Sewing For Beginners: The Foundations For Sewing Projects

1. Start Sewing Intro: Are you drawn to cute or beautiful fabrics and would love to learn how to sew up some projects? Join me as we go over the basics of sewing. I'll guide you through setting up your machine, your threads, fabric, and some simple stitching. I'm Joe. I've been sewing for over 30 years and teaching sewing for quite a few years. I've learned to sew from my mom who was also our town's kits consult teacher. My favorite things to sew are clothes, though I can never resist a cute bag, zipper pouch, pillowcase, stuffed animal, or a fun scarf. Once you've learned basic sewing skills, you'll have the confidence and skills to start sewing many items. I made this class with the complete beginner in mind for someone who has never sewn or even taken their sewing machine out of the box. If you're like me, when learning something new, it's always helpful to see someone do it slowly and you can follow along. We will go over how to plug your chords into your machine, how to get your thread ready, I have a little surprise to show you in that part, and cut your fabric. Then we're on to the fun part; sewing some lines. These sewing lines will be your foundation skills for most of your sewing. That's it. By the end of this class, you'll have two pieces of fabric sewn together and we'll see how it is the start of sewing more. Let's grab our fabric and supplies and meet up in the first lesson. 2. Project Start Sewing: The project for today's class is this, two pieces of fabric sewn together down the side to create a seam. This seam project is the main foundation for sewing. You will find seams on all your clothing, quilts, and many items, so it is a great skill for beginners. A quick tip is to get comfortable sewing some practice lines first, your project will be completed in the sew a seam lesson. Be sure to upload a few photos so we can gush over it in the project gallery. I'm excited to see your project and which fabric you choose. See you in the next lesson. 3. Supplies and Materials: Let's go over everything you'll need today. First off, is a cotton fabric enough that you can cut 6, 6 to 8 inch squares, a spool of thread, or with a light gray it blends, goes well with the fabric. An empty or a full bobbin thread. I go with plastic. I had a sewing machine tech tell me that plastic is better because the metal that comes with them can wear away the parts of your sewing machine. Sharp scissors. You'll notice I label mine fabric only, so everyone in the house knows. [NOISE] Pins. [NOISE] These are just a straight pin with a head. Or you can use sewing clips too. [NOISE] A ruler. Just the basic school ruler will do. [NOISE] A pen. [NOISE] This one is a friction pen. It's erasable on paper, and on fabric when you use it, you can erase it with an iron. Sometimes though it can leave a bit of a color left behind, so just do a test if you use those. [NOISE] A sewing pen, this one washes out with water and this side is air air. If you're doing a long project, you'd want the washout. If you're doing a project that afternoon, something short and you're not too worried, you can go with the air erasable. [NOISE] Today I'm using a sharpie pen just so that you can see my lines easily and that's fine for you for today too. Our next lesson is cutting fabric, so you'll need your scissors ruler and a pen. 4. Cutting Fabric: If you have a rotary cutter, go ahead and skip to the rotary cutter bonus section. It's at the end of all the lessons in this class. If not, we are cutting with our scissors, ruler and pen. We're going to mark six inches, then we're going to go in six inches, put a dot, and go in from the top six inches. Put a dot. We're going to go down six inches and see how close. That'll end up perfect. We're going to draw a line, just connect our dots. You need to do this six times so that you have six squares. I'm going to go ahead and cut this out. Here we go. Yeah, once you have six, I will meet you in the next lesson and we'll set up our sewing machines. 5. Setting Up Your Machine: Your sewing machine will come with two chords. This one is your power cord. Just match it up. [NOISE] Plug it in. This is your on-off switch. [NOISE] Then we have this weird-looking thing and this is your foot pedal. You'll place this part on the floor and this part will plug into the side way of your machine. This little part here is the side flywheel and it will make your needle here go up and down manually, whereas, the foot pedal makes it go up and down automatically. We'll talk about this part here later when we start sewing our lines. Next, we will wind a bobbin. 6. Wind A Bobbin: We're going to put our spool of thread into our machine to wind our bobbin. When you do it, this little ridge at the bottom is meant to stop your spool of thread from unraveling. So when you put it into your machine you want it to the right, you don't want it catching or messing it from this side when it's coming off, so we're going to put it that way. [NOISE] We have a little thread stopper , your spool stopper. I don't put it really tight, I could have it a little bit loose. Now we're going to go through this guide, and around this little tension disk. Goes to that guide, because it will be clockwise around that disk, underneath this little guide, we'll catch it in there. Then we're just going to put our thread, there should be a little hole right next to the center, so you're going to put your thread from the inside, coming up and out that hole. You should have your tail on top of your bobbin and your thread going into it there. Then we're going to put onto this little piece here, and there's a little notch that will line up with the notch in there, so I place it on and I just turn it till it clicks down. Then to disengage your needle, we're going to [NOISE] push that over, so then all the other parts of the machine aren't working, just this part. We're going to hold this thread and step on our pedal. [NOISE] Once you have a good start, you can grab your scissors and just trim that little tail off. [NOISE] Keep going and wind your bobbin, I don't know, till it's a quarter inch from the edge or a millimeter. You just don't want it to start falling off this edge. You'll see when you start to get close to the edge, to just stop. So go ahead and wind your bobbing. Our next step will be threading our machine. [NOISE] 7. Thread Your Machine: We're threading our machine and now, for that little surprise I was talking about at the beginning. This is variegated thread, it's my favorite. This one goes red to a little bit of orange, yellow, green, blue. I have this one and I have this rainbow that has purple in it. [NOISE] I'll show you a few more. [NOISE] I have this pretty blues and greens, and kind of a melanie pinks, and purples, and yellows, and orange. Today, I guess we'll go with the classic rainbow [NOISE]. We'll thread our machine with this. On this one here, there's a little slit cut into it on the bottom, so you want that against the back there. We'll just have a little slit, just harder to see. There's my slit. I'm going to put it that way onto the back. I'm going to stop around loosely and I'm going to take it through this guide again around this one. The other way, we're going to go counterclockwise now. Of course your machine will likely be different. This is a Pfaff. Just look at your guide, it'll show you. In my mom's old machine, this part opened up and it had a little map of how they do open it so you'll be able to find that with your machine. Then we're going to go down to the left side of this little disk here, and then down underneath and back up. Now we came up to the left side and then we're going to take it around to the right and it'll go into the little eye in that piece and back down. To recap, from the top angle, so we went down the left side of that desk, went down here, back up onto the other side of this and hooked it into that eye and then came back down. I'm going to go, kind of like flossing your teeth into that little part. Then I'm going to use my wheel to get my needle up [NOISE] so now I can thread it and this piece here pushes down and there's a little metal piece that goes through the eye of the needle so that it's easy to thread. I just go like this, [NOISE] and catch it in there and it threads my needle for me or you can just eyeball it and do it that way too. [NOISE] I have a bobbin in here, so I'm going to take it out and pretend that's not there. [NOISE] Some will have the bobbin case on the top, some underneath. Again, you might have to look at your manual or if it comes with a video so we're going to take our little bobbin piece. You'll see this little slit, I hope you can see, goes in there so I'm going to place my bobbin, this would be counterclockwise into it so that this slit and the thread goes with and in the same direction. Then I'm going to pull it down through that little metal piece, and that's it. Then I pull this up, and place it in. I want to have it in the right place, that piece will click down. If it doesn't make sense, I don't know, it won't click down. Just line it up so that clicks down and that might take some playing with. Then I'm going to take my wheel on the side, put my needle down and it'll catch that bobbin thread and bring it up to the top. I just pull that out, then I have my two threads above and they're ready to go so I'll close this back up [NOISE] and we are ready to grab two fabric pieces and get ready to sew. 8. Sew Practice Lines: Hey, we're going to get ready to sew lines. I have two pieces of fabric here. I have the right sides together, and I think for drawing my lines, I'm going to draw them on the back side, will just be easier to see for this. We call us a fabric sandwich. I'll draw one line here, nice straight line, I'm going to try a curve. Let's do zigzag. Of course you can do as many of these as you want. You could draw lines the other direction after, you can draw them beside, they can overlap. Whenever you think is fun, for sure, it'll take more than just this for practice, so just keep going until you feel comfortable with your machine. [NOISE] I've got my fabric I'll need to go. Here's going to line it up where I think the needle will start on the line, and I have a presser foot here, low presser foot lever, to put that down, until it's size and tight. When I'm not sewing, it'll always be up. Make sure your presser foot's down, nice and tight there. Then you'll use that wheel on the side we talked about earlier. Put your needle down and see if it's starting where you want it to start to line up. You can do one stitch. Now, I take my threads, and move them to the back and you can lift your presser foot up a teeny bit to get it back there. Sewing over your tails, I'm going to place my hands on the side, and I want to be in front of the needle , just to the side. I don't want to be pulling my fabric. I don't want to be pushing it, to slightly guiding it here. I'm going to step on my pedal and start sewing on this line. [NOISE] Stop when you get to the edge, move your foot right off your pedal. You don't want to accidentally step on it when you're touching your fabric. You're going to lift your presser foot up, and give it a little tag, if it doesn't come out easy, you just need to turn your wheel a little, so that your needle is up all the way. If your needle is not up all the way, it won't [NOISE] let you just pull the thread. You might have a little side cutter on your machine. If not, just use your scissors and cut your thread. You should have a nice line. Now, we're going to do the curved line, I'm not starting straight like I did the other one. I'm going to start going with my line. I'm going to turn it to the side, and use my wheel to line that first stitch up. Looks good. My tail is behind from when I put it in. I'm ready to just start slowly sewing. Now, I'm just going to guide it a little to the right, to just follow that curve. Not pulling really hard. If the curve is getting away from you, you can put your needle down, lift up your presser foot, and give it a little turn so you're going straight again. [NOISE] Curves would take a lot of practice. We've got straight line a curve. Now, we're going to do a zigzag. We're going to line up our beginning, make sure our threads around it the way. I'm going to sew, I'm just going to take it back there. [NOISE] When I get really close to that point, I'm going to stop. Take my foot off the pedal, lift up my presser foot, turn it, so that I'm going straight with the line again. [NOISE] Not my corners, I'm going to lift up the presser foot, turn it and keep sewing. [NOISE] Those are practice lines. Next we are going to sew a seam. 9. Sew A Seam: I've got my two fabric pieces to sew seam. What I'm going to want to do is sandwich the right sides together. We have the backside on the front, a backside on the back. What we're going to do, and you'll probably do this on a table, but you'll line up your edge, so it's nice and straight, and then you can pin it or clip it. I'll do one of each. That's going to keep it nice and straight how you want it. On this today, we're going to sew a half inch seam, just looks nice and big and you can see it. If you look on your sewing machine, there should be a guide with all the numbers, so we'll go to 1/2 or you could choose any. You could do a quarter-inch, whichever. Just make sure you stay on the same one. What you can do is put a tape line, if you have painter's tape. You can tape it on there. I'm going to find my 1/2 inch, I'm going to line it up. [NOISE] I have this lined up where I'm starting and my side edge lined up on the 1/2. If I was doing a seam in quilting, I would not backstitch. But if I was doing a seam on a pillowcase or a scrunchy or a scarf, something that I'm going flip inside out, I would backstitch. Pretty much everything I can think of right now other than quilting, you would backstitch. What backstitch is, is you don't do a couple of stitches. Then there'll be a button, this one looks like a little U-turn, so you push that [NOISE] and then your stitch we'll go backwards. Then to end that and keep going forwards, you'll push it again, and your stitching goes forwards again. You do that at the beginning of your sewing and at the end. Now, we're back to our 1/2 guide and I'll just start going slowly. Before I get to my clip, I just want to pause and take it out. [NOISE] I'll keep going, keeping that 1/2 inch guide even there. [NOISE] Then coming up to my pin again, so I'm going to take it out. [NOISE] I'm going to go almost to the end, [NOISE] then I'm going to hit my backstitch button, go back a couple of stitches, push it again. [NOISE] That looks nice, so now we have a seam. You can open up your fabric. I have two pieces sewn together. Now, you can see here seem bubbles, so what we're going to do is head over to our iron station and give that a nice press. Open up and just press that seam. Makes it flat. There we go. That seems ready too. 10. Sew A Corner: We're going to saw a corner. Like last time we'll have our right sides together, wrong side on the front, wrong side on the back so they are not the right side inside the sandwich. You can pin it if you like. Now, we're going to do a corner. We're going to saw along the side, along the bottom, and we might as well go back up the other side. Then you could see what a pillowcase or a tote bag would be like. I think I'm going to do a 3/8. We're going to start here. I'm going to put my needle in. I'm going to saw two stitches, back stitch. [NOISE] Push it again, go forward. [NOISE] Pause. Take up out my pin. [NOISE] I'm going to slow down when I start to get close to this corner. It's a fun guessing game. You're going to guess when I'm 3/8ths of an inch from the end, that's when I'd want to turn. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don't, know no big deal for this. [NOISE] I'm going to go one more stitch and then I'm going to take my foot off the pedal, lift up my presser foot, turn it, put my presser foot dip down. I'm pretty close, I'd call that a win. I'm going to keep going. [NOISE] Maybe one more. Then I'm going to turn it. I should tell you too, if I have my needle down engaged, then when I turn it, it's easier to keep my spot. [NOISE] I take this out. It's not coming out, so that means I need to lift my needle a little bit, and then it lets it go. [NOISE] We have our three sides done. What we can do, let's take it and flip it inside out. That makes a very cute little bag, that's my handle on it. You see if it was bigger, it could be the start of a pillowcase, the start of a bag. Next, we are going to learn how to do the hem. 11. Sew A Hem : I need a half-inch hem on this. I have a little trucks, I flip it over and to do a half-folded will actually go an inch, will always double what we want our hem to be. [NOISE] Align that. We have an inch and we want a half-inch hem, so we going to fold it in half and iron that. [NOISE] Press that for a second, [NOISE] a half-inch crest, and then we're going to give it another fold until the edge is nice and finished. [NOISE] We're ready to go sew it. [NOISE] We have our hem, now we're going to sew it. I can see my line there. I'm going to sew it on, I think three-eighths will be good for those turn. [NOISE] Go ahead and do a couple of stitches [NOISE] and the backstitch [NOISE]. Backstitch again [NOISE]. Backstitch again. [NOISE] Take a look at this [NOISE] Those are hem, it's all hemmed in the back. 12. Thank You: I'm sure you're seeing how your new foundational sewing skills will help you create many items. Thank you so much for joining me today and I hope this is the beginning of your love of sewing. 13. Bonus Rotary Cutting: For our fabric cutting, we have our cutting mat. This one is a 24 inch by 36 inch, and it's a wonderful size. We have a ruler. This one is 6.5 by 24. This handle I just got recently. I used it for years and years without, but I just find it. It makes it nice, keeps my fingers out of the way, and a Rotary cutter. Push this down [NOISE] to put the blade out, [NOISE] pop that to put it back in. First, we're just going to get a straight edge before we start measuring and cutting our squares. I'm going to put my blade down, it's going to line it up on the edge. Just gentle pressure [NOISE]. Just go along the edge of the ruler, and now see my fabric comes apart, so I'm not using this one, so I'm just going to set it to the side. Now here's the trick. I want to use six-inch squares, but I'm not going to cut it from this side. I'm actually going to flip it over, and cut it from the other side. On my ruler, do the six inches. If you look on your ruler, it's clear, and you can line up your fabric perfectly onto that line. I'll do that on this edge, and then that'll give me the six inches here. That looks perfect, so then I'm going to put a little pressure on my ruler, and then just cut alongside [NOISE]. In this case, I'm not going to need that, so I'll set it to the side too. Now if it was a long piece of fabric, we'd have a great big strip, and we just keep cutting, cutting, cutting. This one is smaller, so we'll just do a couple of cuts. If it was a really long piece, we could fold it in half and do our cuts to save time. I want six inches by six inches. I'm just going to line it up here again. There we go, that's six inches. [NOISE] I just cut it, and I just move along, but I'm just going to move the fabric from now because it's easier with the camera. I'm just going to line up that edge again. That one is not six inches, so it wouldn't be used if it was a project. My one tip with a Rotary cutter is if you're cutting, and it's missing little pieces, and you find yourself going over it a second time, it's time to change to the blade, and you just need a sharper one, and it'll be back to [NOISE] flawless cutting [NOISE].