Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Zig-Zag Finish

Have you ever been really tight on fabric and not sure you have enough to do a proper hem to finish out your project?  I've definitely been there time and time again... you'd think I'd learn to get extra fabric by now!!

Well just this week I was making a couple curtain panels for my sister's first dorm room.  We were not 100% sure of the exact dimensions of the window so I didn't want to waste a single centimeter!  So, I came up with a solution, I finished the bottom of each panel with a thick decorative stich, instead of a normal hem.


I positioned the needle as close to the bottom edge as I could without risking it slipping or sewing over the edge.


We picked out a thick zig-zag stich, shown above in the diagram on my machine.


When I was finished, the stich was less than a half inch from the edge of the fabric, even at it's tallest points.  I saved a whole inch easily, and I was very pleased!

I did accidentally go over the edge of the fabric at one point, but I was able to undo the messed up section with a seam ripper and continue the stich from the top of a point seamlessly.  So I recommend going slow on this type of finish, definitely worth the extra time!


Then to finish it off I simply cut off the fabric below the stich as close as I could without cutting into the  thread.  This step can be kind of time consuming, but I think the result was well worth the effort.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!



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