Eased-in seams
Sometimes you’ll have a seam where one piece is slightly longer than the one you are attaching it to. This requires you to ease in the seam. You do this by placing long gathering stitches along the area you need to “shrink.” Then you very carefully gather and distribute the ease until the two sides match up. I’ll show you.
The Process
I have chosen the wrinkliest fabric in the world for this demo. See the little blue marks along the edges? These represent the areas that I need to match up. On a pattern, you might find this marked as notches. It might involve setting a sleeve into an armhole or even a more exaggerated gathering effect where you will definitely see the gathers. In this case, I’m attempting to see as few gathers or “tucks” as possible.
On the longer piece, sew just inside your seam allowance with a long basting stitch. You are only stitching between the marks or notches. Make sure that there is a tail of both upper thread and bobbin thread on either side. I am going to use a 1/2″ seam allowance, so I have stitched at about 3/8″.
Take the bobbin thread and wrap it around one finger. Pull the threads a bit to start a gathering effect.
Keep pulling and distributing until the marks on either side of your fabrics are more or less aligned.
When you’re getting close, you might want to wrap one end of the thread around a pin to secure it.
Continue to distribute the fullness as evenly as possible, using many pins to secure. You’re hoping to avoid any obvious gathers or tucks when you sew, so take your time on this step.
Stitch your regular seam allowance. Go slowly and remove the pins as you go.
Open your seam and press. Despite my best efforts, there are still more pleats and folds than I would have liked, but I also keep in mind that I just did this as an example and a real-life project might have less ease in the pattern than what I was working with. Also, steam is your friend. Anytime you have a little pucker of extra fabric or something like that, steam the heck out of it!
I’m pretending this is a sleeve, even though it’s not cut as a sleeve. You can see that when set over a curve, it actually looks pretty darn good.
