I have been working on making some bags/purses lately, and since I want to make them look especially pretty, I have been doing a few fancy things with them. Mainly, french seams to attach pieces of vintage kimono fabric together.

I took pictures of the process, and thought I’d put together a quick tutorial on how to do them. I’ll make a single-image one eventually.

French seams area  way to encase the raw edge of the fabric so it’s not seen. it’s a way to finish garments, although I find it works best for straight lines. While you can french seam curves, it is a little trick to avoid puckering. If you’re new to the idea of this way of finishing seams, stick with it for straights until you get it down and can make them narrow.

Hopefully, this image gives you a good idea of what I’m talking about when I say “encasing a seam.”

The secret to french seams is that they should be narrow when finished (around 1/4″ or 6mm or less), so you have to be careful and accurate in your cutting and sewing. I would consider them an intermediate tool to use to finish seams.

This is the fabric I’m working with right now. It’s an old haori (kimono jacket) from what I guess is the 70’s. It’s a heavy rayon, with hand stenciled butterflies on it.

I really love the colors, it reminds me of ice cream with faint yellow, green and pinks. The pattern was too large and spread out to use for corsets, unfortunately, but it will make an excellent purse!

Terminology

Right Side : this means the finished, nice side of your fabric. This what you will have on the outside when it’s finished.

Wrong Side : this is the inside of the fabric, the part you don’t see.

Seam : a line of sewing done on your machine. Usually straight stitch, unless otherwise stated. I left mine at the default setting for my machine (short/medium length stitch).

Press : you will need your iron. Remember the adage “ye shall press what ye sew.” Get used to ironing every seam after you stitch it, especially for french seams. Iron should be set to temp based on your fabric (low to medium for synthetics that can melt, high for cottons).

Let’s Make a French Seam!

Step 1: Sew the first seam

French seams start out the opposite of what you are used to doing. Normally, you sew a seam where the right side (what will become the outside of the garment) together, so the seam is hidden.

Not with french seams. You start out sewing the seam with the wrong sides together, your nice side facing outward.

The seam, here, is the red mark, because it’s a little hard to see:

Step 2: Trim the excess

Since a french seam is an encased seam, you want to get rid of the extra stuff so you can make an nice, narrow piece.

I trimmed this to about 3mm or 1/8″. Be really careful not to catch the thread you used to make the seam.

Step 3: Press

Get used to being friends with your iron.

Press your seam all to the same side, it doesn’t really matter which. You just want it nice and controlled for the next bit of sewing.

Step 4: Sew another seam, encasing that one

This second seam makes a casing for the other, so no raw edges are sticking out, and it won’t fray or anything.

Remember that diagram I made? Now is a good time for a refresh on it:

Now, you will sew it like a regular seam, wrong sides together. You want this seam to be wide enough to capture all of your raw edge inside, but not too wide, because it can be bulky.

For these, I wound up with it being about 3/8″ (10mm) wide, which I was hoping to be a bit narrower at 1/4″ but alas, it is what it is.

Step 5: Hope you left your iron on

More pressing! Yay!

Just like you did before, press the seam to one side. You want to make sure the part of the seam that is visible on the right side of the fabric (outside of the piece) is nice and flat and pretty.

Basically, iron the crap out of it.

There you go! You did it! Yay!

Hope you learned a little something about sewing today, and thank you for reading!

Once I make a single-image thing on it, I’ll add it here as well as my DeviantArt page.

Let me know what you think! I hope I didn’t get too wordy as per usual.