This week will have us finishing our tops. All that is left to do is sew in the sleeves and hem both the sleeves and the t-shirt.
Sleeves for knit tops are about the easiest to sew. This is because the sleeve is easy to ease in on account of the fabric's stretch. The sleeves are sewn in with the flat construction method, i.e. before the side seams are sewn.
Tip: Mark the top of the sleeve with a small scissor snip.
Place the sleeve and the t-shirt right sides together. Match the underarm points and then the center of the sleeve to the shoulder seam. You can probably sew the sleeve in with just these three points pinned together.
Pinning sleeve to garment at armhole
When sewing this seam, it is much easier to sew with the sleeve on the bottom. The action of the feed dogs will help to ease in the sleeve to the armhole. A trick that I picked up from Margaret Islander, the guru of industrial sewing techniques, is to place your left hand in between the two layers that you are sewing. Use your finger tips to gently pull back the under layer in order to bring the two raw edges together. For some reason, this also eases in any extra fabric that is there on the bottom layer. The two pieces match up really well.
You can either sew this seam with your sewing machine or with the serger. If using a sewing machine, finish the raw edge by zig-zagging the two layers together with a medium width zigzag. Or you can simply sew a second line of stitching, just inside the first one. The underarm seam will take the most stress, so that's why you should sew it twice.
Sew and finish the seam allowances of the armhole seam
Take the time to press these seam allowances towards the sleeve. The finished garment will look better for this.
Now you can pin the entire side seam together, from the bottom of the sleeve to the bottom of the garment. Again, serge or zigzag these seam allowances together. Be sure to sew the underarm area twice.
Sew underarm and side seam in one continuous seam
I recently made a shirt from a striped knit fabric. I took time to cut it out so that the side seams could be matched. I must say that it would have been very time consuming to try and sew these and have them come out matched, if I had not used the walking foot that comes with my machine. If you don't have one of these attachments, I would really encourage you to get one. They are marvelous little inventions.
The foot has a set of feed dogs on the bottom. These work in conjunction with the needle. Every time the needle goes up, the feed dogs go up too. These are timed to do this as the feed dogs of the machine go down. In other words, all pressure is released on the fabric at the same time. Then the feed dogs come back onto the fabric, and the two sets move the fabric along evenly. Without the walking foot, the feed dogs of the machine push the bottom layer towards the back, while the presser foot holds back the top layer. The result is that your top layer shifts forward and ends up longer than the bottom layer. With a walking foot, this uneven feeding is corrected and both layers go through at the same rate. So you can sew plaids, stripes, matching motifs together without shifting them.
Tip: Some walking feet (also called "even feed feet") can be very expensive. I have heard the figure $90 for some models. However, many machines will take a generic walking foot, by removing the ankle on the shank and then screwing on the walking foot. This can save you a lot of money as generic ones can be purchased for around $20. Now, I'm not saying that your machine will be able to do this, but check first before spending all that money. The notions companies that I listed in the first lesson are very good for giving advice on this and I know that they carry generic sewing machine feet.
I also used the walking foot for sewing on the patch pocket. It was important to me that the stripes aligned just perfectly on the shirt. I also sewed a strip of black contrasting fabric to the top of the pocket for some added dash. I will post a picture of this shirt next week with the lesson on the rugby neckline.
Hemming a Knit Shirt
I think that the neckline and the hem of a knit garment are the most important areas to finish well. Think of it, the rest of your sewing is on the inside but these two areas require top-stitching. Crooked stitching, uneven stitches, stretched-out fabric are dead give-aways of a home-made shirt. So let's concentrate on getting a nice hem finish.
The September 2002 issue of Sew News Magazine has a short article on hemming knits, in response to a question from a reader on how to sew smooth, non-rippling hems in knits. They recommend a double line of top-stitching, a single line of top-stitching matched to one of the stripes, a plain zigzag stitch, or a double-stitched hem using a twin needle.
Picture scanned from Sew News Sept. 2002
Snoop-shopping in the retail stores will soon tell you that the most common hem treatment on a knit shirt is a double line of top-stitching. Now you can achieve this by sewing the hem twice with a conventional single needle, but it is so much easier and quicker to use a twin-needle. Plus the twin-needle forms a zigzag stitch on the underside, giving the added advantage of stretch to the hem.
Try on your t-shirt before hemming to see if you want to take in the side seams. Also pin up the hem to the length you want. If the hem is deeper than 1", trim away the extra now. Pin up the hem and place the pins so that the heads line up along the foldline. Then, when you are stitching the hem, you can remove the pins easily before you sew over them.
Tip: Sewing over pins, especially on hems, can result in crooked stitches and puckers in the fabric. Remove pins as you come to them.
Turn up and pin the hem allowance with pin heads down
Important
Sew the hem from the right side of the garment. If you have cut your hem evenly, it will not be a problem to stitch it in the right place. Use one of the lines on your needle plate as a guide, or place a strip of masking tape on the machine as a guide for the edge of your fabric.
A twin-needled hem is my first choice
My Hem is Rippling and Stretching! Help!
If you have made a sample and found that the knit ripples, try interfacing the hem allowance. Be sure to use knit interfacing though. The interfacing needs to be able to stretch as the knit does, so make sure that the direction of stretch on the interfacing matches the direction of stretch on the knit. This is most likely the horizontal direction.
Interface the hem allowance with knit interfacing to prevent stretching out
Marcy Tilton, who has written an article for Threads on sewing a $200 T-shirt, interfaces her hems in an interesting way. Rather than interfacing the entire hem, which isn't necessary, she cuts a narrow strip of interfacing, stitches it to the wrong side of the top of the hem with the resin side up. Then when she presses the hem in place, the strip of interfacing fuses the hem in place and, at the same time, stabilizes the line of stitching.
Another tip that I picked up from the Burda World of Fashion, April 2002, is to place two pieces of Scotch tape (or masking tape) on either side of the stitching line. Then simply stitch in between with the double needle and remove the tape when finished. I haven't tried this method yet, but it sounds great to me.
Place strips of adhesive tape on either side of the stitching line for the hem
Tip: Actually, Scotch tape and masking tape are invaluable tools in the sewing room. I particularly like using ½" wide tape to make the windows for zippered pockets. Just stitch around the tape, and you have perfect rectangle ½" wide. I also used Scotch tape just the other day as a guide for the top-stitching on a fly zipper.
Both your sleeve hems and the bottom hem of the shirt will be done the same way. Once you have finished sewing the hems, give them a light press with the iron. Now your shirt should be finished and ready to wear.
Next week, I will post directions for making a rugby neckline on a t-shirt. I found a nice one in a Jalie pattern that I used recently. So drop by again in a week for the fourth and final lesson on sewing knit tops.
Copyright protected, August 2002, Julie Culshaw
Any sewing questions? I would be happy to try and answer them: you can email me at mail@timmelfabrics.com