top stitch on the seam. Like so, you can press that as well. 14. Hong Kong Binding - Part Two: Once you've done that, you basically have your binding, you see your original stitch, then where you're binding is with the other stitch. What you're going to do here, so you're going to fold your binding across the seam. It here is the original stitch line, you're going to take your binding, I'm going to fold it and then I'm going to put a pin in there. Right up to the original stitch line, and you're going to pin that and then you're going to top stitch that as well. So, you fold this over to the original stitch line. Sometimes, with this, it's actually easier to go vertical with the needles rather than horizontal. What you're going to do here is do a top stitch on that. That top stitch can be done about an eighth from the edge, eighth to a fourth from the edge of your Hong Kong binding which ensures that your stitch will be inside the seam allowance and will not show on the outside of the garment. I'm going to trim away. Now, as you can see, the entire seam has been bound into the binding which is a really nice clean finish. Now, I'm going to leave it like this, but other ways that can be done, you can press it open, you can top stitch it. It's really all about the look that you want at the end of the whole process and what you're trying to achieve. But you're still going to want to press it flat and open. So, press that to the back of your garment. That's just the one side, so we'll review it one more time. We're going to fold the binding to the original stitch line, and pin that down and then go back in and give it an eighth to a fourth of an inch from the binding edge a top stitch. So, it's encased within the original seam allowance. I'm going to open it up and press towards the back of our garment. Give that a nice press. There you have a beautiful finish. This is just the inside, mind you. But this could be a technique that you actually want to put on the outside of the garment as well, but it creates a really lovely finish to the outside as well. But it's a stunning effect on the inside. 15. Finishing Up: It's time to finish up the hand. But the first part we're going to work out is actually off the center front, it's the diagonal part of the vest. We're going to do that before we complete the entirety of the whole vest. So, what you want to do is just give this a nice press again, give this little diagonal parts a press. What we're going to do is we're going to turn up a fourth of an inch and topstitch. We're going to do that on both sides. We're going to press those seams out. Now, we're going to fold up an entire inch. You can pin that if you'd like to keep it in place. We're going to do that to the other side as well. Now, with that folded up, we're going to stitch a fourth on the folded edge of the seam. We're going to do that on the other side as well, a fourth of an inch in the folded edge of the seam. We can press that real quick. Now, with that seam folded up, it's loose right now, but what we're going to do is we're going to raised stitch over the stitch that's an inch in. We will stitch right over that. Basically, like we restitch over the armhole. But this time, you're going to need to extend it all the way to the point up. So, you can take a pen or a pencil and basically, what you're going to want to do is mark where that line continues, just very lightly. We're going to continue that down to the hand. Do the same steps along the entire hand now of the vest. So, as you can see, we've now finished the front two pieces and those were here. Now, we're going to do the same treatment around the entirety of the vest. Give the hand more and more really good press. There you have a completed tailored edged hem. That finishes up the five techniques and seam detailing for this class. I hope that the things you learn today about the introduction to garment construction and seam finishes, you're on your way to making your own clothing. As you can see, this is the vest I demonstrated throughout the entire day in the class. I'm so excited to see what you have in store, whether it's a vest, whether it's a pair of pants, whether it's a coat, a jacket, a t-shirt, a tank-top, I'd love to see it. If you're already enrolled in the class, feel free to post questions, comments on the message board, and I'd love to chit-chat with all of you and see how the process is going. Everything comes with baby steps. So, take your time with this class or anything in life. You can't become a master overnight, nor have I. I am still learning and working with Skillshare and taking classes to learn even more. So, I hope you enjoyed how to make your own clothing and introduction to garment construction with me, Joshua McKinley. Until next time, peace. 16. More Creative Classes on Skillshare: