Hey Everyone! This is Sarah with sewingpartsonline. com. I'm going to show you how
to use a double shirring foot, also known as a gathering foot, and how to install it.
so this is the double shirring foot, also known as a gathering foot.
This is a low shank
and as you can see it has a little slot
right here so you can actually add on a flat piece of fabric while
you're gathering another piece of fabric, which is really nice and
a time saver.
So, to install it, we are going to remove
the whole shank that we have on right now.
Use your little screw driver
and remove this whole thing.
I'm going to fit this underneath here
and just slide it up onto the screw
And make sure it is nice and tight.
There we go, that's all there is to it.
Before the gathering foot, we would have to use a hand needle and thread and
we would have to bunch all of our fabric up manually
which was a big pain because the thread would always break.
Now, we can just
put it underneath the foot, just like any other presser foot
and push it through.
And if you want a lot of volume in your gathers
Put your stitch length up as high as it can go.
You can see it'll really gather that fabric. See how much volume is in those?
Maybe you don't want as much volume in there,
just go ahead and put your stitch length a little lower.
See how quickly and easily that gathers?
It's lovely.
If you want something with even more gathers in there
you just take the needle thread, right there, on this side and
this side and you just pull them taut. The fabric will bunch up even more.
It's just such a time saver.
Another benefit of the gathering foot is you can add a flat layer of
fabric
while you're gathering the bottom layer fabric.
So, this blue layer of fabric is going to be gathered
and I'm going to put this green fabric right in this tiny little slot here.
I'm just going to slide it in
Try to line it up as best as you can.
So, the blue layer is going to get
gathered while the top layer stays flat. It attaches and gathers at the
same time.
You're going to have to help guide it through because it is a little slot.
It's going to need a little help.
As you can see, the blue layer is getting gathered
beautifully
and the top green layer is completely staying flat. So, you are attaching and gathering at the
the same time.
Keep an eye on the top layer of fabric to make sure it's not
sliding too much.
So, as you can see, it is gathered and attached at the same time.
Another great option with the gathering foot is you can also do shirring
with the elastic thread in the bobbin for all those great summer dresses
What we do it, take off
the bobbin plate
take out our regular bobbin
and put in some bobbin that is wound with elastic thread.
Install like you normally would, except you have to
manually pull it up.
Bring your needle down,
you'll see that it catches
the thread and just pull it up
like that.
You can see how has tension in the bobbin and that's what's going to give us a little
extra gather.
Put everything back
And we're ready to sew.
Now we are ready to do the actual shirring
We have our elastic thread in the bobbin
I'm just going to put the fabric underneath
and sew.
It's best to have it on a stitch length of 5
because a longer stitch length
creates more gather. You can see, it almost looks like it's smocked. Normally, you have to
do that by hand
and it's [gathering foot] doing it all for you.
So, once we put this underneath
the steam iron, this whole fabric will shrink, like this, really small.
And it will have all that stretch to it.
Just like those great summer dresses we love.
So, that was the gathering foot. To purchase your gathering foot, visit us at
sewingpartsonline.com or on facebook at facebook/sewingpartsonline.