Thursday Tip with Hali - Testing Your Stitches

Thursday Tip // Testing your stitches⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Do you keep swatches handy by your sewing machine? I (Hali) like to keep the small offcuts from cutting out my patterns near my machine for testing my stitches. These swatches are helpful for testing tension, needle type, stitch type, stitch length etc. before starting a project and also double checking machine settings when you switch between projects. Every fabric behaves differently and checking your settings beforehand can help pinpoint a problem before you get to any “real” sewing. Taking the time to test can save you a lot of grief down the road! Also, remember to test on two layers of fabric as most seams will be two or more layers and fabrics can behave differently when stitched on a single thickness compared to a double thickness.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Our free fabric samples at WS could be used for this purpose too! They are 4” x 4” so there is plenty of fabric there to use the bottom half for some stitch testing. The backside of the label could be used for notes about stitch length and needle type as well! What can we say, we love a multi-use product!