Sewing Basics: Learn To Sew

1. Part 1: Learn to Sew Introduction: Hello, welcome to learn to. So I'm Hannah knows and I've taught people from ages eight years old to 80 years old how to sew. And today I'm here to teach you how to. So in this short course, we're going to learn everything about sewing. From threading our machine, sewing on it, cutting out fabric, and eventually making a fun finished product at the end. That's our project and I'll share more about that soon. First, I want to outline who this course is for and who it's not four. This course is for you if you're a beginner sower, if you have never touched a sewing machine, have no prior experience, really want to get into sewing and are driven and motivated about it. But like I said, don't know what to do. Then this course is for you. We're gonna be starting at the base level. This course is also for you if you have sown in the past, but it's been a very, very long time. Like maybe even since the Home Ec days, maybe you have a machine and it's covered in a thick layer of dust. If so, this course is for you, it will refresh your skills. You'll probably find that you catch on to concepts and introduce a little bit more easily and quickly because you at some point wearing them in the past and you'll be on your way in no time with sewing. This course is also for you, is if you've sewn in the past and you quit intentionally, I can share this because I've been there. Perhaps you use to sew But you gave up because something always went wrong and it just wasn't worth the frustration. Perhaps your thread was always getting tangled in your machine and you didn't know how to read thread it. The pattern instructions for your fabric or too confusing. Who knows what reason it was, but you always gave up because nothing seemed to go right, and you could never totally finished a project. This course is for you. Think of it as a reset button to start over and renew your sewing career. Now this course is not for you. If you have sowed already, you're already sewing, you know how to use your sewing machine. You can make things on it. You don't need to watch this video because we, like I said, are going to be starting base level with sewing, no prior experience needed. So if you do have prior experience and know-how to so then you don't need to watch this. Otherwise, I'm excited to get to start sewing with you and open up a whole new world of opportunity using your sewing machine. I will be demonstrating on my own sewing machine. Not this guy though. He's just for looks, mine is going to be a little bit newer as yours probably is too. 2. Part 2: Project Introduction: Allow me to introduce our class project to you, which as you may have guessed from what I'm wearing, is a sunglasses case. That's right. We're going to be making a sunglasses case just like this one together as our class project. It's great for sunglasses are also any type of glasses. And the measurements that I give you are going to make sure that it's big enough so that even you can fit oversize sunglasses and the sunglasses case is great because it's simple and easy to make, which is good for our first sewing project. It comes together in only three sewing steps. We're going to learn how to cut out our fabric together. For this case, it's gonna be two pieces of fabric. And then how to sew it. I cannot wait to see your photos of your finished project. Please definitely post them so I can see those. And let's get to making our sunglasses case together. 3. Part 3: Supplies You Need: Let's talk about the items that you'll need to work on your sewing project. Obviously, you'll need a full-size sewing machine. Doesn't matter what brand. But you're also going to need a few things with sites that like a flat space to cut out your fabric. I have a cutting table with a cutting mat on it here. You don't have to have a cutting mat or even a cutting table. It can be anywhere, even the floor. It just needs to be flat and open for you to lay your fabric out on. Speaking of fabric, you are going to need fabric. You're going to need yard of a medium to heavy weight fabric. I'm gonna be using a canvas fabric that's like this one. However, if you do decide to go with a medium or a lighter weight fabric, like a cotton or linen. You can do this for this project, but you are going to need to use interfacing to stiffen it up. Preferably focusable interfacing. I want to talk more about what that is when we get to cutting out our fabric. But you will need for sure one-quarter yard of fabric. And more than that, if you plan on making more than one sunglasses case, okay, what else do we need besides fabric? We need thread. So make sure you pick out a spool of thread that coordinates well with your fabric. Or maybe it's a fun contrast because the thread will be showing on the outside of your sunglasses case. So make sure that it's a thread color that you're happy with. Besides thread, you're also going to need little scissors to cut out your thread width. So I call these my snips, my little thread snips. And these are going to be your best friend. I keep them right next to your sewing machine and you can use them each time after you saw in your scene to snip your thread. These are going to be very handy. I promise you'll be happy you got them after you have them. Speaking of scissors, you're also going to need fabric scissors. Fabric scissors are different than regular scissors. So make sure that you get actual fabric scissors and not any other kind of scissors. And for fabric scissors you can only use them on fabric. If you use them on any other material, they are going to dull or even maybe be ruined. So once you get fabric scissors, keeps them in your sewing area and don't use them for anything else. Conversely, don't use regular scissors on fabric. It will not work well. While we're talking about cutting methods. This is optional, but if you have a cutting mat, it might be great for you to get a rotary blade cutter. I have mine here. You see the sharp blade there that I can retract. If you have a cutting mat, a rotary blade cutter is just a little bit faster at times for straight cuts than fabric scissors are. So I'm not saying one method is better than the other, but if you want to have another cutting method, you'll probably want to go with the rotary blade cutter. We also will need pins and we'll use these so many times when we're painting fabric and patterns together, when we're pinning, pinning of fabrics together. As we're working on her sewing projects. Pins are really a sower is best friend. Okay. So I have a magnetic pin cushion here. And here's why I like it. See if I dropped my pins, I can pick them up just by turning this upside down. You can also use pins at it from a box or a stuffed pin cushion that you poke them into. It doesn't matter, but makes sure that you have a bunch of pins. You'll use them a lot. And I like to have pins that have a fun round colored ball at the top of them so I can easily see them before I saw over them. You're also going to need a ruler or a straight edge. So this is what mine looks like. I have multiple. It can be bending. It doesn't have to be, but it does need to have measurements on it. We're going to use this for measuring out the amount of fabric we need for our sunglasses case. If you use a rotary blade cutter, you also use a straight edge to cut alongside. So definitely have that. You will need a fabric marker. It could be chalk or a wax fabric marker. My personal favorite is this disappearing ink pen. Make sure you test it first on an inconspicuous area of fabric. But what I love about this is it's very easy to see and yet within 48 h, it disappears off your fabric. So I can mark on the right or wrong side of my fabric as long as I make sure it works on that type of fabric. And the markings will be gone after I no longer need them. But you could also just use chalkboard chalk or Taylor's chalk, something like that. As long as it's something you can use to make marks on your fabric. Okay, just a couple of more things. You're going to need, something to poke out on your points. So we will have zero points on the side of our sunglasses case. And you can use something like a point turner. You could use a mechanical pencil that does not have any lead in it. Anything that has a pointed edge, but that's not sharp. So we don't want something that's going to rip our fabric. But as you'll see after we, so the initial part of our sunglasses case, we need nice clean corners and that's where a point turner or something to really get those nice 90 degrees angles comes in handy. We also may need, maybe you will maybe want a seam Ripper. I'm just going to own it. I have used this seam Ripper a lot of times in my sewing career, and this is what it looks like. It has. It has a little hook. It's actually kinda sharp on the edge of it. And this is what you use to pull out, seems we all make mistakes. Maybe you won't need it for this project. Maybe you'll hardly use it. But if you're like me, it's just good to have one on hand if you saw something and you need to take the sea mount, a siem refers gonna do the job for you. You also need something with a curved edge. I have a French curve. Okay. But you could also use something like a mug or a drinking glass. It just needs to have a circle. Okay? Two more things that you need are an iron. If you don't own an iron, you can still make this sunglasses case, but it's just not going to look quite as nice. So this is my iron. I can change the different steam, steam settings on it. So I can do it for delicate fabrics and I can also get hotter for heavier weight fabrics. But we will need to iron or sunglasses case before we finish it. So make sure you have an iron. And I'm not going to show you, but the last item is a trash can. Just keep one underneath your sewing machine because you're always going to be having scraps of fabric and thread all over the place. And if you'd just get them right into the wastebasket, it's going to help you cut down on this. And that's everything you need for our sewing project. 4. Part 4: Threading Your Machine: The first steps in learning how to use our sewing machines are turning it on and threading it. So let's begin with turning it on its unnatural first step. Your machine is either going to have one compound plugin like mine does here or two separate ones on the right side. Make sure those are plugged in. One chord will lead to an electrical outlet. And the other courts going to lead to your foot pedal, which kind of looks like a car gas pedal use, you may have guessed that's going to go on the floor underneath your sewing machine somewhere where your feet can reach it easily. After those are all plugged in, go ahead and turn your machine on. You can tell that your machine is on for one. If you have a computer machine, if it's all lit up on the computer. And additionally for any machine, if the light is on over here by your needle, I actually took my light out. So it's easier for you to see here on the camera, but your light by your needle should be on. Now let's focus on threading your machine. Now, I have a Ken Moore machine here. It's pretty basic, but still great machine and your machine might look like mine, or it could be a totally different brand, totally different make. The techniques that I'm going to show you and learning how to thread your machine will work for any brand of machine. They just might vary slightly from machine to machine. However, your machine will have some type of instructions on it for threading. So using a combination of those instructions and what you learned in this video, you will be all set. All we need for threading or sewing machine today is our machine, obviously a full spool thread. Then an empty bobbin. And bobbing is going to look kind of like a short, very short spool thread. It's probably plastic minus plastic. And it most likely came with your machine when you purchase it. If your machine did not come with any of these, definitely go out and get several because you're going to want one for every thread color that you're gonna be sewing with. It needs to be empty though. To start, we are going to place thread on our bobbin first. When you so esteem. It's basically a sandwich. A siem is thread from the top of your machine and the bottom of your machine with fabric in-between, hence this sandwich. So when we're threading or machine, we're not just threatening it in one spot worth reading it it into. If you were to go ahead and thread the top part of your machine and realize that you're bothering was still empty. You would actually have to undo threading the top of your machine. Put thread on your bobbin because it happens up here. Place your bobbin in your machine and then re-throw the top. What does all that even mean? It means always placed thread on your bobbin first. So that's what we're going to start with today. And we sober is called threading our bobbin, winding, our bobbin. So let's go Winder bob wins. First step, take your spool of thread and place it at the top Spica of your machine. This might be horizontal or vertical like mine. Depending on your machine. Find where you are going to be placing your bobbin. For bobbin winding, it's gonna be close to your spool of thread. Most likely, my place is right here. Now, locate the point of tension. There will be at least one between your spool of thread in your bobbin. They're not going to wind directly to each other. You will be weaving your thread at least one spot. And my point of tension is here. So I'm gonna go ahead and take my thread. And I'm going to wind it around this point of tension. Now, before I place my bobbin on the machine, I'm going to take my thread. I picked your ad hoping you can see it a little bit better. I'm going to manually tightly wrap the thread around the bottom and just a couple of times to get my machine started. Now I'm going to place my bobbin on that spigot. There is one more step to do before we went, Bob Winder, bob wins. Because right now my sewing machine thinks that I'm just showing down here. You need to trigger bobbin winding. And in my case, I moved the bobbin spigot over and that triggers my machine. Just know, oh, we're winding the bobbin now. Very slowly press down on your foot pedal to get going. Because like a car, your machine goes faster the harder you press down on your foot pedal. Let's start slowly and make sure that your bobbin winding correctly and not making any tangles are winding above or below this picket. Mind it just a little bit more tightly. Let's pause here for a moment. Let's say you put your bobbin on and the thread gets all tangled and you realize you manually wound it counterclockwise in your machine. Actually winds clockwise. Easy, easy fix. There's no top or bottom two above and pop it off, turn it upside down and place it back on. Now let's say you're winding your bobbin, It's going great, like minus, I sure hope that's the case and you're worried about overfitting it. Your machine is going to have some sort of automatic stop minds right here where you can overfill your bobbin. So depending on how often you are going to use this red color, you can either Winder bob and up all the way or like me, I'm just going to wind it a little bit more than it is right now. So it's enough for today and maybe one other small project, totally up to you. But go ahead and finish winding your bobbin. Okay, I'm gonna stop there. Next. D trigger bobbin winding, move it back over, pop it off of this spigot, and take your thread snipers and cut your thread. Now, our bobbin has a little bit of thread on it. Now we need to insert our bobbin into the machine. Your machine might have a clear glass or plastic case here, really close to your needle where you directly insert your bobbin. If so great. My machines bobbin is actually hidden inside the machine. So I need to move the arm of my machine and pull down this trap door. Right inside here is where my bobbin case is located and that's what I will insert my bobbin into. I'm going to take my bobbin case out. It's this little metal looking contraption. And I'm actually just going kinda like a doughnut. I'm going to drop my bobbin inside of the metal case. Now, there's this opening on the side of the bobbin. And I am going to actually thread, we've my thread through that opening. So it looks like that. Okay, so now my bobbin is in the bobbin case. Now I need to place the bomb in case back inside the machine. My bobbin case actually has this lever on top. If you have a bobbin case, it probably has a lever that looks something like that. And you're going to pull on that lever. And keeping the lover pulled out, place your bobbin case back inside your machine and listen for a click. Okay. Do you hear that small Click? I'm going to let go of the lever. Now you can see I have some thread hanging out here. I'm actually just going to tuck the thread inside the trap door. I want there to be a long thread there That's good. Shut the trap door and put my machine, the lower part of it back together. Congratulations, you have now threaded half of your machine, the bottom, the bobbin. Let's focus on the top half of the machine. Okay, so back to our primary spool thread up here. When we thread the top half of the machine, like I said, it will vary from machine to machine, but we're always going to be going from right to left and then down to our needle. So I have some numbers and arrows on my machine. You might have those as well, if not words. And we're going to just follow the instructions that are already there. So I'm taking my thread, I have a number one. So I'm threading underneath this metal lever here on my machine. And I'm going down. Then my two has an arrow on it that says to go back up. And I have a three here, but there's nothing up here. If you'll see on my machine for me to thread my thread through, Some people get confused here and that's understandable. What I want you to do is pause, hold your thread with your left hand and look over again to the right side of the machine where we turned it on. Above that is going to be a wheel. This is called our flywheel and it manually moves your needle up and down. Always turn your flywheel towards you. That's all we're going to learn about the flywheel right now. But it's helpful for us in 3D or machine, because I'm going to turn my flywheel a little bit. If you'll see there, it just pot metal lever up onto my machine. I'm going to thread my thread right to left through that lover and go back down. There's one metal lever above my needle here. I put the thread through and then final step. And this is something some people miss. It's really small and hard to see, but your machine should have one or two tiny metal or wire lovers directly above the needle. If you miss a step, your machine will still so, but your needle will come unthreaded so easily and that's just not fun. So go ahead and floss your thread through one of those levers. And now it's time to thread your needle. Feel free to wet your thread at the end of it if you need to. But you're going to thread your needle from front-to-back, never back to front. So go ahead and place your thread through the eye of the needle. Once it's through the eye of the needle, it through. So once again you have a nice long tail thread. Yea, the top part of our machine is threaded and the bobbin is threaded as well. We just need to join those two threads and our machine is ready to go. So take your patella thread and hold it with your left thread underneath this contraption. This is called the presser foot, and we're going to be talking more about that shortly. But hold your thread with your left hand and once again go over to your flywheel on the right side of your machine and turn it towards you. One full revolution. Watch closely underneath your presser foot for thread to come up from the bottom of your machine. Alright, so I turned it one full revolution. I'm gonna give a little tug on my Taylor thread here. And it's hard to see here. So I'm going to use my thread scissors to pull out the thread. And I had a tale of thread pop up from the bottom from the bobbin of my machine. Now my machine is threaded on top. My bobbin is wound, it's inserted into the machine and it's the threads been caught by the bobbin. This means that my sewing machine is fully threaded and ready to go. 5. Part 5: Sewing On Your Machine: Congratulations, you have made it to the most fun part of our sewing video. We are going to learn how to actually so on our machine now that we've done the work of learning how to turn it on and plug it in and threading the top and bottom parts of the machine before we start sewing our seams, here's what you need for this part of the video. All you need are your thread snipers, remember your little handy little scissors and a piece of scrap fabric. I am just using a simple piece of muslin fabric here that I had leftover from a separate project. It really doesn't matter as long as this is not your actual sunglasses case. We don't want the first seems that we sold to be part of our project because this is all about practice right now. Also, we need to make sure that our machine is on the proper settings. So let's start with Stitch type. On my machine, my stitch type is right here where it says pattern. These stitch type indicates what type of stitches you may have guessed that your machine is sewing. And you want to make sure that your machine is set to a straight stitch. So I have a straight dashed line here on mine indicating that my machine is set to a straight stitch. Your stitch type might be on your computer, on your machine. Just make sure that it's set regardless of where the setting is to a straight stitch. Next, we need to make sure that our stitch length line has a knob here is set to the proper setting. I typically so with around a 2.5, 2.5 stitch length, that's for most normal basic stitches. There will be different projects where you will so with different stitch lengths. But for today I'd recommend something 2-3. You will also have a stitch width setting. Honestly, this could be at any width that you want for today because we're not using a width. We're sewing with a straight stitch. So it won't actually affect our straight stitches. Lastly, you may notice that directly above or close to your needle, there's another dial with numbers on it. This is to adjust your machines thread tension. Now, I always tell students don't touch this unless something is wrong with your seams. The tension affects how tight your stitches are against the fabric. So if your stitches are popping or super loose, one of those two extremes on your scenes, that's when you need to mess with your tension dial and adjust it. It typically goes 1-9 mindset about a 4.2 right now. However, if your seams look great, you're not having any bunching or loose issues. Do not change your machines tension. Okay. So we've made sure our stitch length is correct. The stitch type is correct. Tension should be good. It's time to start sewing. So take your scrap piece of fabric and we're going to move it over to buy or needle. Now directionally under a needle is our presser foot. Our presser foot can rock back and forth, but other than that, it does stay in place. The presser foot is what keeps your fabric in place as you feed it through the machine. Underneath your presser foot or two little rows of something that looks like a conveyor belt. They are in a way, these are your dog teeth and they move your fabric through the machine. You cannot. So if seem without your presser foot being down, right now our presser foot is up. So what we're gonna do is we're going to place our fabric underneath our presser foot. And then we need to put our presser foot down. This will be in some sort of a lover that's hidden in the back of your machine. Minds back here. I'm gonna go ahead and now my presser foot is down. Okay? So our fabrics there are settings are great or press or if it's down, we are ready to sell our first team. So make sure that your foot is very, very lightly pressing down on your foot pedal. Remember, we're not in it for speed right now. Quality is what matters anyways, I want you to lightly press down on your foot pedal. And so for as long as you'd like or to the edge of your fabric. Keep your left hand to the left and behind the scene that you're sewing and use your right hand to gently feed your fabric through your machine. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and stop there. Now. Right now my needle is actually down in my fabric. I need to get it back up because I do not want to pull my fabric away from that and risk breaking my needle. Once again, we're gonna go over to the right side of our machine where our flywheel is. Makes sure, like I said earlier, to always turn your flywheel towards you. And do you see how this move my needle to an upright position again. Now, the lever to move your presser foot up and pull your fabric away. Hey, my fabric is still attached to my machine by the threads. So go ahead and snip your threads, making sure there's still two nice long tails of thread on your machine here. For your next scene, I am going to go ahead and trim my threads. From the beginning of my seem to, like I said, it's very handy to have a wastebasket near you. Let's go ahead and look at our first scene. This is a great opportunity to check to make sure that your stitches all look good and that we threaded our machine properly, that there's no popping, no knots, know gathers, nothing like that, but it's just a nice straight seam. Looks good to me. Okay, after we sold our first scene, I want you to do that same thing again before we add on another concept. So I'm gonna go ahead and place my fabric underneath and slightly behind him I needle, placed the presser foot down. And so another scene. Once again, my needle is down so I'm going to use my flywheel. Pull the needle up, presser, foot up, pull out snip and snip. Okay. So that's another theme that we just sewn. Now that we've learned how to sew seems, let's add on another important concept. Right now. If you were to look at your scenes, they could come unraveled really easily, couldn't say with these threads hanging off the edge, even if I were to cut those, I can pretty easily just pull those seams out. Not great, not ideal, especially when you're sewing apparel. We want our seams to stay in place. That's why at the beginning and at the end of every scene that you will be sewing, you are going to backtrack. Backtracking is backward stitching that holds your seams in place just at the beginning and at the end. Here's how you do that. You're going to locate the backward stitching mode on your machine. Once again, it might be on your computer. It might be a button. Mine is a lever here that has a U-turn arrow on it to indicate we're going backwards. Now if I just press down on my lover, it doesn't do anything. In my case of mice situation with my machine, I need to hold down on the lever to trigger backward stitching on my machine. So let's practice. We are going to backtrack at the beginning and at the end of our next team. So I'm gonna go ahead and place my presser foot down. And first I will still stitch a few stitches forward before I backward stitch. So go ahead and go forward two to three stitches, going slowly once again. Okay. Now I'm going to press down on my backwards stitching lever, holding it down and slowly go back. Just a couple of stitches. Okay. Now I'm gonna go back over those stitches and continue sewing the rest of my scene. Okay. Let's say this is where I want to finish my scene. Once again, I'm going to press down on my backwards ditching lever, go backwards and go forward. Okay, So let's look at our first backward stitching scene. Make sure that your stitches on your backward stitching are going directly over your scene and see how much more secure the scene looks now with the backward stitching at the beginning and at the end of it, no more easily unraveling, even when I target the threads. Soon you'll get into this cadence where you do that at the beginning and at the end of every seem use so you won't even think about it. Okay, So we've learned about sewing straight seems we've sewn a scene with some backwards stitching. Our last concept we're gonna be learning for this part of the video is seam allowance. Seam allowance is the distance between your scene and the edge of the fabric. Here's my same. There's always gonna be a distance here, right? We're never gonna be exactly on the edge of the fabric because on our scene would just fall off and be useless. Most patterns that you saw with will indicate the seam allowance on the pattern for you to use for the rest of the project. We're going to experiment with a couple of different seam allowances. Now you may be wondering, how do I measure a seam allowance? Do I need to hold a ruler as I'm sewing? Absolutely not. Go ahead and look at your machine and at the plate that's underneath your needle. Most likely your machine has numbers, mine has fractions and lines to the right of my presser, foot and needle. It should at least have lines. If your machine has no markings for seam allowances, go ahead one time and take a ruler and measuring exactly from where your needle is out to the right and use masking tape or another similar tape to mark out the amounts of seam allowance. Now, what you need to do for sewing the seam allowances is to line up the edge of your fabric with the seam lines that you're using for that project. The great thing about sewing with a seam allowance is that it automatically helps you. So a straighter stitch. So let's first practice with a five eighths inch seam allowance. I locate five-eighths inch on my machine and I align up my fabric with that line. I'm gonna go ahead and start my seam, making sure to backstitch at the beginning and the end of my scene. Okay, backstitch again at the end and off my fabric. So now my entire scene that I just sold is exactly five eighths of an inch from the edge of my fabric. And it's a nice straight seem pretty great. Let's try one more same with a three-eighths inch seam allowance, which is also a common seam allowance. It's gonna be narrower. I'm gonna go ahead and line up the edge of my fabric with that three-eighths inch line, placed my presser foot down and so okay. Now you can see my second seam here where it's also a nice straight scene and it's a little bit closer to the edge because three-eighths inches less than five-eighths of an inch. That's how you So on your machine, take your time and practice, practice, practice. You don't want to start your first sewing project, which will be your sunglasses case until you have started to feel comfortable with selling. So go ahead and practice on your scrap piece of fabric. And before you know it, you will be a sewing experts. 6. Part 6: Cutting Out Fabric: We know how to operate a sewing machine now and it's fully threaded. Now, we just need to learn how to cut out our fabric so that we can start making our sunglasses cases. So the first thing you need in order to cut out your fabric is a nice flat cutting space. I have a cutting table here with a large thick cutting mat underneath it. But you don't need this. It's okay if you don't have this in your home, it just needs to be a flat space. It can totally be the floor as long as you're not cutting on top of a super nice rug or super thick carpet. It just needs to be flat and open. Maybe a dining room table, clear off your kitchen table temporarily, something like that. What else do you will need for cutting out is something to cut with, right? So you have two options here. You can use fabric scissors. Remember, makes sure that they are only for fabric. Or you can use a rotary blade cutter. Only use a rotary blade cutter if you have a cutting mat underneath, alright? Because the rotary blade will go through whatever you're cutting and so it has to be out of protected area. So if you don't have a cutting mat, don't use this. Also need a marker for your fabric to mark the measurements we're gonna be using. I loved my disappearing ink marker, so I'll be using that. And then a straight edge or other type of ruler for measuring your fabric. What we're actually going to be cutting out for the sunglasses case. Lastly, you'll need fabric. So I am going to be using a heavyweight fabric here to Canvas for my sunglasses case. You can use a lighter weight fabric if you would like. However, if you do decide to use a lighter weight fabric, you need to stiffen it up a bit. If we look at our sunglasses case, what it looks like here. You can see when I open up my sunglasses case example I have here it's nice and thick. And it isn't just like flimsy falling over, right? It's kinda a little bit sturdy because I'm using a thicker fabric. If you use a thinner fabric, that's fine, but you need to reinforce it with something called interfacing. So here's a small piece of interfacing that I have as an example. This is called usable interfacing. So there's textured, I can feel it, dots on one side and then it's smooth on this top side. And if you have a lighter weight fabric, you need to get some of this interfacing. And after you've cut out your fabric, you need two iron on a cut-out piece of this interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric and that will stiffen up so that it won't collapse when you create the sunglasses case. No extra sewing required with interfacing, but you do have to iron it because the iron heats up the glue on the wrong side of the interfacing and adheres it to the fabric. But remember, do that on the wrong side of the fabric. We don't want this showing on the outside. Okay? That being said, we can now go ahead and cut out our fabric. So what you will be doing for most of your sewing projects is using a paper pattern, pinning it to your fabric and cutting out around it. But this is such a simple first project. I don't even have a paper pattern you need to cut out. We just have a simple measurement for a square. You need to cut out to 8.5 inch by 8.5 inch squares. That's it. That's all you need for the sunglasses case. No pattern required. So since we need two of these, I'm gonna go ahead and open up my fabric since it's not very directional and I know what's the general direction of it that I want to use for my sunglasses case. I'm gonna go ahead, flip it to the wrong side so I can mark out my squares. So I'm going to mark out the measurements overall the fabric. I cheated just a little bit. Just save on time and already Major that the total length of my fabric was 17 " so that I just need to cut it in half for my first measurement. I'm going to use my marker to mark out just a couple of different places. The 7.5 inch measurement, excuse me, 8.5 inch measurement. Draw a line there. Now I'm gonna make my first cut. I am going to use my rotary blade since this is a nice straight line. And I have my cutting mat underneath it. Okay, then I'm going to line these up here and finished cutting it out. So it's a perfect 8.5 inch square. I'm going to press down really hard on my rotary blade cutter. This time. Since I'm cutting through two layers of thick fabric, feel free to cut your two squares separately. Let me see if that cut through all the way. Almost. Okay. Definitely closing up my blade. Okay. So those are my two squares of fabric that we need for our sunglasses case. One last thing to do for cutting out our case. If you'll remember, on the finished case, it has a nice curved edge here. We're gonna go ahead and cut out that curve before we. So I'm going to place the two fabrics wrong sides together on top of each other. And I'm going to fold them in half. It doesn't matter which way you fold them in half. Because after all it is a square. Now, I need to mark out and cut a curve just on one side. I will be cutting through four layers of fabric very thick, alright. But I just need to measure any type of curve. What you would like for your sunglasses case, there's not a specific right way to do it. So you can use something like a drinking glass. You could use a roll of tape. Or if you have one. I would recommend using a French curve. This is what I have and you'll use this in different sewing projects, but it has a nice curvature with it. I'm just going to use that to draw the curve just like that. Okay? And since this is thick and it's a curved edge, I am going to use my fabric scissors to cut along the curve instead of my rotary blade cutter. And there we have it. We have our two squares of fabric for our sunglasses case with the curves cut out, just waiting to be sown. That's all you need to do for cutting out for your project. 7. Part 7: Sewing The Sunglasses Case: All right. We're ready to so our sunglasses case. So make sure you have your two pieces of fabric that are all cut out now. You'll also need pins. Your thread sniffers, fabric scissors, just briefly. And then also a point turner or edge of a mechanical pencil like I'll be using. First step is to put your fabric right sides together. Because we're gonna be sewing on the inside for our first scene. As you'll find that you do a lot in sewing projects. Now, we need to pin our fabric together. So go ahead and take some pins and pin perpendicular to the edge of your fabric. That's my number one tip with pitting. So make sure your pin is going against the opposite way, are perpendicular to the edge of your fabric instead of parallel to it. If you pin parallel to the edge of your fabric, you're gonna find that it's a lot harder to take your pins out when you're sewing if they're this way as opposed to through this way, I can just easily take the edge of the pinout with my left hand. It'll make sense to you when we start sewing. I like to pin every couple inches and my fabric, typically, unless it's a really difficult area, feel free to put more pins in or even a couple of fewer pins. And then I want, I'm using. The more that you, so the more that you will find that you develop your own personal preference. Alright? So we're ready to sew around our sunglasses case. Make sure that you leave an opening at the top. So the edge opposite the curved edges, because we are going to need to turn this right side out after this step. If you so around the entirety of the square, you're not going to have an opening. I like to make sure the openings a few inches wide or at least wide for four of my fingers to get through. I'm going to make sure that I don't so past the opening. When I get to that point by placing double pins there, feel free to use fabric, chalk or some other marker that's going to help you remember, oh, stop sewing here. Alright, so let's begin. I'm going to start here at the other edge of the opening. We're gonna be sewing with a three-eighths inch seam allowance. So make sure you find that marker since we know how to use a simo, it's now on your machine. And don't forget to backtrack at the beginning and the end of your scene. Alright. I'm almost to my first pin here. Make sure you always take your pins out before you. So over them, not after. It's so important to take our pins out. Because if you do so over a pin, chances are you're going to bend or even break your sewing needle. So take the pins out first. Once you get about three-eighths of an inch, since that's our seam allowance. From the corner of your square here, you'll need to pivot. You don't need to start a new scene. You just need to turn the scene that you're sewing. This is super easy to do. First step is to make sure your needles down. My needle is currently all the way up. I'm going to reach over to my flywheel, turn it towards me, and make sure my needle is all the way down. After that happened in only after your needle is down. Go ahead and lift your presser foot. We're not starting a new scene. We're not cutting our threads were not even backward stitching. All we're doing is swinging our fabric around at a 90 degrees so that we continue our seam down the next side of the square. Before we do that, don't forget to put your presser foot back down. And that's all there is to pivot. You can continue sewing. Alright, I'm close to another pan. I'm going to take that out. Place it on my pin cushion, which I like to keep close to my machine. All right, We're coming to the curved edge of our sunglasses case. There's gonna be two of these. No need to pivot unless you have a really sharp curve. Just take it very slowly. So as you're turning your fabric, you're doing your best to stay on that same three eighths inch seam allowance line. See how I'm slowing it down and taking it every couple of stitches at a time. Okay, now I'm on a straight edge and then we'll get to that other curved edge shortly. All finished with clickers. And as you may have guessed, Once your three-eighths inch of an inch away from the edge of the top part of your case, you'll need to pivot one more time. Once you get to the point where your marker is and my case to double pins, that means they need to stop sewing to maintain that opening there. So I'm going to take both pins out and backstitch and end my scene. Okay, I'm going to pull my needle up, my threads at the beginning and at the end of my scene, so I don't have any unwanted threads hanging out inside my sunglasses case. Okay. Before we go to turn our case right-side out, take your fabric scissors and make diagonal cuts at your two 90-degree corners. They should look like that. Make sure you do not cut into the scene. That would not be good. This is just cutting down. No pun intended on the bulk inside your sunglasses case. Alright, now we're ready to turn it right side out. This part might go very quickly for you. If you have fabric that's a little bit lighter weight than mine. Heavier weight fabric is just a little bit bulkier and stiffer, takes a little bit more time. Now, when you initially turn your case right side out, like I've done here, it looks okay. Let's be honest. It also looks a little misshapen. That's when you need to take your point turner or similar tool. Place that inside the opening of your sunglasses case. And let's start at our 90-degree corners here. Just use them to poke on the inside. Remember, we're not trying to poke through the fabric. We don't want any unwanted holes. But I'm just using this to make it like a nice crisp corner. I'm gonna do it for the other corner there. And I'm even gonna do it on the curved edges. Just a little bit. They're there. Now is a great time to pause this video and iron your case. Nice and flat. I know you probably don't want to step away from your machine when you're so close to finishing your first project. But believe me, it's a good thing to do so it'll be nice and crisp. After you've done that, we have two more steps and then we're all finished. See this opening that we left here on our sunglasses case. We need to close that up. Our fabrics already folded at the proper seam allowance there. I'm just going to place one pin in and you are going to edge stitch this opening. Hi edge stitching. I mean you need to so with an extremely narrow seam allowance is just gonna be a very small team there. When I edge stitch, I like to use the opening in my presser foot over here as a guide for the edge of my fabric. So it's less even than an eighth of an inch seam allowance. It's very narrow. Okay. That was a very short seem. To close up our unwanted hoping since we no longer need it. I'm continuing to use red thread to not because it matches my fabric, because let's be real, it does it. But so you can see it a bit more easily. Alright, here's our last step for sewing our sunglasses case. You are going to fold your fabric in half like this. And we are going to sew around the bottom and this side of our sunglasses case, leaving this nice opening here on the end to put our shapes. And I'm going to go ahead and pin. And once again, if you have thick fabric like me, this is gonna be some good hand workout for placing those pins in there because I'm placing them through four layers of fabric. Okay. I think I'm gonna do one more pin. Really makes sure that the edges of your sunglasses case are lined up because that's gonna be a pretty visible mistake if they're not. Okay. So you will be starting here at the fold of your case. That's what we're going to start sewing. And once again, it's going to be a three-eighths inch seam allowance. Be patient with your machine to as its probably going through a lot of bulk. At least mine is. Now when that happens, I like to start a little bit further in on the fabric and then backward stitch. It seems to help my machine get going. I'm still going to backtrack to the edge of the fabric. You may find you have to really push your fabric through to keep your machine going for this step, I'm taking my time going around the curved edge. I think I am going to pivot here as I'm sewing. I think that'll keep me more on track with the three-eighths inch seam allowance. Lift my presser foot up and back down. Almost finished. I'm taking my last pinout. Make sure you backstitch at the end. I'm going to pull my fabric away. After I left the presser foot. Snip your threads. And there you have it. Your very first sewing project is now complete. You have a highly useful super sought-after sunglasses case that you can say you made all yourself on your sewing machine. Time to go put it to use. 8. Part 8: Learn to Sew Conclusion: That concludes our learned to sew course. I hope you feel so accomplished and proud of yourself for all that you've achieved in this course. I hope that you are just exuding confidence and ready to tackle 1 million new projects at your sewing machine. Because you can, since you now have the skills needed. I hope that you love your sunglasses case. Maybe you'll make multiple of them. Please post the photos of them. The fabric that I use for my sunglasses cases is from my shop on Spoonflower. If you're interested. It's Hannah notes designs. And I just hope that you are falling in love with sewing because I certainly know that I have been myself for many years now. The possibilities are endless when it's you and your machine. Go ahead, go on and take on the world. Because you sure can now, with this skills that you have learned from this learn to sew class. I'll see you next time.