A simple trick with a seam ripper saved my whole collection last month

I was working on a jacket design for about three weeks and the shoulder seams just looked bulky and wrong. After ripping them out and redoing them five times, I tried using a smaller stitch length on my machine, like 2.0 instead of 2.5. The difference was crazy, the fabric laid flat instantly and the whole silhouette got way cleaner. It's such a small change but it fixed the entire piece. Has anyone else found a tiny machine setting that made a huge difference in how a garment hangs?

4 comments

4 Comments

nancy_wood2mo ago

Wait, you redid the shoulder seams FIVE times? That is some serious dedication. I would have thrown the whole jacket out after the second try.

jason_stone592mo ago

It was actually six times, but who's counting. The fabric was too expensive to give up on.

maxl9317d ago

And six times is actually not even that bad if youve ever tried to set in a sleeve cap on a heavy wool blazer. I had one project where i mustve taken the same sleeve out like eight or nine times because the fabric was too thick and the curve just wouldnt sit flat no matter what i did. Its one of those things where you get to a point where you know the seam is wrong but youre so tired of ripping it out that you just close the machine and walk away for a day. Then you come back and its somehow worse than when you left it so you just rip it out again anyway.

johnson.river2mo ago

Been there with a linen shirt last summer. Ripped out the same collar stand four times before it sat right. Sometimes the fabric just wins a few rounds before you figure it out.