How to Sew an Infinity Scarf

An infinity scarf, is a very popular and trendy accessory, and it's also very easy to make. This is also a great first project, if you want to learn how to sew with knits. I love making these. I have them in several different colors. They're great to wear, just as an accessory. You can double them up, the length of this one is long enough, so that it's very versatile. That looks lovely, and it's nice and warm. If it's cold outside, you can take it and loop it a third time, around your neck, so it's nice up in here and it's warm. And then you can also take the back of it and put it over your head like a hood. And you can wear it like this when it's very cold outside. My favorite way to wear it, is just around my neck. And then if it gets cold if I'm in the movie theater or something, I can slip it on almost like a coat, and it goes over my shoulders, and I can stay nice and cozy and warm in the theater. So, this is an infinity scarf, and we're going to sew it today. So you will need two yards of fabric, to make your infinity scarf. Luckily, it makes two infinity scarfs, so you can give one to a friend. I have two yards of fabric here but I've cut it in half, along the length. So I still have two yards this way but I have half the width and the width of knits is usually 60 inches wide. So this one is now 30 by two yards. If you look at the selvage edge here, you can tell it's kind of rolling over a little bit, right in here. We don't want that. So, just get your scissors, and cut along the entire length here to trim that off. After you've trimmed it off, you are going to fold it in half, right sides together like this. And you're going to match, the long edge of the fabric, and you're going to pin all the way across, like this. Now on either end of this guy, we are going to leave, three inches unsewn. So in order to remind myself not to sew right there, I like to take a pin, and put it right there. That's a reminder not to sew there. You need to do that on both sides. So I'm gonna come over here, and I'm gonna put a pin here as well. So now we're pinned and we're ready to sew. But there's a couple of things that you need to know about sewing with knits before we get started. First of all, you need to use a stretch needle or a ballpoint needle before you sew with this. The regular sharp needles that you use, to sew through cottons, don't work in this application. The reason why is you have a very sharp needle, and the fibers that are in your knit, are very stretchy. So what happens is the needle comes down and if it hits the fiber just right, it acts like a trampoline and just kind of bounces that needle back up. And then you don't end up sewing all the way through the fabric. A ballpoint needle, however, will come down and the fibers will slip around it, so that the needle can get all the way through the fibers. And it makes for a much more successful sewing experience. So not only that but if you'll notice on my machine, I have a walking foot, okay? This walking foot has feet on the top, and we already have feet on the bottom. So what's gonna happen is, the feet on the top are going to work with the feet on the bottom to move the fabric forward, this way your presser foot just doesn't smash down on the fabric, and it's possible that it could stretch it out as you're sewing. You want the fabric to be nice and relaxed , as it passes through the machine. The last tip you need to know is to sew with a stretch stitch, or a zigzag stitch if you don't have a stretch stitch on your machine. A stretch stitch looks a little bit like a lightning bolt. It goes kind of like this. A zigzag stitch looks more like this. Now, either one of those will work just fine, simply because, when you're sewing with a knit, this is what your zigzag stitch will look like. When you stretch the fabric, if it's in a dress for example, and you need to get it over your hips, that thread needs to be allowed to go straight, and allow the fabric to stretch, to get over your hips, and then it will come back into shape like this. So what I like to do is just have a little scrap of fabric, and test it a little bit with different settings on your zigzag and pull it and make sure that you don't pop that seam. I am on a stretch stitch on this machine. I've got my walking foot on here and now I am ready to sew. Now in this case, this is just an infinity scarf, so your seam allowance doesn't matter. So I'm just gonna let this, I'm just gonna line this up with the edge of my foot, like I normally do, and, what I've just noticed here is see how my knit, has rolled over on the backside. Please make sure that when you start, it is nice and flat. If you're a knitter, you also know that knits have a tendency to roll on whatever edge is cut. It's nothing that you've done, don't try to iron it, it just naturally happens. So you just have to pay a little bit of attention when you get started. I'm gonna go ahead and lower my foot here and remove this pin. As I'm sewing, the fabric that I'm feeding under the foot, I'm just gonna every once in a while look on the backside, and make sure that it hasn't rolled under, so that I don't end up missing and you know, not sewing the backside entirely. So, don't forget to do your back stitch. On this machine, when you are on a decorative stitch with which a stretch stitch or a zigzag is, it will notice that if it goes backwards it will kind of ruin everything. So it just ties in little knot. So if your machine has this feature just push and hold the back stitch button until it comes to a complete stop. And now, we can sew all the way down remembering to leave the last three inches undone. Now you'll notice as you're sewing this, that this fabric has a tendency to travel. I am almost pulling the edge of my fabric a little bit to the right, it almost feels like it goes in at an angle and starts to slide one way or the other. So don't be alarmed if you have to feed it in at an angle in order to sew a nice straight line. All right, here's the pin to remind me to stop. So I'm going to push and hold my back stitch button, or go ahead and go backwards to tie myself a knot. I'm gonna lift my needle here, trim my threads. All right, and now, you have a tube. I'm gonna pull my pins out of either end, okay? And if you look closely, you can see, my little lightning bolt stitch right in there, just a little teeny bit of a zigzag. And if you're not gonna use a serger on this and you're gonna use your home machine, this guy's really nice. He's really nice and thin so that if you're doing the side seam of a maxi dress, even though it is a zigzag stitch from the outside when you turn it inside out it still looks like a straight stitch. Now it's time to turn this guy inside out. So you're going to reach all the way into your tube, and you're going to pull it out, just like that. So now, it is time to attach the two. I'm going to find the seam I just sewed, which is right here. And I'm going to put that on one of the edges, so that it is folded on that seam. And I'm gonna spread this guy out, like this, folding it in half, just like that, with the seam on one edge. This way we know there's not a twist in it. Now you can see here at this end, here is my three inches that is unsewn and that's fine. We're gonna leave that be for now. Now that we've got the fold on one side, we are going to fold this guy directly in half, matching the two short edges, that need to be sewn. So, this is a little bit awkward and you just have to kind of trust your pinning instincts. We are going to start pinning, the right sides together. So, at this point, these two sides right here are the only two right sides that are together. This guy is right side down, and this guy is right side up. So we're gonna ignore those two exterior layers for just a moment. And we are going to match up these edges, and we're going to pin. Now this time you can start right on the very edge, you do not need to wait for three inches, before you begin sewing, okay? So this part's fairly easy. Now you don't wanna stretch the fabric, you want to let the fabric relax, as you're matching the edges. And if you'll notice I'm putting the pins in very close to the edge of the fabric. I'm not starting way down here to do my pinning. I am starting up here, close to the edge. Remember that rolling we were talking about earlier? The closer your pin is to the edge of your fabric, the less chance it has of rolling underneath so that you can't see it. All right, we've gotten all the way across this one piece, and we still have these other two pieces to pin together. So you just keep going. You can shake it out a little bit, and then you're just gonna kind of pull this guy around, and you're gonna continue, pinning the right sides together, even though it's going to start to make a very awkward shape. Once you come to the end here, you're going to pin right up to the end as well, getting those right sides together. And now, we have this very strange looking thing, which I like to call the tube flower. It literally looks like there's this little flower, blooming out of our tube here, okay? It's a little bit awkward to sew, especially because we have to sew a straight line, but this is in a circle. We're going to leave our machine settings, on exactly what they are. We still want to use our stretch stitch. Now it's a little awkward to start, but you want to take small pieces of your fabric, and make it straight. So I'm gonna tuck this under here, starting at the very beginning of my fabric, okay? I'm going to do my back stitch. Pull my first pin, and I'm going to sew a little bit. And now, I'm going to kind of, shake this out a little bit, and give myself another maybe four or five inches of straight path. I'm gonna sew adjust, sew adjust until I get all the way around to the end. I'm coming up on the end here, gonna make sure I have a nice straight pathway. Once I get to the end, I'm going to do a little back stitch. All right. Pull that out, trim my threads here. Okay, so, when we open this up, we again have our little tube flower situation. So if you separate the two pieces of your tube, and you gently pull, then walla, you magically have an infinity scarf. However there's still a hole in it, that we need to top stitch because we needed a hole to turn it inside out. Along the length of your seam, you have this hole here, that needs to be closed. Now, this is the one case where we're actually going to use a straight stitch, to close this, instead of a zigzag stitch. So, I am going to, spread this out a little. I'm going to fold my edges over like this. So we have a nice flat edge on both sides, so that we can meet the two. You really want to make sure, that these two edges meet very nicely. You're going to so very close to the both of them and you don't want them to come apart so that you miss the other side. If one is, you know, a little overlapped and behind the other one. So we're just gonna put a couple of pins in here to keep it closed. Now, you still want your walking foot on your machine because you don't want your regular foot to stretch out the fabric as you're sewing this part. So, you'll want to move your needle position somewhere where you can see it. Although you'll find that only one of the walking feet is actually on the fabric. The other one is just kind of in the air, and that's just fine too. So I'm going to, change this to a stretch oh sorry, a straight stitch. And I'm going to put my stitch length on 3.5 or four. Something nice and long. We don't need lots of little teeny stitches interfering. Now I'm just going to move my needle kind of to the center so that I have a good runway with which to see by. I'm gonna tuck this under here, and I'm just gonna watch the needle with the edge of my fabric. Even though my foot on my right side is hanging over the edge of the fabric and it's not helping anything, the foot on the left is still on the fabric and it's gonna help me. So I'm just gonna go forward for a couple, and then we'll have to go backwards to do a back stitch. And we're just gonna sew, right across this little hole here, staying fairly close to the edge. And of course the walking foot really really helps this fabric to stay relaxed as it feeds underneath the machine, so that we get any weird stretching and weird puckering. Okay I've gone all the way across. I'm gonna do a back stitch. I'm gonna pull it out. Now, if you are... When you do this seam, it is on the top side of the fabric. You can see right there that it can actually be seen by everyone under the sun. So, what I like to do is just use a similar color thread. And also when you slip it on, I like to just take that piece and put it right towards the back, so that when I wear it, nobody ever knows the difference.