The Essential Guide to Sewing With Sheers

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Sew the drapey, delicate garments of your dreams. Discover handling, sewing and finishing techniques to achieve professional results with sheer and lightweight fabrics.

Introduction to Sheer Fabrics

Meet your instructor, pattern designer Sara Alm, and learn more about some of the sheer fabrics, pattern types and linings you might use to create beautiful layered garments.

Pattern Alterations for Sheers

Add ruching, pleats and pintucks to any pattern piece with Sara’s guidance. You’ll learn how to create duplicate pattern pieces to assist you in adding a ruched layer to the side panel of a skirt, for example, or create tiny pintucks on the front of a blouse. You’ll slash and pivot or spread your pattern pieces to add fabric right where you need it.

Pretreating, Cutting & Marking

Get a solid foundation for sewing sheer fabric by pretreating: staystitching, washing, drying and ironing your fabric. Sara shares some tips for helping your fabric stay on grain and retain its character. Now you’re ready to lay out, cut out and mark your pattern pieces. You’ll also learn how to apply wash-away stabilizer to areas where you might need more control.

Stabilizing & Sewing Sheers

To add more lasting stability to your sheer fabric, you might want to consider sewn-in interfacing. Sara covers the many options that are available and explains how to prepare your pattern pieces. She’ll also discuss your sewing machine setup and what needles to use. Sew along with Sara and see some of the common problems you might encounter. Finally, learn about Sara’s secret stabilizing tool, a common household item that might surprise you!

Fabric Manipulation

Add texture and opacity to your sheer garments with pleats, pintucks and gathers. Sara shows how to sew the pattern pieces you drafted in Lesson 2, with helpful tips for pressing and using a template.

Seam Finishes

When working with sheer fabrics, you want your seams to look as tidy inside the garment as they do on the outside. French seams, enclosed seams and bound edges are the best choices for concealing the raw edges of the material. Sew along with Sara as she demonstrates these techniques!

Hems & Finishing

Yes, you can create a baby hem on sheer fabric, using Sara’s crinoline trick. She also shows how to sew a simple, clean-finished hem and picot hem and shares some tips for creating fabric-covered buttons to use on your sheer garments.