I was concerned about the way the right side of my garment would look so I asked for advice on which stitch to use. Back stitch seems like it will work just fine for my purpose of sewing a T-shirt. The two pictured stitch lines seemed to stretch pretty equally. The zig zag might come in handy with something like a crotch seam but seems kind of unnecessary for making a shirt at this time. After the garment is worn awhile I’ll update in a few months or if things fail early.

I made sure to get my stitching equally spaced and tighter spaced this time. The marking on my finger trick was pretty handy, but I think I’ll do something slightly different in practice. Aside: I’ve also been trying to figure out a viable way to mark my seams for the purpose of neat sewing. Tailors chalk marks fine, and I understand sharpening helps, but it just rubs off too easily for lots of handling like I’m having to do right now as a beginner. One suggestion I saw was masking tape so I tried that with this little sample and it worked a treat. Since I’ll be doing that I’m just going to mark on the tape because that will ultimately be easier than trying to maneuver my finger into a perfect position for measuring. Bonus that the tape is reusable multiple times so I won’t have to mark extra or make excess trash.

Pics: spacing for stitch length is the same for both lines. With the zig zag I also tried to make the spacing between peaks the same length as the stitches so they were more directly comparable on the right side of the garment. 1: I redid the back stitch to make it neater and better spaced. 2, 3: back stitch right side of garment, one is purposefully stretched tight to make it easier to see how it might look during wear. 4, 5: one is the previous back stitch, the other is what the zig zag looks like on the right side of the garment.

Lots of fabric scraps and (mostly) hand-stitched. 6” square makes a roomy project bag … or whatever. Fully lined with pockets! Super fun project.

As we all know, hand sewing tends to take a while. Post your current works in projects in this thread and share with us how its going.

I am planning to sew extra fabric plus sequins/stones on top of a ballet leotard to make a dress for my figure skating program. The images are of the leotard I bought with rough drawings of my plan (it's for Heavy Is the Crown from the Arcane tv series). Any piece of advice is appreciated!

I don't have a machine and haven't used one in a long time so I'm planning to just handsew it all. I'm going to buy the fabric etc this week and a hoping for some advice. The leotard is 92% nylon, 8% elastane fabric. The fabric I'll get will nerd to have stretch to it, too. Below is the full description if my plan, but here are the main questions I'd appreciate advice on:

1. Fabric types to look for? I will also get a mock fabric to drape on myself first, any recommendations here?

2. Needles? Are regular standard needles fine or should I look for specific stuff?

3. Thread? I intend to ask about stretchy thread, but is there anything that you can recommend that would work well with my intended fabric/for handsewing?

4. Thread patterns? I don't know the names of them but like criss-cross, straight, straight going back on itself..., is there a particular way of sewing by hand on stretchy fabric that you'd recommend? Or any resources to look at?

5. Any general advice? I've sewn bits and bobs by hand before but not a project of this size. I am doing it for fun and am fully prepared for it to go horribly wrong, but I want to challenge myself.

I plan to cut the inner shoulder straps, redirect them to my neck and connect them to the neck bit with a button in the back, the neck bit being a folded/ruffled fabric sewed to a red ribbon. All 6 straps I plan to encase in a gold/yellow fabric which I will also sew round the back and front neckline.

The front and back will have a blue fabric panel, getting wider at the skirt level and possibly with folds to get more fabric into the skirt, the sides lined with the yellow/gold fabric, which is the attachment point to the leotard body - the neckline and the two vertical lines from neckline to waist. On each hip, a grey fabric panel, widening at the bottom, possibly doubled up for more skirt volume when spinning, will be attached at the waistline in a horizontal line crossing slightly underneath the blue panels. They won't go fully around to keep some stretch around the waist. The yellows side "belts" will go on top and hide the stitch on the grey side pieces and more strongly attach the blue pieces. I will then add sequins or glue stones on top of these. I might sew the center-waist of each blue panel to the leotard via the sequins to keep it attached at the waist.

The shoulders are an extra I want to try but might scrap - i plan to do a rectangular yellow shape lined with blue underneath and then two half-circle/triangle-ish shapes on each long side of the rectangle to create a shoulder shape, and then do a strap around the arm (stretch fabric or buttons depending on what the fabric I get is like), attached with two straps going from the neck to the top of it (sewn to each strap it crosses), and two straps going to the front and back vertical shoulder strap.

Edit: I realise one thing I forgot to mention of my plan: no hems on the blue/grey/white fabric, the only hems will be the gold/yellow lines. I'm going to buy the types of fabric usually used on skating dresses that doesn't fray when cut and so can be hem-less.

I’m practicing so I can hand sew a T-shirt. Any help would be appreciated. I’m just wondering if I’m doing something wrong or if this is kind of what to expect. I’m using back stitch because that’s what I’ve seen suggested. When flipping the seam I’m seeing the stitches between the fabric layers. Is my stitching not tight enough? I’m worried about popping stitches since it’s a T-shirt so maybe I’ve been stitching too loosely. I’m also concerned about puckered seams if I stitch too tight.

Yellow thread to make it easy to see, I’ll use black with black fabric when I make the actual shirt. I didn’t anchor the bottom of the line of stitches because I was just checking what the seam will look like. I basted first instead of pinning. Ignore the edge finished part, that was more practice (I’ve also tried double back stitch, zig zag back stitch, zig zag double back stitch, blanket stitch, overcast stitch, overlock stitch). I starched and ironed my fabric to make stitching more stable.

I'm fairly new to sewing and I need to know how to sew a beanie/ skull cap, I have the pattern and all the fabric laid out but I dont know the proper stitch to sew it together, anything helps!!

Feel like I'm going to need to trim the interior threads that pull loose to avoid fluff, but I've been putting this off for two weeks and I feel pretty silly now. It was not that bad.

Any advice on the fluff or puckering would be welcome though! I am going to avoid putting these on the final piece a bit longer

Hi! I was looking for a good 1850s pattern for a bonnet! I'm not really interested in sunbonnets and those were only the ones I could find. I can't really find anything fun on Etsy since it's just mostly AI slop now.

When I embroider on apparel, I usually secure my stitches with fabric glue so they can survive multiple washings, but this makes them stiff and kind of itchy. Any advice on super securing stitches to survive anything without making them uncomfortable?

Thought you guys would love this!

Current hand sewing set up - repurposed a silver sugar pot for scraps and thread ends and put my pincushion on top as a lid. Using a copper engraving plate as a tray and of course repurposed spools I put modern thread on for aesthetics. Beeswax thread conditioner is from a local apiary.

As we all know, hand sewing tends to take a while. Post your current works in projects in this thread and share with us how its going.