I recently had some trouble achieving a neat finish when sewing a French seam on a synthetic crepe. After doing the first stitching pass with wrong sides together, I knew I wouldn’t get a good press on this fabric, so turning it right sides together for the second line of stitching would be tricky. I decided to understitch the seam allowances to one side. I then trimmed the raw edges close to the understitching. This made folding the layers right sides together easy, and the final line of stitching was smooth and accurate. The seam ended up perfect, with no fuzzy edges sticking out of the seam.

—Catherine Hay, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

This reader-submitted tip was featured in Threads #209, June 2020. Photo: Mike Yarmin

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