Knits - The Walking Foot and Binding Techniques

Hi Everyone! Over the past few weeks, we've explained a few techniques to make sewing with knits a bit easier. It's been so fun to see the response! Many of you are gaining confidence and mastering this challenging fabric - which is the goal- Horray!

This week we touch on two additional topics:

1. How to Use a Walking Foot - A walking foot is an attachment you can buy for your machine. It is brand/model specific, so jsut be sure to have the information handy when shopping or researching it. You can find them at a variety of places - local quilting/fabric shops, online stores like Quality Sewing (they have a customer support hotline, and they're fabulous to work with! Use coupon code Pixie20 to get 20% off your order) or Sewing Machine Plus, or even Amazon (you just need to know exactly what you're looking for). 

The walking foot might look intimidating, but it's actually pretty easy to use. The benefit of the foot is the additional feed dogs built in to the foot itself. They work in combination with your machines lower feed dogs to push the fabric through with equal pressure from both sides of the fabric, which reduces the stretching of the knit! Be sure to watch the video to see the instalation and demonstration of a few types of stitches and seams.

2. Sewing Neck Binding and Neck Bands - Whether you're looking for an alternative to a knit hem or you're just interested in a new type of finish, these are both great techniques to master! In the video I demonstrate both styles: a binding and a band. I also show you how to substitute a binding or band for an exisitng hemline. Many patterns are designed to use a band/binding (like the t-shirt variations, baseball tee, or v-neck tee) but some (like the free t-shirt) are designed with a hemline that can be finished in an alternate style for a new look! These techniques can be used not only on the neckline, but also on the sleeve hem or waist/hip hemline! Once you master this technique you will gain confidence in sewing with many types of knit fabrics!

A few tips to remember:

• Always cut a binding or a band on the bias, even on a knit fabric. This will provide the greatest amount of stretch and result in a nice flat/tight circular shape for your binding/band
• I prefer a finished width of 1/4" for both bindings and bands, so I cut them at 1" width. This allows to 1/4" seam allowances and the remaining 1/2" is folded in half resulting in a 1/4" finished width. If this it too small for you to work with, you can add to the width which will result in a wider band/binding (adding another 1/4" will result in a 3/8" finished width).
• Adding fusible knit stay tape (has stretch) or fusible interfacing for knits to your shirt neckline before attaching the binding may help provide added stability to your fabric.
• I've used the walking foot in the video, but you can use a standard presser foot when sewing bindings/bands. 
• Steam is your friend! It's pretty magical to watch how well pressing with steam works, don't skip this final step!

There are two videos posted below. You can watch them here (streaming) or click the text link Walking Foot Download or Neck Binding Download to go to a download page where you can download the video to watch offline.

Got questions? Be sure to jump over to our private facebook group and comment under the Knit Fabrics - Walking Foot and Bindings post. We're happy to help you confidently sew with knit fabrics!