Why Your First Garments Look Amateur and How to Fix Them

In this way, nothing can be more disillusioning than the first garment. It may look great on paper, but the reality is a floppy mess, crooked and an odd shape. The cause is usually not a lack of innovation, but a lack of mastery over the way the fabric moves. Novice designers approach fabric like paper, as if it will hold its shape and sharp creases. In fact, every fabric drapes, stretches or hangs in a different way, and the mastery of how it moves is the secret to illusion. Before trying to create intricate garments, simple drape a square of fabric over the back of a chair or from your hand to watch the way it moves.

A good place to begin is with muslin or other cheap cotton fabric making a “sample” or “square” (rather than making an actual garment), and cutting out a rectangle and sewing a straight line, a curve and a dart, and pressing each sample piece. Observe how a curve gives a piece of fabric a slight concavity and a dart reduces the volume of a piece of fabric and adds definition. By practicing like this you will develop your instincts much more than you would by trying to sew a whole dress or jacket. If your fabric puckers, pick out the seam and try again more slowly, and pushing the fabric through the machine rather than pulling it through. The faster you sew, the less likely you are to notice a pucker and the more likely you are to make it worse.

A very frequent error is disregarding the grain. Fabric has lengthwise and crosswise threads, and any off-grain cutting can result in twisted garments, sagging hems, or seams that will not lay flat. If a skirt appears to be spiraling or a sleeve is too far forward, it’s probably because of the pattern placement on the fabric before cutting. To overcome this problem, place your pattern pieces on grain by using the selvage edge as a guide. Use plenty of pins and make sure the fabric is smooth before tracing your pattern. This one practice will make a huge difference in the way your garments hang on your body.

Even 15 minutes a day is more productive than a few hours every few months. If you dedicate a few minutes to sewing one accurate straight line and then pressing that line and then looking at the line you can learn more than sewing 10 shirts in an hour. In a month you will be able to see a difference. Try to save each attempt you make in a small box and write on the sample something like “stitch length was 3 and used universal needle and pressed with wool setting.” If you look back at what you have done previously you will be able to see how far you have come and you will be able to tell which settings are actually helping.

If you get frustrated, don’t just keep going and hope for the best. If you are having trouble getting a collar to lie flat, for example, stop working on the garment and make a few collars on muslin until you get the hang of it. As a general rule, practice is more valuable than creativity when it comes to garment sewing. Every seam graded, every pattern piece cut on the grain, every seam ironed as soon as it is sewn, will add to your skill and eventually help you execute the garments you really want to make. What separates “beginner” from “intermediate” is not a magical technique, but a series of tiny tweaks that are made sooner rather than later.