Category Archives: SEWING ESSENTIALS

For many people, elastic waistband is a synonym of comfort. Most commonly seen on skirts, pants and dresses, a garment with elasticized waist is easy to pull on, will stay in place all day and live with your body. Elastic waistbands also allow for small variations in fit and work great for most body types….

Today we are going to show you how to draft, form and sew box pleats. After knife pleats, discussed in our previous tutorial, box pleats are the second most common type of pleats you are likely to use when sewing garments. Just as with knife pleats, they are used to add volume, take in fullness…

Pleats are folds of fabric that are made to add volume, take in fullness and add interest to the silhouette of a garment. They can be used as decorative features on sleeves and blouses as well as in home decor. However, pleats are most commonly seen on skirts and dresses to take in a full…

Today’s tutorial is about one of the most common patternmaking techniques: neckline alteration. Changing the shape of a neckline is one of the easiest ways to vary the style of a garment. In this tutorial, we will show you how to do a basic alteration to an existing pattern in order to achieve a design…

Welcome back to our pocket workshop! After inseam pockets, patch pockets and cargo patch pockets, we want to show you how to sew single welt pockets. The main characteristic of this type of pocket is that in a welt pocket the actual pocket is on the inside of the garment, with a strip of fabric…

Today we are going to show you how to sew a vent (sometimes called a split). It is a part of functional design that allows for the ease of movement (walking or sitting) within a garment. All vents are positioned in the seams and are most commonly seen at the back of classic style skirts,…

One way of adding fullness to a particular area of your garment, for example, a hemline on a skirt or a back of a dress or even the bottom of a sleeve, is by inserting panels of fabric which are commonly known as godets. A godet is usually triangular in shape (but not necessarily) and…

Today’s tutorial is a quick tip on how to finish the hem of a curved edge (a circle skirt or a rounded bottom hem of a shirt, for example). Since the curved raw edge is fuller than what you are trying to hem it into, the standard turned up twice technique is not ideal for…

A yoke is the upper part of a garment that fits the shoulder area. It consists of two separate pieces of fabric (an inside and an outside yoke) that are attached to the front and the back of the garment. Since all the raw edges are concealed within the two yoke pieces, you get a…

Today we wanted to show you how to sew another type of a sleeve placket – a continuous bound placket. It is called like this because it’s made from one piece of fabric that is used to bind a slash opening in the sleeve. This method is much easier than the traditional shirt sleeve and…

A sleeve placket is an opening at the end of a sleeve that allows your hand to fit through a narrow space easily. It’s most often seen on shirts or blouses and is generally finished with a cuff. Not only it is functional, it can also be used as a design detail. At first glance,…

In one of our recent posts we have showed you how to draft and sew button bands the classic, shirtmaking way. So now that you got the hang of the basic techniques, we thought we’d take you step farther and show you how to make a concealed button band. As its name suggests, a concealed…

The partial placket, also known as a button placket, is basically an opening in clothes that allows you to easily put and remove your clothes and is a great design feature. As its name suggests, the partial placket will only go down a short distance instead of the full length of the garment. Sewing a…

Peter Pan collar is a flat collar with rounded ends that meet at the front. Women have worn this classic design staple since the early 20th century and it has made a major comeback during these last years. It seems to be popping up a lot in stores and around necks, but why buy one…

If you are looking to take your sewing skills to a new level, you’ll appreciate this tutorial on how to sew the button bands the shirtmaking way – when one front side is simply folded twice and stitched in place, while the other has a separate, sew-on front band where the buttonholes go. Even though…