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Hi, I'm Cynthia Mann and we're here today at Birch Fabrics in Paso Robles, California.
This is also the home of Fabricworm.com. Hi, I'm Melissa Lunden; I'm the resident seamstress
here at Birch Fabrics. I teach sewing lessons here, prepare blog tutorials and sew samples
of Birch's line of organic cotton. And I am here today to talk to you about sewing. Hi,
now we are going to talk about how to sew an elastic waistband. I have a little sample
here for a very little waist, and once you've sewn your piece or two pieces together, what
you're going to do is make a casing, which is folding over the fabric once, pressing
- which I already have - and then folding it over one more time, and pressing again.
You're gonna have your piece of elastic, you're going your measuring - sewing gauge to figure
out that my piece of elastic is half an inch, so I want to make my casing just a little
bit wider than half an inch. That way there's enough room for the elastic to get in, but
it won't have too much room to wiggle around. You're going to start sewing very close to
the bottom fold of the casing. Back stitch a couple stitches, and then sew all the way
around, rotating the fabric as you go, and making sure you don't sew the underside while
you're at it. And then you're gonna want to stop sewing about an inch away from where
you started and then back stitch, and then you are going to start threading your elastic.
And this is what your casing looks like. And then you take your piece of elastic and a
safety pin. You put your pin at the top of your elastic, and this just makes it so much
easier to thread your elastic through. And so then you just kind of push and pull the
safety pin and the elastic. So once you've decided that this is the right width, then
you'll trim your elastic, take out your safety pin, and then take your elastic, and then
with your sewing machine, back stitch - forward, back, make sure it's nice and secure. And
then you'll tuck your elastic in, smooth it out, and trim your threads. And then what
you'll do is you'll just finish sewing over those - that opening, stretching the fabric
as you go. Back stitch - and then you can take a second to kind of smooth out the fabric.
And ta-da, you're all done.