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Serge Quick French Seams | Insider Video

Save time and get a professional result with this easy, precise technique.

Learn a technique for sewing a French seam that is faster and neater than the traditional way. Precision sewing expert Louise Cutting shows how a serger speeds up the process.

In this method, the fabric is arranged with wrong sides together. The seam is serged with a 1/4-inch-wide, three-thread overlock stitch, which trims just the stray threads along the cut edges. This stitching pass adds body along the seam while it saves you from having to trim the seam allowances by hand, as you would when sewing a traditional French seam.

Press the seam allowances to one side, then fold the fabric layers with right sides together. Press along the seam, making sure the seamline is exactly on the fold. Then sew the seam with a 3/8-inch-wide seam allowance, enclosing the serged allowances.

Find out more about sergers by clicking here. If you’d like to sew a traditional French seam, view this video to learn how.

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About This Video Series

Get a behind-the-scenes look at how professionals construct fine clothing worthy of designer labels. Threads editors, along with nationally recognized sewing maven Louise Cutting, will show you how to improve your skills as you learn techniques for French bias binding, clipping curves to produce graded seam allowances, and a mitering method that's key to sewing neat, flat, sharp corners.

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  1. Sophia_M | | #1

    This 3/8-inch-wide seam is rather wide.
    I would prefer a much narrower seam, wich I can obtain only by stiching the first seam with a normal sewingmachine and cutting the seamallowance as wide as I want.
    And what about the armhole with a seam3/8 inch wide?
    Will that be a nice one ? I am doubting. Sophia from The Netherlands

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