Seam Finishes Session 4: Encased Seam Finishes

In an encased seam finish, the cut edges are actually enclosed within the seam itself. And you're gonna see how that works in just a few seconds. Sounds difficult, but it's really quite easy. And it is a super professional finish for your sewing projects. The encased seams are best for light to medium weight fabrics only. Do not use it for heavy, heavy fabrics. It just doesn't work. It's too bulky. So typical applications where we see encased seams are, excuse me, when you're using sheer fabrics, we see it in any type of heirloom sewing, baby sewing, bridal sewing, and sheer curtains. If you have cottons, linens or blended fabrics, you'll see them in pillowcases, children's clothing, unlined jackets, unlined totes, unlined draperies. you're kind of hearing a theme here of anything that's unlined, this gives a great finish to it, and also anywhere where we want some durability. On the encased seam finishes, you want to use your straight stitch foot and plate to, again, keep the fabric from being pulled into the feed dogs. This is absolutely critical when you're doing encased seems on sheer fabrics. I can't stress that enough. There are three different types of encased seams. The first is the self-bound encased seam, the second is a mock French seam, and the third encased seam is a French seam, which is my favorite. So I'm gonna save the best for last. With the self-bound seam, we are using your standard 5/8ths inch seam but we do not press it open. You want to leave it like this, all right? The first thing you're going to do is trim one of the seam allowances. And in this case, I just do the top one. We're going to trim it back to an eighth of an inch. So you're gonna take your scissors. You can do this several ways. If you really wanna be the perfectionist, you can come along with a ruler and with a marking pen, put your eighth of an inch mark on the ruler on your seam line, mark it with a pen and come back and trim it. Or if you have a pretty good eye, you can just do it by eyeball. All right? If you have a long seam, this is gonna take you a while. You definitely want a nice sharp pair of scissors. But what I like to do is open that seam up, so the bottom one is out of the way. And actually I would do it from this side, so you can see. Put your ruler here and line it up again on the seam line for the one eighth inch mark all the way around. And if you're a quilter, you know all about the rotary cutter, it's kind of like a pizza wheel. Keep it locked unless you're using it. When you open it up, the wheel comes out and the blade is exposed. The blade is very, very sharp. You can cut your finger. I cut off almost a third of the tip of my finger one time, because I was using a dull blade. I hadn't changed it. And it jumped over the ruler and got me. So use some safety when you do this, but it is a huge time saver, and change your blades frequently. Don't let them get dull. It's like a dull knife. So I have that lined up. The trick is you wanna hold this steady, so it doesn't dare slip, especially when we're only talking an eighth of an inch. And just like that, we've trimmed it to an eighth of an inch. Nice and simple. All right, so now that we have that done, we're going to go back to the ironing board. And again, lock your rotary cutter. Come back to the ironing board, and you are going to take a... And turn over the other seam allowance. You're going to turn it and press it an eighth of an inch, which is pretty, pretty easy to do at this point in time. You're just gonna eyeball this one. Whoops. And I want that other seem to be facing in toward it, so the cut seam is facing in toward the middle. I've pressed this seam an eighth, and now I'm going to turn this and bring it right to the edge there, and we're going to stitch it. If you want, you can certainly give it a press, or you can just do this at the machine. Your option. I don't want it to cover the seam line. I want it right next to the seam line. Now, you want to, I like to come back, if I pressed it, and press on the opposite side just to make sure that my seam and fabric is away from the actual item itself, because otherwise it's very easy to stitch into your fabric. You don't wanna do that. So everything is to the side. You can see the seam is here. Everything is to the side. So my eighth of an inch that we trimmed away is tucked under. It's going in toward the sewing machine itself, the top or the bottom one has folded up and over, and it's right next to the seam line. When we get ready to stitch, I have put on my quarter inch foot. I like this one because right in front I can use this little slit here as a guide before I even get to my needle. My other favorite would be the narrow edge foot. So I'm going to put this into the machine and get ready to sew. Now, for this one, the trick is you sew next to the seam, but not onto the seam line. On this one, you just wanna give it a press, and then you can press it either direction that you want. I'm gonna press half of it one way. Actually, I'm gonna press it all this way. And as you can see, this makes a very lovely seam finish. There are no raveled edges exposed. The stitching is here. It's nice and flat. The self-bound seam tends to be narrower. It's finishing out here probably at about 3/16th of an inch, as you can see, so it's a very nice application, especially for your sheers. From the front side, this is what it looks like. It's a little work with all the trimming, but it is a very, very nice finish. So definitely keep that one in mind for classy work, should we say. Now, I wanna show you the mock French seam. It's similar to this one that we just did, in that we're starting with the 5/8ths inch seam. We do not press it open, all right? In this case, we are going to trim both same allowances, not one, but both to a quarter of an inch. Again, you can do it using scissors. You can mark a line. You can do whatever you need to do. But we're trimming it back down to a quarter of an inch. In this case, we're going to be turning each seam under. This gets a little, little tricky here. So we're bringing them both kind of to the edge. Let me bring it up here. We're bringing it into the edge, so that they meet in the middle. And give it a press. The iron gets a little hot. There we go. So once they are pressed into the middle, flip this over and turn your seams into each other now, so that what you're seeing are the two-folded edges. Give that a press. And now we're going to stitch next to the folds. Again, I'm going to use that mark from the quarter inch foot as my guide. If you noticed, I was simply pulling on the thread here a little bit. Sometimes if you feel the fabric going down into the needle plate, even though this was the single hole one, sometimes if you just give a little pressure on that thread, it will get it started. But once it started, you can let go. And now I just need to sew next to the folds. Double-check and make sure that you have indeed caught both folds, which we have. I think you can see how close to the edge that is. This is another one that finishes pretty small about 3/16th of an inch. Make sure you set the stitches. And then you're going to press to one side or the other. And then always give a press on the top. Sometimes your seam will slip back. So I like to just give my top a press, and there you have the mock French seam. And as you can see, it's a very similar finish to the self-bound seam. But the stitching here is right next to the seam. On this one, it's away from the seam and onto the folds. Again, two narrow edge finishes that are absolutely wonderful. And again, they look beautiful with sheer types of fabric. Now I'm going to show you probably my all time favorite encased seam, which is the French seam. And this is my go-to seam when I need durability, when I'm doing tote bags, when I'm doing pillow cases, it just, especially on the pillowcases, gives them that professional, a higher grade look. And I use it also when I'm making gift bags, like for wine or any type of a little bag. It's quick, it's easy, but it just looks really professional. So let me show you how this one is done. This seam is different. The French seam, the true French seam, I haven't sewn it yet, is created by putting the wrong sites together. You will actually be stitching on the right side of your fabric. We are going to go ahead and do... I'm gonna show you the proper way to do this first. And that is using a 3/8ths inch seam. Make sure I back tack there Take out my pins as I sew. Back tack. Alrighty, give that a quick press. Set your seam. This seam is still staying closed. All right? In this case, we are going to trim back the seam allowance to an eighth of an inch, and we're trimming both seams once again, all right? And this one I wanna be very accurate with. All right, my seam is now trimmed to an eighth of an inch. Now we want to press this. We've turned the seam to one side. I know it's still bothering you. I'm working on the wrong side. The seams aren't supposed to be on that side, but just wait a second. You're gonna see the magic. Now we're going to press it again. And what I want you to do is make sure when you press that that seam line is visible, but you don't want it rolling to one side or the other. You need to be dead on with the seam line at the top of the fold. Give it a press. Now you've got, as you can see, the seam is encased. It's going to be encased within itself. It's easiest to see it on the French seam, I think. Now we're going to come and stitch a quarter of an inch from the folded edge, from the seam line. That's where I liked my quarter inch foot, because it will keep me honest and make sure that I've got accurate sewing here. Put it down. And for this one, I do go ahead and just back tack, especially if it's gonna be anything of durability or if the seam is not going to be crossed with something else. And that was a good example of the fabric going down underneath. If you have problems with that, even with your straight stitch foot, let me show you a nice little trick. Just take a little piece of fabric. Doesn't have to be very big. Just gonna cut some off. Fold it in half. And what I want you to do is start sewing somewhere off or past the edge just there. And you can see how it pulls through so much easier. This is my leader piece. So I'm going to sew right up next to the edge. And just before I get off the edge, go ahead and put your next piece that you're working on under the foot, so it's ready to go. This is a quilter's trick and it works great. So then it just glides my piece right on through. All right? And now I just have to do my quarter inch seam all the way down. With that foot, I can go lickety-split, pedal to the metal. When I get to the end, let's give it a quick back tack. Trim your seams. Now you're going to just cut that leader off, and you can reuse this as times as you want. Just keep it by your sewing machine and you're ready to go. All right, back to our French seam. You can see that this one has a wider seam. It's a quarter of an inch. We have sewed that. We want to go ahead and press it to one side. I think you're hearing the theme there, pressing to one side. I like to give a little steam. I am a steam person. Make sure you come to the opposite side to press and make sure that that's nice and flat. And there is your French seam. When you're on this side, double-check. Sometimes you'll get little pieces of the raveled thread in there and you'll just wanna trim those. But if you give it a good... If you have trimmed to an eighth of an inch and then do a full quarter inch seam, you typically won't have any problem with raveling, but it doesn't hurt to just give it a check. So there is the true French seam. I'll be honest. I find this one a lot faster and easier to do than the other two. I like these two particularly for that really fine heirloom sewing or bridal sewing, something where it really, really makes the difference. But for more practical items, such as, you know, the tote bags, the kids' clothes, the unlined jackets, the pillowcases, in particular, those sorts of things, I find it's much faster to do it this way. Now, in the video, or portion rather, of the bonus project, which we're going to do next, we're gonna do a super, sweet, little tote bag that you can put together in literally 30 minutes. It is not that hard to do. So you're gonna get to use the French seam right away. And the reason I chose that again is because this is a durable seam and it's gonna give longevity to that bag. I think you're gonna be very pleased with the results.