How to Keep Fabric from Puckering

[Music] one of the most frustrating and heartbreaking things when we're sewing is to be working on a garment in particular and find that our threads and our seams are puckering especially if you're using something like a satin it tends to really pucker and if you get this kind of action going and then when you have it open it just the seam doesn't lay right it doesn't look good and it feels very non-professional and that's not what we want with our sewing we know that the specialty fabrics like satin tends to pucker but even regular cotton can pucker which is frustrating for my quilters out there it's it's not a good thing even when you lengthen your stitches it's puckering even if it's a heavy decorative fabric it's puckering even when i'm doing a fancy stitch such as this blanket stitch it's puckering and we're very frustrated what do we do let me give you a few tips here first of all always always always have a test sample before you start working on the project just take a few inches of fabric like i've done here three to six inches will do just fine and run the stitch with the thread and the stitch length that you're planning on using and evaluate it if it's not right you need to probably number one loosen the tension number two lengthen the sit stitch slightly you may even need to slow down your sewing sometimes if we sew too fast it can cause puckering you want to make sure you're guiding the fabric through the machine not pulling it because when it comes out the fabric has a memory and it'll stretch back to where it was and we get puckering you also need to make sure that you're using the correct thread you may need to have a lighter weight thread or a heavier thread depending on what you're doing so check your thread weight most important have a sharp needle a new needle makes all the difference in the world you want to make sure you're changing it often at least every eight hours of sewing more often if you're using specialty fabrics if you're embroidering if you're quilting make sure you're changing that needle more frequently you can tell when a needle needs changing for sure if you start seeing pull pulled threads on your fabric or if you start hearing kind of a whack thwack when you're putting putting your fabric through the machine so all things to look for make sure it's also the right type of needle you don't want to be using a ballpoint needle on your specialty fabrics that should be a sharp so that it's making a nice sharp point and going through and not bunching the fabric or anything or or piercing it with a hole larger than what you want there's some tips that you can do if you're finding the puckering at the beginning or rather puckering overall let's put some interfacing in there look at the difference between these two same fabric same stitch length this is just folded over and i stitched it and you see the puckering these are not pressed this is with a piece of stabilizer or interfacing in the middle and then i stitched i remember very clearly when i went and bought a brand new machine my first embroidery machine i was so excited i came home and my husband gasped at the price even though he had agreed that i could purchase it he was a little shocked when i came home and he said okay fine and i'd agonized for nine months before i bought this machine just like a baby and he said let's see what this beast can do so i put my fabric in and i put on one of these giant stitches that it was supposed to do this little dinosaur and he came out just as crunched and ugly as could be i was in tears i'm like oh my god i didn't do that at the store so i went back and they said oh that's because you didn't use stabilizer we put the stabilizer in and it worked perfectly so that may be part of your difficulty with your puckering put some stabilizer interfacing in very critical when you're using the decorative stitches or embroidery also buttonholes makes a big difference on your buttonholes handle your fabric gently fabric has three grain lines the first is the traditional one that we all think of the straight of grain it runs parallel with the selvage that has the least amount of stretch the cross grain is perpendicular it stretches a little more you can see how that's stretching more but the bias is the 45 degree line imaginary line between these two points and when you pull on the bias you can see how much that is stretching compared to the other two so my tip for you to help avoid puckering is anytime you've got a bias handle it very gently my quilters use a lot of bias when they're piecing and they're using triangles this is going to stretch so be very careful with it for sewers you're going to have bias where the neckline is this is going to really stretch a lot and have puckering all right on different parts of that circle same thing with like a pocket it's or a sleeve if this was a sleeve your sleeve cap is going to stretch a lot and it can pucker so run a stay stitch 1 8 of an inch away just a straight 2.0 or 12 stitch per inch line of stitching on the curves and you'll find that will help with the puckering the other thing i want you to try doing is pin more frequently pinning actually helps with puckering i want you to pin the ends first and then the middle and then if you need to pin some more in between go ahead and do that this is critical for quilt borders for my quilters and i want you to just sew and hack because you do get puckers in there and it also pulls and distorts the fabric pinning will help a lot the last thing you can do with puckering is to press everything as soon as you sew it get over to the sewing machine and press i don't want your ironing i want you to press up and down motion and first we're going to press it just as it came out of the machine that sets the seam if you're a quilter then you will be typically pressing to one side or the other if you are a garment sewer you'll probably have a 5 8 inch seam instead of quarter inch and now is when i want you to open it up and press that seam you need to press seams open before you cross them with another seam and that will get out a lot of the puckering that you've been having but don't rely on that as the only way to get it out look back to the cause of the puckering first and let's try and fix it before we get to the pressing stage

Channel: National Quilters Circle

Views: 11,798

Rating: 4.959866 out of 5

Keywords: quilting, quilting tips, quilt, quilt tips, sew, sew quilts, sewing, quilt patterns, quilt projects, quilting projects, quilting patterns, national quilters circle, nqc, quilter, quilting videos, quilt videos, quilting how to, stitching, learn to quilt, quilting class, quilt class

Id: u5kVT1sKWgQ

Length: 7min 33sec (453 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020