Investigating seams

[fred_mouse]

I had a tablecloth needing repair, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in terms of the seam. I knew that I was going to take a strip out of the middle (long side to long side), and thus I was going to be seaming across the width of the tablecloth. I decided that I wanted something that was 'good' on both sides, and thus needed to learn something new -- everything I already knew had exposed edges on the back

After some research, I thought what I wanted was a flat felled seam, and I found two resources that I found useful in 'how does that work'

• How To Sew A Flat Felled Seam: A Tutorial With Pictures - Eve Tokens
• Flat Felled Seam : Sewing tutorial - Sarina Tariq

These were particularly useful in showing me that this was not what I wanted, because I thought I'd end up with a ridge. Instead, I worked my way through this list of seam types until I found the counter seam.

This worked well, and I'm happy with the result. What I would do differently though, would be have the turn under be half as wide, so that they didn't overlap, but the cut edges touch.

Also, I didn't do the calculations correctly on where to cut and where to iron / sew, and thus I have a narrow repeat of the distinct pattern where I was attempting to take out exactly one repeat.

Conclusion: good for heavier fabrics, not great for pattern matching unless you are meticulous.

Comments

[nou]

I like flat felled seams but yes, they do leave a ridge.

I also like Sarina’s website (it taught me how to sew a placket!) but I can’t get my head around her diagram of the counter seam. It just really looks like you’re going to end up with the wrong side of the second piece of fabric on the front.

I can’t find this seam in any of my sewing books (maybe it has more than one name?) but I did find a blog post (scroll down to the bottom) stating that one seam allowance should be turned to the wrong side and one to the right side, which makes more sense to me. Was that how you did it?