Sewing Tips: Sewing Side Seams

Video Transcript

"Hello! I’m Stephany from Stephany’s Simply Sewing. We’ve already put our collar on our shirt and now we’re ready to take this shirt bodice, which is the body portion of our shirt, and sew up the side seams. The first thing we want to do is make sure that we put our wrong sides together. Now, I know the wrong side for this particular one has the pocket on the front, so I’m going to turn it. It’s similar to turning a garment inside out, and then I’m going to match my seam edges. I want to secure them with pins as I go down. Now, this is a pretty straight seam, so I’m not going to pin too many. I do have notch to match here, so I will want to be sure that that is matched and continue pinning towards the hem. You can pin as frequently as you feel necessary. I like to pin probably about every 4 inches, depending on the fabric. Once you have pinned your seam and have your edges matched, you’re going to want to sew your seam at 5/8 of inch or whatever it is that your pattern calls for. Once again, most patterns do call for a 5/8 inch seam, and I have marked that on my sewing machine. Once again, I’m going to line up the edge of my fabric with my paper edge, which gives me my seam, hold my tails to prevent tangles, and begin sewing. Because this sewing machine does not have the capacity to finish seams, I’m going to go ahead and finish the seam and make a flat felled seam as we did with the shoulders. That is how we finish the side seams on our men’s shirts."