If you are starting out on your home-sewing journey or trying your hand at skirt making, this series of beginner's sewing tutorials will help you to understand some key techniques. Wendy Ward is a sewing teacher, fabric fanatic and owner of MiY Sewing Studio in Brighton, and she knows a thing or two about sewing your own clothes.
With top tips for starting and finishing your sewing and advice for using the overcasting or overedge foot for your machine; understitching and staystitching tutorials; as well as how to add elastic; Wendy covers a whole range of sewing techniques that you might need for making your own clothes.
How to start and finish sewing
In this video, Wendy takes you through the basics of starting and finishing sewing with a machine, including how to use the tension setting and how to use the seam guides to ensure straight and accurate sewing. This video covers some of beginner's sewing machine basics that often aren't included in manuals, and Wendy gives you some of her all-important top tips to help you when first learning how to sew.
How to understitch
Wendy teaches you how to understitch; a really useful technique that is often overlooked by beginner sewers. Understitching is used on waist facings and pocket openings when making clothes in order to create a neat edge.
How to staystitch
Staystitching is a simple row of stitching to stop your curved edge from stretching out of shape, used when making the circle skirt or other clothing items with a curved edge.
How to use an overcasting foot
In this sewing tutorial, Wendy shows you how to use an overcasting (overlock or overedge) foot to neaten seam allowances. She shows you what the overcasting foot looks like and explains why you need to use this technique, before giving you a demonstration using her Janome sewing machine.
How to use an edge stitch foot to topstitch
In this Beginner's Guide to Sewing video, Wendy demonstrates how to topstitch using the edge stitch foot so that you get a neat line of stitches at a set distance from your seam line. She shows you what an edge stitch foot looks like, as well as giving you a couple of examples of topstitching as style details on skirts and other clothes.
How to attach elastic
This is a really handy tutorial for anyone looking to sew their own clothes. Wendy uses elastic as a style detail in her ruched pencil skirt and shows you here how to attach it to help you achieve even gathers.
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Wendy's latest book is A Beginner's Guide to Making Skirts is full of sewing tips and techniques, as well as a range of skirts to make.