sewing

Fabrics

Felt: It is a non-woven fabric. Commonly used by beginners because it’s extremely cheap and also has no stretch whatsoever.

Cotton: Often used in older soft toys, but has fallen out of style because it’s not soft, isn’t stretchy and frays if you don’t treat it correctly.

Faux suede: This is the standard go-to when you want a soft, but not “fuzzy” texture, like in skin or clothing. Most faux suede is not stretchy.

Fleece: This is fabric made from knitting fibers. Recommended as one of the better fabrics for beginners because it’s soft, fairly inexpensive, is stretchy and forgiving when you make mistakes.

Minky: Another fabric made from knitting fibers, this means it is stretchy. Probably the most popular fabric for soft toys. It’s extremely soft, has a fluffy but smooth texture and is fairly easy to work with. The downside to minky is that it’s more expensive than other types of fabric for soft toys.

Faux fur: It is extremely thick, difficult to work with and not stretchy at all, so making entire plush with it is rather difficult. The upside to faux fur is that the fluffiness of it tends to hide mistakes in sewing. This fabric is also expensive compared to other types.

This link has great information about pros and cons of different types of fabric for soft toys.

Stuffing

Polyfil: relatively inexpensive polyester-based filling. When put inside a stuffed toy, polyfil also known as polyester fiberfill will hold its shape perfectly

Cluster Stuff: More expensive than polyfil, but the fibers don’t clump the same way polyfil does, so plush stuffed with it tend to be softer and squishier.

Natural pellets and dried herbs: If you want to go all-natural while still maintaining the pellet feel, you can use beans, rice, and other natural herbs. You can create a potpourri or scented soft toy, stuff a pouch with dried herbs and surround it with other filling. 

Shredded memory foam: Not good for every project, but has specific applications.

Micro-beads: These are like a tiny version of what’s in beanbag chairs

Poly pellets: Not usual, but it is used to add weight to plush. These pellets are hard plastic pellets. Generally is used in conjunction with a fiber stuffing to not make the soft toy too heavy.

Cutting Tools

Fabric Scissors: You need sharp scissors to cut fabric. Use fabric scissors and not the regular fabric we have at IMA, they are usually gunked up with glue residue. Do not use fabric scissors if you don’t intend to cut fabric with them.

Seam ripper: They are great to stitches you made by mistake or taking apart clothes for refashioning or repurpose the fabric. Seam rippers are also used for cutting open buttonholes.

Thread trimmer: This is a great tool to cut pieces of thread close to the fabric, so we will be using this for finishing and also to cut little cuts on the fabric when we have angles.

Rotary cutters: Not essential but great to have if you are cutting a lot of fabric. 

Cutting Mat: Especially useful if you are cutting with a rotary cutter. The grid printed on them displaying inches or centimeters is also a great help.

Pinning Tools

Pins: The most common are the glass head or ball points pins when sewing woven fabric or felt.

Safety Pins: extremely useful when you are turning tubes inside out slipping elastic through a casing.

Pin Cushion: keep your pins and needles organized in one place. There are some wrist pincushions that are pretty useful too.

Threads

There are many threads for different type of fabric and they come in different colors and thickness. A standard thread is polyester thread, but the quality varies greatly. A cheap thread will break soon, so that means your work won’t last for too long.
If you want to know more about different types of threads, look at this article showing different types of thread as seen under a microscope. Learn how to thread the sewing machine here and how to hand sewing here.

Bobbins: The machines we have in the studio use bobbins that are “Class 15”. Check out how to wind up the bobbin here.

Needles

Hand Sewing Needles: It is always good to have a package of assorted hand needle sizes. Thinner needles are for lightweight fabric and thicker needles are for heavier fabric. The different eye sizes will accommodate various thread thicknesses.

Sewing machine needles: The standard sizes run from 60/08 to 120/19. The first number is the European size while the second number is the one used in the United States. The lower the number, the more narrow is the needle.
For general sewing with medium-weight fabric you’ll want to use a 90/14. 60/08 or 70/09 are good for very lightweight fabrics, such as the chiffon, and don’t make big holes in the fabric. When sewing a heavy-weight fabric, a 100/16 or 110/18 will be wide and strong enough to push through the fabric. Learn how to change the needle in the machine here.

The hand stitches are very much useful even when you have a sewing machine. Hand stitches are used for a variety of purposes such as stitching seams, preparing for machine sewing, or just decoration.

Let’s see some of the basic stitches you might need to use in this course.

Basting Stitch

This is the easiest stitch to sew fast two or more pieces of fabric. It is not too strong and it’s usually used for prototyping before to use the sewing machine, because they are pretty easy to remove.

Back Stitch

The backstitch is similar to a machine sewn stitch, and it’s quite strong. We use it when we don’t need to worry about the back side.

Whip Stitch

A way to use the whip stitch is when attaching a shape to a piece of clothing or artwork. 

Blanket Stitch

This is a decorative stitch typically used to reinforce the edges on a project.

Invisible Stitch

We will use this stitch to close the opening we leave after sewing something with the sewing machine and turn it inside out.

   

Check out these ones and more basic stitches here:

Before you start, review some important parts for the machine:

1. Presser Foot
2. Take-Up Lever
3. Tension Dial
4. Stitch Width Dial
5. Bobbin Winder Spindle
6. Stitch Length Dial
7. Hand Wheel 
8. Stitch Selector Dial
9. Reverse Lever

Find the manual for the Singer Tradition model here and for the Singer Heavy Duty model here.

Now, turn the machine on pressing the switch on the right side of the machine.

After you properly placed the bobbin and threaded the machine, you are ready to start sewing.

The basic stitch is the straight stitch. Make sure this type of stitch is the one your machine will do. If it’s not, turn the stitch selector dial, so that the straight stitch icon is in line with the grey dot above.

Make sure the stitch length dial is set between 2 and 3, which is the standard length for a straight stitch.

Finally, make sure the stitch width dial is set to 0.

now place your fabric under the presser foot. Lower the presser foot by using the lever behind the machine. Now press the foot control to start sewing.

Tip: if you are starting a seam, it is a good practice to start sewing 2 to 3 stitches and stop. Next, press the reverse lever to sew about 2 to 3 stitches backwards. Try to do it always on top of the fabric, do not make stitches without fabric.

Release the lever, and now start sewing normally along the seam by pressing the foot control. Notice that you do not need to push or pull the fabric, you just need to guide it and the machine will move it forward.

Tip: when you are done sewing, it is good to do some stitches backwards again. Press the reverse lever and make 2 to 3 stitches backwards, release the reverse lever and sew to the end of the fabric. The reverse stitching at the start and the end of the fabric, secure the thread so that it doesn’t become unraveled.

When you finish this, move the needle to the highest position by turning the hand wheel towards you.

Now move up the foot presser and remove the fabric. Trim the thread and that’s it. Make sure before you start sewing the length of the thread coming from the needle and from the bobbin is around 10 cm or more.

The stitches should look uniform in both sides.

However, if your back stitches have loops or some wavy zigzags it means the upper thread isn’t threaded properly. Rethread the machine and do another test. However, sometimes this is also because you forgot to move down the presser foot.

If you notice, the stitch selector shows two more stitches in every position. If you want to sew the blue stitch instead of the black one, turn the stitch length dial to the S1 position.

If you want to sew the red one instead, turn the stitch length dial to the S2 position.

You might want to adjust the stitch width dial, especially when you are sewing decorative stitches. Turn this dial and select a number from 0 to 5, 5 being the widest stitch.

Here you can see some example of different stitches:

Tips

When using the sewing machine you will be sewing a variety of shapes according to your work. For acute angles it will be better to stop the machine and rotate the fabric. To make sure the fabric is not going to move around, it is always good to leave the needle down, holding your fabric. If the needle is not holding the fabric at the moment you stopped stitching, you can turn the hand wheel towards you until the needle is in the lowest position. Now you can lift the presser foot, rotate the fabric and move down the presser foot before start sewing again.

For curves you can even use the thread trimmer to guide the fabric. Make sure you don’t put the trimmer under the needle or you will break it. If that happens, check out how to change the needle here.

When you are making a soft toy, you should sew the details such as eyes before you sew the whole piece. Place them in the position you want and use Basting Stitch or pins to hold them in place before you use the sewing machine. If you prefer, you can also hand sew them using other types of stitches stronger than the Basting Stitch.

If you are sewing the details by using the machine, be patient and do it slowly. Make sure you do the reverse stitching at the start and the end of the fabric to secure the thread and prevent it to become unraveled.

After you sew the details, you will be ready to sew the main pieces. Remember you are going to sew them from the back side.

Leave at least 0.5 cm of border when you sew the piece Remember also to leave around 4cm of fabric without sewing, so you can turn the soft toy inside out by using that hole.

It is a good practice to make a little cut in the corners, so that the fabric doesn’t get wrinkled on the front side. You can do this with the scissors or the thread trimmer.

Start turning inside out the soft toy with your hands.

You can use some rounded stick to help you to turn the small parts. A chopstick work very well.

Use the invisible stitch to close the hole you used to turn the soft toy inside out.

finish the hand sewing by making a final knot before you cut the thread. It is better that you don’t cut the thread right next to the knot, so make a big stitch and take the needle from a place far away from the knot(like 5cm) and then pull the thread and trim close to the fabric by using the thread trimmer or scissors. Pulling the thread before to cut it will help to hide the thread inside the toy after you cut it.

To prepare a sewing machine you might need to:

• Wind and place the bobbin
• Thread the machine
• Change the needle

A sewing machine will make stitches differently that when you do it manually. A sewing machine uses two totally separate threads to make stitches. One thread coming from above from a thread spool and a second one coming from below, from a bobbin.
Check out how a sewing machine works here:

Now that you know how the machine works, let’s get started!
Turn on the machine by using the switch on the right side of it.

 
1. Winding the bobbin:

To thread the machine, you first need to start by winding the bobbin. 
Before you do anything, make sure the needle is in the highest position by turning the hand wheel towards you.

Depending on the machine you are using the bobbin case will look different.

Step 1-a: In the case of the Singer Heavy Duty machine the case is below the presser foot. 

To the right side of the case there is a black button that you can push to the right. Lift up the lid and take out the bobbin.

Step 1-b: if you are using the Singer Traditional model.

Slide to the left the case at the bottom of the machine and then open the vertical lid.

Remove the bobbin case by holding the hinged latch. This latch is also a lock to keep the bobbin in the case.

Remove the bobbin by releasing the hinged latch.

Now, for any type of model you are using, slide the thread on the spool pin at the top of the machine and put on the spool cap, finally lay it down.

On the top of the machine you will find diagrams. Depending on the model of the machine, you can see two diagrams of two different colors. Another option is one drawn with a dashed line and another one with a continuous line. To wind the bobbin, follow along with the dashed line diagrams.

Step 2: Slip the thread in the first hook or thread guide.

Step 3: Bring the thread to the front and wrap it around the screw in front of the previous hook.
You should feel a little bit of a tug, because there should be some tension in there.

Step 4: Run the thread up from the center through one of the holes of the bobbin.

 

Step 5: Place the bobbin on top of the bobbin winding spool. Make sure it snapped all the way down.

You can see a video of the whole process here:

Step 6: While holding the end of the thread, push the bobbin to the right. 

Step 7: Now step on the foot control to start winding the bobbin, just for a moment.

Using the scissors trim down close to the bobbin, so the thread is not sticking up on top. 

Now you can finish winding the bobbin. It should move up and down by itself.

Whenever you are ready, stop pressing the foot control, push the bobbin to the left, and remove it from the bobbin winding spool.

Use the scissors to trim the bobbin thread from the spool of thread.

Step 8-a: In the case you are using the Singer Heavy Duty model. 

Put the bobbin back in the bobbin case. To put the bobbin in properly, make sure the thread is going counterclockwise of the bobbin.

lay the bobbin in the bobbin case and follow the arrows in the machine with the thread.

Finally, put the case lid back.

Step 8-b: In the case you are using the Singer Traditional model.

Insert the bobbin so that the thread moves in the clockwise direction. Pull the thread through the slid and under the finger.

Hold the bobbin case by the hinged latch and insert it into the shuttle. You should feel it click into place. Once the bobbin case is correctly seated, release the latch.

 
2. Threading

Step 1: In order to thread the machine, we will slide the thread on the spool pin at the top of the machine and put on the spool cap.

Step 2: Next, using the continuous-line set of diagrams, we will follow these instructions.
Number 1 and 2 are metal thread guides, number 3 is just going down the groove, then number 4 is  a U-turn that will make the thread go back up.

Step 3: Number 5 is another metal guide or take-up lever. Make another U-turn, from the right to the left and pull the thread into the eye of the take-up lever. Make sure the thread is inside this eye before you continue.

in the case that you don’t see this take-up lever, move it up to the highest position by turning the hand wheel towards you.

Step 4: Follow down to the number 6. Place the thread behind the metal hook.

Step 5: Finally, place the thread behind the metal hook under the previous one and right above the needle.

There is an automatic needle threader that you can use in this final step. You need to make sure the needle is in the highest position by turning the hand wheel towards you.

Using the lever on the side, push it all the way down until it turns towards the needle.

Take the thread and wrap it under the metal hook to the left and then around. Pull the thread to the right and place it into the metal hook around the needle. Pass the needle through and then to the back. Finally, let go the lever on the side. The automatic needle threader produces a small loop behind the needle that we will pull out.

After pulling on the thread loop slightly, your machine is threaded and ready to go.

Just one more step if you just placed the bobbin. Hold the upper thread with one hand, while turning the hand wheel towards you with your other hand. The needle will move down and then up and by doing so it will bring up a loop of the bobbin thread. Pull out this loop to bring out the end of the bobbin thread and place both threads under the presser foot towards the back of the machine.

 
3. Changing the Needle

To change the needle in the machine it is helpful to place a piece of fabric or paper over the needle plate so that you don’t accidentally drop the needle into the machine.
Turn the needle clamp screw above the needle and remove the needle.

Now place the new needle and place it into the needle clamp. Make sure the flat side of the needle is facing backwards. Then use a screw driver or your fingers, to tighten the needle clamp screw.