How to Shape Your Fashion Sewing Garment Properly

Many beginners don’t know how to shape your fashion sewing garment properly.  How often have you followed the pattern instructional guide to sew each seam, but didn’t know that you really should press the seam in a specific direction after each step?  Most often in the real sewing world, that step is skipped.   Maybe, because there is no illustrative drawing for the visual learners, you feel or  think it’s not important and glide right past it.  Or, maybe it’s because you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to read each and every word in the sewing guide.

But, pressing as you sew is an important step to sewing professional-looking, handmade clothes.  You must press as you sew using the proper equipment to shape your garment for your body.  The proper equipment includes:

• a good steam iron
• a padded and covered ironing board
• a tailor’s ham
• a seam roll
• a wooden point presser w/clapper
• a press cloth

The purpose of pressing the garment as you sew is to shape flat fabric into the form of a body.  If you wait to press the entire garment after it’s been stitched together, you’ve missed a critical part of the shaping process.  Use the long, bread loaf looking seam roll to steam press straight seams before you connect adjoining pieces.  The roundish ham looking tailor’s ham is used to press all darts, princess seams, hip seams and any other curvy type seams.  The point presser is used to get into the corners of collars, plackets and waistbands to flatten and eliminate an bulk.

So in order to shape your fashion sewing garment properly, in addition to following the steps in the guide sheet, remember to press the seams directionally using the shaping tools that looks like a ham and a loaf of bread.

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Here’s the video I created that shows you how to shape your fashion sewing garment properly as you sew to obtain those professional-looking results.

Enjoy!