Talk Back Thursday

Image from the book "Sew It In Minutes: 24 Projects to Fit Your Style and Schedule" by Chris Malone.  Thanks to Claire for the pointer!  :)

Thank you so much to Claire, BConky, Draculash, Elaina, Webfrau, Mamafitz, Carla, Patsijean, Prttynpnk, Linda, Shannon, Mary, Becky and Gwen for talking back to my confession last week!  :)  I asked about “chain-stitching” (although I wasn’t aware of the official term until reading the comments!). 

I recently tried it when making 9 wine totes and 9 casserole totes assembly line style and liked it.  I asked what others thought of this technique.  

When it comes to sewing garments, people were fairly evenly split between voting "yes" (4), "sometimes" (3) and "no" (3).  The most commonly called out reason to do it is exactly the reason that I did it - sewing multiple copies of the same pattern.  

BConky, for example, sewed 9 sets of Christmas PJs for her grands a couple of months ago.  Prttynpnk used to sew and sell scrub caps and Mary makes boxers for her DH in batches.  And Shannon learned the technique doing production sewing for her aunt's clothing business.  

But some people use it even when they are not making multiple copies.  Patsijean, Linda and Shannon, for example, explained how they do it when sewing a single garment - like chain stitching shoulder seams or side seams, and chain-serging to finish the seams.  

The advantages that were cited include saving time, saving thread and protecting the edges of your fabric from being "eaten up" by the feed dogs.  

Several people (4, in fact) said that chain stitching is a mainstay technique in quilting - which is, when you think about it, another place where you are doing multiple copies assembly line style.  And Webfrau pointed out that it's particularly good when you are trying to deal with little pieces of fabric - again, protection for those pieces from the hungry feed dogs!  ;)

But, as you saw from the initial counts, not everyone does it.  Some people rarely find themselves sewing more than 1 garment at a time.  And others, like Elaina, are perfectionists when it comes to their garment sewing, and prefer to focus on each seam, one at a time.  

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to leave a comment with your thoughts!  :)