Sewing Over Pins: Tips and Techniques

Sewing over pins can be a rather touchy subject when it comes to sewers because you either are usually 100% against sewing over pins or maybe you do sew over pins and it's just how you've sewn since you learned to start sewing. So I'm not here to say whether one is 100% better than the other, but there are some pins that I recommend not sewing over, some that you can sew over, and ways that you can place your pins when you're pinning your fabric that can make either removing them easier or avoiding sewing over them altogether much easier. So this is just a small sample of the different types of pins available out there. There are pretty much pins for everything nowadays and there are many different shapes and types of pins. So, starting up here, this is a really fun new type of pin that's available and it's called an easy grasp pin. So if I open this here you can see it just has a very large head on it but it's actually made of kind of a rubber, a hard rubber material and it makes it much easier to grab it than if it just had a metal head or a glass head on it. So this is a really great pin maybe if you have some dexterity issues or you just find that it's hard to pick up pins. Easy grasp pins would definitely be the ones you wanna pick but this is definitely a pin that I would want to avoid trying to sew over or even trying to sew anywhere near the head of this pin, just because it has a fairly large head to it. Another type of pin that I would definitely avoid sewing over are these sort of large, I'm gonna call them ore decorative-type pins. So, this one here has some buttons on it. You can also find some that have little flowers on them, some have butterflies, some sort of fun shapes. But these are very heavy-duty pins, fairly thick pins, and you definitely don't wanna try and sew over these because your odds of hitting them are just much greater. There are other pins that I'm gonna say are okay to sew over. Again, this is still personal preference, but the smaller or finer the pin is the less chance you have to actually hit it with your needle. And so these are pins that are called satin pins or you can find pins that are called fine pins but they are very, very thin, very fine compared to the pins I just showed you and they generally don't have a large head on them or even a head at all. So there is no big decorative say button on them, nothing big rubber or a big ball on them that might get caught. And so these are pins where generally you can sew, as long as you're sewing at a moderate pace, you can sew over these and not have any issue. Now, there are other pins that whether you sew over them or not, it's gonna be up to you, but there are different types in terms of how pointy they are. So, with this one, this is actually a ballpoint pin and so if I just take my finger and I touch the end of the pin, like it's not even hurting my finger and it's not just because I have thick skin. But it's a ballpoint pin and so this is the type of pin you'd wanna use in polyester or stretch fabric because it's not going to pierce the fabric like a regular straight pin would. Rather, it's gonna go between the fibers of that fabric. Because of this it's also a little bit thicker and it's something that again you may not want to sew over. Now, there are ways that you can place your pins that make either avoiding them much easier or removing them much easier. So if this is where I was going to stitch, when I first learned how to sew the way I always placed pins was just like this where I have the head of the pin down into say my garment or whatever it was that I was pinning and the edge of my pins were closer to the edge of the fabric. Well when I then take this over to my machine to sew it and get ready to stitch, you can see that the heads of the pins are definitely out of the way but that my tip of the pin is within the needle path. Now I'm right handed. So for me that means when I get to my pin, I'm going to have to either stop or reach across my hand to be able to take this pin out just 'cause I'm not, I'd be a little bit clumsier with my left hand. So if your reasoning for wanting to sew over pins or for not removing pins is because you don't want to have to stop every inch or two inches as you're sewing along to remove your pins, then there's a different way you should be placing your pins in your fabric to avoid that. So I'm gonna take this piece off my machine, bring in another sample here. So again, if this was my garment and this was the seam that I'm going to want to stich, rather than placing them with the tip of the pin towards the raw edges of the fabric, I'm going to come in at a different angle, place my pins so that the head of the pin is hanging off the edge of the fabric and the tip of the pin is down this way. And take this back over to my machine and get this ready to sew and you're gonna see how if you're a right-handed person like me, it's much easier to then remove these pins as you go. So again, I'm definitely gonna be approaching this pin, going to have to stitch over it, but because I'm right-handed I can simply just pull it out of the way much quicker and easier, and if I had a lot of pins I could just be pulling these as I'm sewing. I don't even need to stop. So, again if your reason for sewing over pins is that you don't wanna have to stop to take them out, you definitely wanna place your pins that direction. Now, if you have a very long seam, you can see I just pulled my pins out and set them to the side, you could definitely pull them out and put them in your pin cushion as you go. Or you can simply pull them out, leave them here on the bed of your machine, and then if you have one of those magnetic pin cushions or maybe just even a giant magnet, you can just take those right in, magnet them all back up, and you're good to go. Another way that you can avoid stitching over pins altogether but still have your layers of fabric pinned nice and securely is to use smaller or shorter pins. So here are two different options here. These are applique pins. They're about half the length of a normal pin, and there are things called sequin pins, which are about a third of the length of regular pins. So if I'm going to use this little applique pin, you can see it is much shorter. Let me just bring in a regular pin. See it's about half the length of a regular pin, and I can take these guys and I can place them back my very first way that I was placing pins into fabric but place them back a ways so that when I'm stitching, even the tip of the pin is not in the stitching line. So they're back far enough out of the way that I can leave them in and stitch right past them. Those are the applique pins. Sequin pins, which are meant to hold little tiny sequins in place if you're going to sew those on, are even smaller. See they're about 2/3 the length of those applique pins but this is also something where you can take and place this pin even further back, and again do all of your stitching right along that seam line and then not even have to remove your pins because you're placing them. This is much easier to do if you are sewing something, I'm gonna say like a pillow or a pillowcase, something that has some flat pieces that are going to lay together, because the further back you pin it's easier if your pieces lay flat. By that I mean if you're gonna sew something like an arm's eye into an arm in a garment, you're gonna have maybe some curves you have to work in and it would be much harder to pin further back from the seam line in something that is curved. But so that is definitely an option if you wanna leave your pins in place and stitch by them. So again, if you are 100% against stitching over pins then just remove pins and maybe change up your pin placement to make removing those pins a little bit easier or if you like to be able to sew over pins if you have to, definitely change up the type of pins that you're using and get those finer or shorter pins and you should have no problem at all sewing your next project.