For those of you who have been weaving in the Saori way for a while, you may have quite a bit of fabric ready to turn into a wearable. You may even get to the ‘another scarf and I’ll scream’ situation.  Please, I’m not rebelling against scarves! I love them and I think they are the most underrated, important piece of clothing you can own, but it is nice to have a break from them at times.

Cutting

The first process in making garments is overcoming a possible fear of cutting the fabric that you may be harboring. You’re not alone. It took a lot of effort and resources to make it and cutting it seems a wanton thing to do. But you must do it. Work out where you need to cut and stitch two lines of machine stitching about 1cm apart from each other.  I nearly always use a plain stitch but some cloths may require a zigzag. Then (bravely) CUT.

Seaming

I’m not going to start with the simple seaming options but with the flat felled seam.  Throwing you in the deep end of the pool. This is the one to use when you have two ‘raw’ woven edges to get together.  They are secured with the previous stitching step and it all looks a bit dodgy at times, but it works really well. Here in the photo I have pinned the seam with right sides together. I’ve left one edge to extend past the other edge and pinned.  Machine stitch about .5cm-.75cm inside the shorter edge.

Press the new seam so the longer edge covers the shorter edge.

Then turn under the longer edge so it conceals and encloses the shorter edge. Press and pin, then stitch close to the folded edge. 

That’s it!  Both the front and the back of the seamed cloth is secure, neat and strong. Now you know the hardest thing about cutting cloth and stitching the other seams will seem easy.