Hey friends, it's Haley at Seamwork and today I'm going to talk a little bit about picot elastic
and I'm going to show you how to sew it. So you might be thinking "what's picot elastic?" Picot
elastic is a really common elastic that's used in lingerie projects so what it looks like is
it has a plush side, the plush side faces your body, touches your skin, so it's nice and plush and comfy.
There is a plain side that looks a lot like regular old knit elastic and then there's
the picot edge. The picot edge is this cute little decorative scalloped edge. In this video I'm going
to show you how to sew picot elastic with a really beautiful, clean, professional finish. Let's jump in.
So our first step for when we're sewing picot elastic is we are going to want to find
the plain side of our elastic. This refers to the kind of smooth side, not the plush side
and I will refer to this always as the plain side, and then this is the plush side just for
your reference and we are going to put the plain side right sides together with our fabric and
with the bra and really anything that you're going to be attaching pico elastic to typically
the elastic is going to be a shorter length than the length of the fabric and the elastic
adds shape, that's why it is that way. So you're going to want to stretch it to fit to that length.
I like to start by taking a clip and clipping one end and then the other end
then you can take your third clip and give your elastic a little stretch, take your fingers for
a walk finding that center and then clipping again. Next we're going to take this over to
our sewing machine and we're going to use a zigzag stitch to sew along the picot edge of our elastic,
just right to the inside of this little decorative edge. Okay so we're over at our sewing machine
and the first thing we're going to want to do is make sure that we're on a zigzag stitch. A
zigzag stitch is going to stretch along with our elastic, unlike a straight stitch might
and I want to make sure that my zigzag stitch has a good amount of width to it. The width of your
zigzag stitch is what's going to make it stretchy. So I'm going to be starting at like a 4
and then for my length I'm at a 1.5 but I might adjust from there.
All right,
and I'm going to place my
fabric and elastic right underneath my presser foot and make sure everything is nice and aligned.
The clips are great but you kind of have to remove them right before you start sewing.
So what I'm doing when I'm aligning is I'm making sure that my needle when it's in
the leftmost position is pretty close to that uh decorative edge, not on it but really close to it.
So I'm just aligning everything and for my first couple stitches I'm going to use
the hand knob just so I can make sure that I'm being nice and precise and that everything is
lining up just the way I want it. Okay that is looking really good I'm happy with that.
So um I do want to increase the length just to smidge. I'm going to go bump it up to like a 2.25
and sew a couple more stitches.
That looks a lot better, bumping it up a little bit more. Everything with sewing is trial and error and
that's why we always want to take it nice and slow. I'm happy with where I'm at so I'm going
to do a little back stitching just to secure that really well and then I can start sewing.
So to this point, for this first little half inch I haven't been stretching but now that I've
back stitched, everything is secure I want to start stretching a little bit. So I'm going to feed
this through the machine just enough so that I can kind of take hold of the back a little bit here
and I'm going to start stretching as I sew.
I'm still letting the feed dogs do their work, I'm not pulling it through the sewing machine
I'm just allowing a little bit of counter tension so that my stitches stay nice and even
and you can if you have this feature on your machine you can slow down your stitch
speed a little bit that can be really helpful.
All right,
i'ma speed it up though, I'm a speed demon.
There we go,
and as you approach the end you'll want to slow down a little bit, take that last clip out
and then back stitch really well at the end there.
Let's take it back to our table and do some trimming. Okay so we've sewn our first
little round of stitches right up next to that picot edge. What we want to do next
is a little bit of trimming. Of course trimming our threads if you have any, that's a good habit,
and if you turn your sample around to the wrong side you'll see that you have
all of this extra fabric below your stitching and you don't need that.
It's going to add bulk to your project, so you can just trim it right away,
and I'm just trimming, I don't know eighth of an inch or so away from that stitch line.
All of this is going to be hidden so if your trimming isn't super pretty don't sweat it.
All right,
next what we're going to do is we are going to turn our elastic towards the wrong side
and you can see here from the right side what this does, I will get nice and close, is that leaves that
decorative edge visible but then on the wrong side you have the plush side touching your body,
which is nice and comfy and all of that seam allowance is encased underneath your elastic. So
we're going to turn everything towards the wrong side, you can throw a couple little like clips
or pins in here if you desire, but you really don't need to, a lot of the work can really be
done by your hands as you are stitching everything together because those zigzag stitches are almost
acting as a basting stitch, keeping everything secure. So let's pop on over to the sewing machine
and we are going to sew with a zigzag stitch right along this edge to secure everything in place.
Okay so we want to stitch as close to this undecorative edge of our elastic as
possible and by doing that it's going to help prevent our elastic from like rolling around
and buckling quite as much. If you were to sew like in the center of your elastic
this edge would be hanging kind of free and that wouldn't um be as comfortable or attractive so
I'm going to position my elastic right underneath my presser foot
and use the hand wheel just to kind of make sure it's positioned where I want. It is, it looks good,
do a little back stitch to secure
and then we can start sewing. Again, I sew kind of flat to start and then once I have enough fabric
that I can kind of hold on to without my finger being crushed by my needle, that would be bad,
I am going to start stretching a little bit as I sew, making sure that everything is nice and flat.
Something that can be really helpful when you're doing this if your machine has a
needle down button um that's really helpful because
stopping with your needle in the down position is going to give you just like a little bit more
even spacing when you are stopping and starting, which you'll have to do when you're sewing elastic.
Again make sure that you're not trying to do the work of the feed dogs,
pulling your fabric through the machine, you're just flattening the elastic enough
that it's not bunchy when you sew through it.
All right, home stretch
and then a little back stitch. All right,
let's take it over to the table and we can look at the finished result.
All right so here we have our picot elastic finish so you can see on the right side
the only stitching that's visible is the last row of stitching
that we did at the machine and then we have the pretty decorative edge that's poking through,
and on the wrong side you have the plush back elastic and the two rows of zigzag stitching
and so the picot elastic is going to add some shaping to your lingerie projects that's going
to make them nice and stable, stick into your body, I'm using a three-quarter inch elastic here but
this is going to be all the same regardless of what width of elastic you're using. You'll use
the exact same order of operations which to recap is, right side of fabric to plain side of elastic,
stitching close to the picot edge. Trimming, flipping towards the wrong side and then topstitching
with that zigzag stitch as close to the plain edge of the elastic as possible. And
that is how you sew picot elastic. There you have it, easy peasy. Let me know what you think
in the comments below. Do you have a favorite kind of elastic to sew with? Let me know.