luxury living room pillows
eric: this video is brought to you by sailrite.visit sailrite.com for all your project supplies, tools, and instructions.in this short video, we’re going to show you the process of creating a french seam.nothing sets off an upholstery job, like this cushion, better than a french seam. frenchseams are used for the upholstery in vinyl and leather products often seen in luxuryvehicles and boats. on the underside of a french seam, a reinforcing strip of fabric-for us, grosgrain polyester binding- is used. this helps to provide the strength of thatseam. we’re in the process of creating a cushion for a power boat. here’s cindi explaininghow it’s done. we have our three pieces cut and marked, andi’m going to sew these two pieces together
first; right sides together. i’m going tostart down at this end. you can see that our marks are very close. so i’m going to usethose as my guideline as i go down and make sure that they stay close on all the edges. eric: when patterning, we created these marksas match up marks. this is the top plate we’re going to sew together. i want this to be a fairly accurate â½â€seam. so i’m going to use this magnetic seam guide and attach it to the base of mymachine using the â½â€ on the seam gauge, and then i’m ready to stitch. eric: this will be the first of three stitches.this first stitch is a â½â€ from the raw
edges of the fabric. she’ll be careful thatthe edges are lined up perfectly as she sews along the length of the fabric assembly. she’llalso ensure that the matchup marks are coming out directly on top of each other as she sewsthis top plate together. if this assembly didn’t have shape, the matchup marks wouldnot be important. but as you can see here, there is a rounded shape to these two panelsthat are being sewing together. so for us, keeping the matchup marks directly on topof each other is important. the first stitch is done. now we’ll talkabout the reinforcement for the bottom side. we want to do a top stitch finish on eitherside of this, which is sometimes called a french seam. in order to do that, we needto flatten out these two seams. i’m going
to use this grosgrain ribbon and attach theseamstick to it and then attach that to the seam to hold it in place while i’m stitching.eric: this is a 1†grosgrain ribbon that’s available from sailrite. it will help strengthenthis french seam. without it, the center stitch is very weak. basting it in place will helpus to avoid from having to line it up as we sew. so this will hold the seam in place whilei’m stitching, but it also makes the seam stronger. eric: it is important to press down the â½â€flanges from the first stitch flat as its being basted.
we’ll be sewing closer to the center sothis doesn’t have to be exactly centered on the backside. eric: since the topstitch is approximatelya â¼â€ from the first stitch, the grosgrain ribbon does not need to be perfectly centered. for this stitching i’m going to stitch withthe edge of the foot along my seam on either side. eric: notice the right side of the presserfoot is directly on top of that seam, or first stitch. for a more professional look, go slowand be sure to guide the fabric so the foot is directly on top of that first stitch.
i’m going to turn it around and do the samething on the tan side with the edge of the presser foot at the seam line. eric: by flipping the panel and starting fromthe opposite end, we’re still sewing with that first stitch right up against the rightside of the presser foot. this last top stitch completes the french seam. a few things toconsider…we’re using a v-92 thread; sometimes even heavier threads look best with a frenchseam or contrasting colored threads. for more free videos like this, be sure tocheck out the sailrite website or subscribe to the sailrite youtube channel. it’s yourloyal patronage to sailrite that makes these free videos available. thanks for your loyalsupport.