Hey Everyone… I have a number of exciting projects going on and I wanted to sew some yoga pants for Anna to take back to school with her. So I switched from working on some Fashion Serger Techniques to plain old knit construction. It was then that I had a “do what I say…not what I do” moment. Instead of changing my needles to something more appropriate for knit fabric, I decided to leave the needles I was using in my serger. Everything seemed to be fine. I made the yoga pants and gave them to Anna to try on. Everything still seemed fine, she loved them and flopped down on the couch to watch some TV. A little while later she came back up to show me that I must have “left a hole” in the back. The waistband had separated from the pants across the entire back! I thought I must have not caught the fabric completely when I stitched the waistband to the pants…. so I switched the serger on and went around again, carefully trimming off an 1/8″ as I went. This time when Anna pulled the pants on, her fingers went right through the seam on both sides!
Looking more carefully at the damage, I realized that the fabric was sheering away from the base of the stitching. Then I checked my needles and discovered that I had been working with a topstitch needle in my previous project. Even worse, it was a size 16 needle… way to huge for knit fabric. I know that it’s important to use the appropriate needle for the job, but I didn’t realize that the consequences could be so dramatic!
Needles are super important… I almost feel silly sharing this experience with you. I use Schemtz Brand Needles because they are the best, and they have a wide variety of specialty needles so you can sew happy, no matter what you’re working on! Here is link to the Schmetz Needles website… Check out today’s quick tip video for all the gory details.