(relaxed music)
- What's sewing on, friends?
Wanna learn how to shirr?
"Shirr" you do!
I promise that is the one and only shirring pun
that I will make in this video.
This is a quick tutorial on how to shirr fabric.
Shirring is a sewing technique
in which you replace your regular bobbin thread
with elastic thread.
You then sew in lines on top of woven,
that's non-stretchy fabric,
and the outcome is something that looks like this,
a puckered looking fabric
that has a good deal of stretch to it.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
One second there, Annika.
I thought this was called smocking.
Well, smocking can actually look kinda similar to shirring
but you can differentiate between the two
because smocking is usually done with hand stitches
with embroidery thread
and it's either applied to a patterned fabric
or the stitches are used to create a pattern on the fabric.
Shirring, however, is done with a sewing machine.
It creates a somewhat more stretchy fabric
by using elastic in the bobbin
and it's usually done in a straight stitch in lines.
So let's get into the how to
and then afterwards, I'll show you a little sneak peak
of the next project that I'll be uploading
in just a few days that uses shirring.
To the tutorial.
For demonstration purposes,
I'll just be using this scrap piece of cotton woven fabric
that I've ironed flat.
If it's your first time shirring,
I highly recommend trying it out on scrap pieces first.
Many different types of fabric can be shirred
but light-weight cottons are probably
the easiest type of fabric to shirr.
The fabric I'm using is a little thicker,
probably about quilting weight,
but it'll still work out if it is this thick.
It might just require some adjusting
of machine tensions and stitch length.
Now, this may not be necessary depending on your application
but if at some stage you wish
to hem the fabric piece that you're shirring
and the shirring is going right out to the edges,
you should hem it first,
because once the fabric is all elasticated and stretchy,
it'll be really difficult to hem.
I'm just going to put a simple double folded hem
on the top and bottom edges of my piece of fabric.
Now, it's time to draw some guidelines on the fabric.
The guidelines need to go on the right side of the fabric.
If you're using a material with lines
or squares on it like gingham,
then this a clever way to skip this step
but if you don't have lines already on your fabric,
then at least for the first few times,
I recommend drawing some guidelines in chalk
and then once you get the hang of it,
you can use the guidelines on your machine
or even the edge of your presser foot as a guide
or just eyeball it.
I'm going to draw guidelines on the right side
of the fabric like this,
each spaced 1/2 an inch,
that's 1.25 centimeters if using metric,
from each other.
I'm using a water-erasable chalk pencil to do this.
Now, the fabric is prepared.
It's time to wind the bobbin.
Now, this is what creates the shirred effect.
Using elastic thread in the bobbin.
Elastic thread comes in all different sizes
but for shirring light to medium weight fabric,
using an elastic that's one millimeter wide works best.
Keep in mind, that the elastic will be visible
on the wrong side of the fabric,
so you will probably want to use an elastic
that is a similar color to your fabric,
especially if working with a semi-sheer fabric.
The bobbin needs to be wound by hand.
Now, if you've been spoiled
with an automatic bobbin winder on your machine like I have,
then this can seem extremely tedious
but it's important to wind it by hand
because machines will stretch it out too much.
As you hand wind the bobbin,
you need to make sure you're not stretching
the elastic thread at all so go slowly.
Once your bobbin is full
or however full you need it to be,
cut the elastic thread.
The bobbin in then placed inside the bobbin case
and then into your machine in the exact same way
that you would load your regular bobbins.
Bobbin.
It's a fun word to say.
So I'm popping this bobbin
into my front loading bobbin as usual.
Then, it's usually a good idea
to pull the elastic bobbin thread
up out of the machine like you normally would before sewing
and pulling it a little bit longer than usual.
Now, shirring is usually performed using a straight stitch.
You can use other stitch types to get different effects
but that's beyond the scope of this tutorial.
Set your machine to a regular straight stitch.
Your stitch length will probably need to be lengthened
from the regular setting that it's automatically on.
I set my stitch length to four
when the default stitch length is three
and the upper thread tension will most likely
need to be adjusted as well.
Depending on your machine,
you might not need to adjust it
but for my machine,
I find that turning the tension from four
which is the default, up to five
makes the shirring work a lot better.
On some machines, you might even have
to turn the tension down.
It's totally dependent on the machine that you have
and it'll change from machine to machine.
Are you sure that Cher likes to shirr and then share it?
I couldn't help myself.
I'm sorry for this.
(test pattern beep)
Okay, now we have all that set up,
we can do the actual shirring.
Woo hoo!
I'm going to sew straight lines
on the right side of my fabric like this.
At the end of each row,
I'm going to pivot and go back up the next one
without fastening off the stitches.
You can fasten off your stitches
at the end of each row with a backstitch
and then cut it off,
but it'll use more elastic thread doing it this way
and I'm all about being thrifty here.
I'm also not going to sew right up to the edges.
I'll leave about half an inch unsewn on both sides here.
With the right side of the fabric facing up,
do a backstitch of one to two stitches at the beginning
and then it's as simple as
sewing straight along those guidelines.
As you can see,
the fabric is beginning to gather up a little here
because the elastic thread underneath
is pulling on the fabric where it's been sewn on.
Then stopping about half an inch
before the edge of the fabric at the end of the first row,
I put my needle down,
pivot it 90 degrees,
brought the needle up,
carefully move the presser foot to the next guideline
and then here you can gently pull the upper thread
a little bit loose if you're getting bunching
between rows.
Then I put my needle back down
through the next row's guideline,
pivot it another 90 degrees
so I'm heading back in the opposite direction
and then I began sewing
on the chalk guideline down the next row.
So, let's just speed this whole thing up.
With each new row that I've sewn
with the elastic in the bobbin,
the fabric begins to bunch up.
You will need to hold your fabric flat,
which often means stretching it back out,
as the fabric will start becoming
very elastic with the more rows that you sew.
And then at the very end,
I did a backstitch of only one to two stitches
to hold the threads in place
and that's it.
This Is what it looks like after shirring.
Now, if the edges of your shirred piece
are not going to be sewed up into seams,
then you will also want to do a straight stitch
using regular thread in both the top thread and the bobbin,
down both edges like this,
to ensure that each row stays secure.
But if both edges are going to be sewn up in seams,
you don't really need to do this.
Now the very last step that makes it look
just that little bit nicer,
is to get your iron and set it to maximum steam setting.
Now, a lot of people recommend
that you simply hold your iron just over the top
of your newly shirred fabric
and blast steam at it from there
but that seemed to be doing nothing for me
and I had no problems ironing directly onto the fabric
with my iron plate touching the right side of the fabric
and after doing that,
the shirring just looks a little bit neater,
makes it more evenly gathered at the top and bottom edges
and the stitches become a little tighter
which makes it shrink slightly too.
Also, you can see I still have
the chalk guidelines on the fabric.
You'd wanna wash those off perhaps before ironing
to remove the guidelines if it was gonna be
part of a piece of clothing,
but as this is just a test piece,
I'm not gonna bother with that step.
Shirring makes the fabric about 1.5 to 2 times shorter
than it originally was
depending on the stitch length you use,
the thickness of the elastic thread
and the type of fabric that you're using.
I measured it and this piece became
approximately 1.9 times shorter than its original length
so keep that in mind when you're using shirring
as one piece of a larger project,
for example, as a panel on a dress.
It's wise to do a small test piece
using the sewing machine settings
and a fabric that you eventually wanna use
just to determine how much shrinkage you'll get
so that you can plan and cut your fabric accordingly.
♪ Troubleshooting, because sewing is never that simple ♪
Number one.
The first is to play around with your stitch length.
Making your stitch length longer
will make your fabric more gathered.
Decreasing it will do the opposite.
It'll make it less gathered.
So if your fabric isn't shirring enough,
turn the stitch length up if you can.
Keep in mind that you need to do at least a few rows
before you get the full effect
of the shirring on the fabric.
The second tip is to fine tune your top thread tension.
Don't just turn it up slightly and leave it at that.
You might need to turn it up even more, even more.
You may even need to turn it down.
You might need to play around with different settings
until you find something that works.
Number three, try hand-winding your bobbin again.
I know.
That's annoying.
But it is possible that you had a little bit of stretch
when you wound it the first time
or, just maybe, not enough stretch.
Yeah, that's right.
You may just need to stretch it every so slightly
while winding the bobbin.
It just totally has to depend on your sewing machine
and I am sorry if you have to redo this.
Don't blame me.
Number four.
Try using a walking foot attachment if you have one.
While a regular presser foot will work for most machines,
a walking foot may just be what you needed
to help your machine grip the fabric a little bit better.
And number five, the final troubleshooting tip that I have
is to adjust the bobbin's tension.
Just be really careful if you decide to do this
and only as a last resort
because you can mess up your bobbin doing this
so only do this if you know what you're doing.
So if your shirring's just not turning out right
after trying all the other trouble shooting steps,
then you can turn this screw on your bobbin
to the right to increase the tension
or to the left to decrease it.
Usually increasing it will solve most problems with shirring
but it could be the other way.
There's just so many different types of machines out there
that you might have to do something very strange to yours.
When you turn the screw,
remember exactly how much you turned it,
i.e., 1/4 of a full revolution
so you can return it to the same tension
when you're finished shirring.
If you forget, your regular sewing projects
might start messing up until the bobbin tension is reset.
Finally, you do not need a fancy, computerized,
top of the range sewing machine to do this.
(mumbles) likes to tell me stories
of shirring a lot of her clothing in the '70s and early '80s
using a, you know, sewing machine from that period,
that basically only sewed with a straight stitch.
Shirring can be done on pretty much any machine
where you can put elastic thread in the bobbin.
So what can you make with this?
Well, in a few days time, I'll have a tutorial up
on how to make a blouse that is shirred
and has puffy sleeves and a square neckline.
So get practicing on shirring
and then you can follow along with my tutorial
in a few days time.
I'll see you soon
and stay crafty everyone.
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(relaxed music)