How to Understitch (So Your Lining Never Rolls Out) | Beginner Sewing Tutorial

Summary

Understitching is the little extra line of stitching that keeps your lining (or facing) tucked inside where it belongs instead of rolling out to the front. It's way easier than it sounds, and I walk you through it in real time (at 3 a.m., with four working brain cells).

• Sew your two pieces together, clip your curves, then stitch the seam allowance down to the lining, right next to the seam.
• Keep everything flat and smooth so you don't catch extra fabric, and back stitch at the start and end.
• Press it and the lining stays hidden. Slow down and take your time, because rushing never helps.

Transcript

Hi. Hello. You've got time to waste and I'm here to waste it. Hi. Hello. I'm going to explain understitching to you. Okay. So, let's say that you have sewn two seams together. You had two pieces. You sewed them together. And then you're going to flip them right side out. And this is going to be a little annoying because it's the same fabric on both sides, but this is the front. This is the back. And I want to make sure that this back stays in the back, right? Like I kind of whenever I press the seams, I want it to stay like this, right? So that the front's there and you don't see the back. So, how you get that to happen is while it's still inside out, you are going to take your back side, take your seam allowance, and you're going to stitch those together, and you're going to do it right along the seam allowance line. So, here's your stitch from where you put the two pieces together. This is your seam allowance. You're going to sew your seam allowance to the inside. Watch. Oh my gosh, I wasn't even recording. If I had recorded, this is what you would have seen. The seam allowance being sewn down to the lining on the left. Okay, so when you finish doing your stitch, you'll see that there's this stitch here on the left hand side that is attaching my seam allowance to the back side of my fabric. So, this is going to keep the back side tucked under whenever I turn it back the right way. I haven't pressed the seams yet, but you'll see this is the front. Nice and smooth. This is the back with that extra line of stitching. It's that easy.

Okay, let's try that again. So, here you'll see me clipping the seam allowance. If you're wondering why, um, it's because if you don't clip your curves, you're going to get a weird like tensiony drag line situation that you don't want. So, anytime you are going to be sewing along curves or flipping things inside out that were sewn on curves, you got to do a little clipping, and that will help everything lay nice and flat. Now, I've got this bad boy underneath the sewing machine, and I'm going to start sewing my seam allowance down to that inside lining fabric that I keep calling the back side. I left this all in real time so you can see just how like it can be tedious. It can be annoying. You have to make sure that you're not like getting an extra bit of the fabric underneath there where you're sewing your seam allowance also to the middle of the front of the shirt because you didn't keep it nice and neat and smooth first. And you really want to like take your time and be precise. Rushing never helps anything. I can tell you that with great assurance because boy oh boy did I try to rush my way through a few things for that fashion show and I paid for it in the end. So, always take your time, go slow, and you're just laying that seam allowance flat against the lining. And then zoop slow motion zooping all the way down. Okay, you get the point. This is annoying. Let's speed things up a bit, shall we? Oh, turkey. Does your presser foot ever just like unscrew itself and then you lift your foot up and the thing falls off? I CUSS hate that. I don't know why it does it, but I do know that it always does it right when I'm in a good flow and it just screws everything up and then I have to start over again. After I sew a line, I like to kind of inspect it and make sure I did it right. And then I get confused and think aloud a lot and try and figure out what have I done and is it the right thing.

Okay. So, you'll be fine once you're poked around. You don't have to be stitched down, but you do. If you're not muttering incoherently to yourself, are you even sewing? Full disclosure, it's like 3:00 a.m. while I'm recording this and uh I'm on my second iteration of a dress that has absolutely failed. I have like four working brain cells and they are struggling to figure out if I'm sewing this CUSS to the right side or not. Just bear with me. Just roll with it. Please understand it gets hard out here when your brain doesn't work. But you will see some good things like how I'm making sure that I don't have any extra fabric underneath the needle so that I'm not sewing weird parts to weird parts. That I'm kind of not stretching but making sure that the seam allowance is totally flat and not bunched up because I know that that will cause a kind of bunching on the outside as well. A more type A person would be using pins probably, but that's not me. So, I'm using my fingers and I'm praying. Yes, I have in fact put a needle through my entire fingernail. No, that does not stop me from putting my fingers precariously close to the CUSS object that could stab through my hand at any moment. We're going to speed this up again because it is tedious and I move extremely slowly. Don't forget to back stitch at the start and stop of each line so your CUSS don't fall apart. And uh if it'll focus. It's not going to focus. Sam, here I didn't do any understitching. That's the shoulder seam. So I didn't understitch it cuz it's going to connect to another one. Here I did understitching. You can't even see the other side right now before I've even pressed. So you can imagine how well it will hold in place. Oh, also it's still inside out. This fabric frays a ton. So you'll see that poking out all along. 3:00 a.m. camera skills, y'all. I'm so sorry. So hard to show you that the inside is staying on the inside and the outside is staying out.

Now I'm going to press it into place. Uh this is what the lining looks like. And then this is what the outside of the garment would look like. Look how nice and smooth and beautiful that is. This is one side of a front bodice. Now I need to do the other. So here I have just sewn my like outside fabric to my inside fabric, the lining. Then I pressed open, clipped the curves, and then sewed the seam allowance here to the lining fabric there. Then just zoop all the way down. And here you go. You see the seam allowance has been sewn down to the lining. And it also kind of curves it up that way, forcing the outside to stay outside. Get it pressed. Bada bing, bada boom. Here you go. That was the front. Now, let me show you the inside. It looks like this. Then I'm just going to sew these together and finish out my dress. And through the power of TV magic, here she is when she's all done. This was a fashion show piece and it fit the model way better than me. Here she is looking absolutely CUSS stunning on the runway. That's my girl Fia. She owns a really great Y2K vintage shop. You should absolutely check her out. It's called Outfits. But anyway, that's an understitch. It's not as hard as you think it is. You just have to get used to it. And then you're golden, baby. I love you. I believe in you. Just another moment for the dress, please. Because my god, I am so proud of this one. I'm not even going to lie. It looks like it was made for her. Because it literally was.

And it was all made better by understitching. Okay. I love you. Bye. Thanks for wasting your time with me. Waste more time by liking and subscribing and watching another video. Thanks.