Sewing Tips: Clipping Seams

Video Transcript

" Hello! I’m Stephany of Stephany’s Simply Sewing. On behalf of expertvillage.com, I’d like to show you how we clip our seams. When we have a seam that we are attaching, as we did on our collar where we have a fairly straight seam and then we have a pretty drastic curve, we want to clip those seams in order to help them to lay correctly. When we clip a seam, all we’re doing is cutting small slits in the seam and going up or a thread or 2 not quite as close as to the seam line. We do not want to cut through the seam. A lot of people are afraid that if they cut the seam of clip these seams, they’ll be more likely to rip. In fact, the opposite is true. If you only clip a seam part way, you’re going to wind up not having enough stretch in that seam, and then those stitching lines will pop. If you cut it too far, naturally you’re going to cut through the stitching line, and that’s an easy enough fix. You just need to stitch along that edge again. If you cut just up to or a couple of thread away from that line, your stitching line, you have added the flexibility into your seam so that it can lay smoothly along your collar, as you can tell right here. Clipping seams is a very important strategy for reducing bulk for enabling a seam to lay straight and for ensuring that your curves on your garments lay flat. That is how you clip a seam or clip a curve on a garment. "