DIY Skinny Jeans

Although skinny jeans aren't the most popular trend at the moment, trends come and go and you don't want to buy new pants every time a new style of jeans becomes all the rage. If you have looser and flowy jeans that you no longer want in that style, they can be easily altered to a thinner leg or even a skinny jean style with the use of a sewing machine and a few stitches.

You can make it more of a boot cut fit or skinny jeans if you have a flared pant leg. It's a great way to save some money and not throw away a perfectly good pair of jeans.

Use Binder Clips to Hold Difficult Fabric Together

Sewing is all fun and games until you have to try to pin together slippery or silky fabric with just some pins. You have to use about a million pins just to try to hold the pieces together and it still someone doesn't seem to be doing the trick. They fall out and the fabric slips all over the place. That is the perfect time for some binder clips. They are stronger and less likely to lose their grip.

You'll be impressed with the results of binder clips for those difficult fabrics that are nearly impossible to pin and keep together.

The Easy Way to Install a Zipper

For some people, putting in a zipper is the most daunting task when it comes to sewing. If you don't know what you're doing, it can be extremely time consuming. However, there are so many tips and tricks that you can learn that will help you to save time when you are installing a zipper, making it actually to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the sewing process.

Keep the needle on the left-hand side and sew on the right side of the seam.  Then you just have to slide the fabric under the presser foot, backstitch, and start sewing the other side.

How to Get Crisp Corners

One of the simplest things that you can do when sewing that will make your piece look professional is to ensure that all of the corners are properly turned so that they are crisp. Having bunched up fabric in the corner of a piece (especially if it is a collar) will make your garment look unprofessional and homemade. One of the easiest tricks to prevent this is to cut the excess fabric in the corners and use a blunt object to push it out when flipped right side out.

You can also sew a small thread into the corner and use that to pull the corner to a perfect point at the end.

Use Plastic to Easily Sew Heavy Fabrics

If you don't have a fancy and expensive sewing machine, or if it is just difficult for you to sew with certain bulky or heavy fabrics, this hack will be a lifesaver. In order to sew over top thick or troublesome materials (like terry cloth or fluffy fabric), all you have to do is put a piece of plastic over the top when you sew. This ensures that the fabric doesn't get stuck in the machine.

It is already easy enough for regular and easy to use fabrics to get stuck in the machine. When you try out different fabrics it can become unbearable.

Get Yourself a Good Seam Ripper

No one is perfect. Mistakes are made with every sewing project. There is not a sewer on earth that has completed a project without making a few mistakes. Although some people tend to just use scissors to remove the unwanted stitches, spending endless amounts of time trying to rip out each seam individually without ripping the garment, you need to buy a seam ripper. It will speed up the process immensely.

Seam rippers even have one end that is blunt so that it can help you to remove the stitches quickly without harming the garment in any form or fashion...truly an essential!

A Trick for Using a Serger

A lot of folks love using this machine because it really speeds up the sewing process. The secret sauce here is the serger, making sewing a breeze! But to get those edges looking sharp and the stitches just right, you've gotta know how to use it properly. When you're working with jersey fabrics, here's the trick: lift the top knife of the serger by pulling it to the right and then turning it up.

Fold that corner of the knit fabric twice, give it a good press, and you're ready to rock and roll with perfect hemming on your knit fabric.