Sewing by hand is the least glamorous skill in this domain and probably the highest return. Clothing is the thing a household gets through fastest, replacing it is the thing that becomes impossible soonest, and almost every garment that gets thrown away fails at a seam, a button or a hem: three repairs, none of which take more than fifteen minutes.
You need four stitches. Everything else is refinement.
The kit
Salvage buttons, zips and thread from anything beyond saving before it goes. A dead shirt is a bag of buttons and half a metre of usable thread. See salvage in this domain.
A thimble is not optional on heavy fabric. Pushing a needle through denim, canvas or webbing with a bare finger is how people give up on sewing.
Thread, and how much
Polyester for strength and rot resistance. It is what almost all modern clothing is sewn with and it outlasts cotton considerably, particularly anything that gets damp.
Cotton where you want the thread to fail first, which is a real technique: on a delicate fabric, a thread stronger than the cloth will tear the cloth rather than break, and then you have a hole instead of a loose stitch.
Work with a length no longer than your forearm, about 45 cm. Longer tangles, abrades against the fabric with every pull, and wears out before you reach the end of it.
Single thread for most work, doubled for buttons and anything structural. Doubling halves the number of passes and doubles the strength.
Wax it. Drawing the thread across a block of beeswax two or three times stops it tangling and adds noticeable strength and water resistance. This is the smallest tip on the page and the one that most improves the experience.
The four stitches
Running stitch. In and out, evenly spaced, the simplest of all. Fast, weak, and right for tacking two pieces together temporarily, gathering fabric, or a seam under no strain.
Backstitch. The workhorse and the one to learn properly. Come up, go back a stitch length and down, come up a stitch length ahead of where you started. On the top it looks like an unbroken line; underneath the threads overlap. It is the hand equivalent of a machine seam and it is strong enough for trousers, bags and workwear.
Whip stitch. Over the edge, again and again, at a slant. For joining two folded edges, closing a gap, stopping an edge fraying, and attaching patches.
Slip stitch, sometimes called ladder stitch. For hems and for closing a seam invisibly. Catch a couple of threads of the outer fabric, then run the needle inside the fold for a centimetre, and repeat. Almost nothing shows on the outside.
That is the set. Backstitch for strength, whip for edges, slip for invisible, running for temporary.
Starting and finishing without a knot showing
Starting. A small knot in the thread end is fine and is what most people do. Neater: take two tiny stitches on top of each other in the seam allowance, which locks the thread with nothing to catch or pull through.
Finishing. Two or three tiny stitches in the same place, then pass the needle inside the fold or the seam allowance for a few centimetres before cutting. That buries the tail so it cannot work loose.
Never finish with one knot and cut close. It pulls through the first time the garment is washed, and the repair silently undoes itself from one end.
A button that stays on
- Mark the position, and check it against the buttonhole before you commit.
- Doubled, waxed thread. Start with two tiny stitches on the right side where the button will hide them.
- Lay a matchstick, a cocktail stick or a spare needle across the top of the button and sew over it. This holds the spacing automatically.
- Six to eight passes through the holes. On a four-hole button, two parallel bars are stronger and easier to undo than a cross.
- Remove the stick. The button is now loose with a gap of thread underneath.
- Bring the needle up between the button and the fabric, and wind the thread tightly round the loose threads five or six times to form the shank.
- Pass the needle back down through the shank to the wrong side, two locking stitches, bury the tail, cut.
On thin fabric, or a button that takes real strain like a coat or a waistband, sew a small flat button on the inside directly behind the outer one and stitch through both. It spreads the load and stops the button pulling through the cloth. This is what good coats do and it is why their buttons stay on.
Hems
Turn twice. Fold up a centimetre, press or crease it with a thumbnail, then fold again to the depth you want. Two folds means no raw edge inside and nothing to fray.
Pin or tack first. A tacked hem in running stitch takes two minutes and saves you unpicking a crooked one.
Slip stitch for invisible, whip stitch for quick and hard-wearing, backstitch where it will take abuse like the bottom of work trousers.
Do not pull the thread tight. A hem stitched tight puckers and shows a line of dimples from the outside. Snug, not taut.
Check the length wearing the shoes you will wear with it. This sounds obvious and is the most common reason a hem gets done twice.
Repairing a seam that has burst
The commonest garment failure and the easiest fix.
- Turn it inside out.
- Unpick a couple of centimetres beyond the burst at each end, so you are starting and finishing in sound stitching rather than at the weak point.
- Pin the edges together, matching the original seam line exactly. The old needle holes show you where it was.
- Backstitch the whole length, overlapping the original stitching at both ends by a centimetre.
- Finish and bury the tails.
If the fabric itself has torn rather than the thread failing, sewing the edges together makes a weak, puckered line that will go again. Put a patch behind it instead. See patching and darning in this domain.
If a seam keeps failing in the same place, the garment does not fit or the fabric is worn through. Reinforce with a patch behind the seam before you stitch it, or accept the garment has moved to a different job.
What to practise on
Do not learn on something you care about.
- A worn-out shirt gives you seams to unpick, buttons to move, a hem to redo, and nothing is lost if it goes badly.
- Sew two scraps together with each of the four stitches and then pull them apart. Feeling backstitch resist and running stitch let go teaches more than reading about it.
- Sew four buttons onto a rag, two flat and two with a shank, and pull them. That is the argument for the shank in ten seconds.