You need only a few supplies to make dismantling or altering your denim jeans to nice experience. These include a sewing machine, heavy duty machine needles, hand-sewing needles, thimble, yardstick, a flexible tape measure, a cotton sewing thread, fabric marking pen, pattern or tracing paper, long pins and pincushion, small sharp embroidery scissors and sharp scissors twenty to twenty-five centimetres long.
How to Use a Sewing Machine
In the process of altering jeans sewing machine is the most significant tool, thus it should be kept in proper order, well oiled, clean. When you work with heavy-duty fabric, such as denim textile, do not forget to refer to instruction manual. To avoid missing stretches and tangled threads, you have to ensure that bobbin case is free fromlint.
One of the most important items that cannot be overlooked is the correct needle. Use only heavy-duty or leather needles so that the stitches are formed correctly. Be sure to remove all pins so that they do not pass under a presser foot. If it happens, your needle gets bent and thus it can cause skipped stitches and additional damage to a needle plate or bobbin case. Replace damaged needle as soon as possible. If your jeans are heavily soiled, you have to thoroughly wash them as dirt can cause trouble to the sewing machine as well as to the sewing mechanism.
Sewing Tips for Altering Jeans
Cut out excess fabric for secondhand jeans without hesitation. Usually fabric is stretched in the thigh or knee areas. When the jeans are lying on a flat surface, it is easy to spot these areas. Cut them if you do not want problems at the time of assembling parts.
To sew over or near the seam can be a challenge as double-fold jean seam is usually very dense. Keep the presser foot level to avoid broken needles and skipping stitches. If a seam is very bulky to put it under a presser foot, place it on a hard surface and hit it with a hammer a few times.
If you want to cut different patterns from your denim jeans, lay flat or press a wrinkled textile.
Lapped seams are not so bulky as two edges are overlapping and then stitched in place. Two parallel rows of stitching are advised to secure this seam.
When you join fabric pieces, stitch along a decent seam path, and if the seam line is not straight, little dimples will appear along the finished seam.
