When I am wearing a garment I made, the one thing I absolutely DO NOT want to hear someone say is, “Did you make that?” This is the kiss of death. When you make garments, the last thing you want is for them to actually LOOK like you made them. I was totally beaming recently when I told my new boss at my interview that I had made the pants I was wearing (we were requested to bring items we’d made for show and tell), and she exclaimed, “I would never have guessed that you’d made those!”

10 Tips on How to Make Your Garments Look Professional.

1. Make a muslin. Or two. Or three. Whatever it takes for you to get the fit right. If you wear something that fits poorly, it’s a sure sign that it’s homemade, because you would never lay down your hard-earned money in a store for ready-made clothing that does not fit well, would you? (Would you???) I know I wouldn’t. But lots of people would wear items they made, even if they don’t fit well, simply because they made them. Of course, if you’re making something like Amy Karol’s 5-minute skirt, making a muslin kind of defeats the purpose, but the 5-minute skirt is also not a highly fitted garment. The more fitted it is, the more you need to make a muslin!



2. Buy decent fabric. You don’t need to break the bank, but use something that you are going to like the feel of. When I buy ready-made clothing, the first thing I do is feel the fabric. If I don’t like how it feels, it doesn’t matter what it looks like, because I know I won’t like wearing it. If the fabric is poor quality, it won’t hold up to all that machine washing. Then you’ll have gone to all that work making your garment, only for it to disintegrate prematurely.


First floor at Britex, San Francisco.

3. Don’t skip the interfacing. Interfacing gives your garments structure, which makes them look more professional. Waistbands that roll, buttonholes that pull, and collars that don’t lie flat do not look professional. Period.



4. Baste and pin. If a pattern says to baste or pin, there is usually a very good reason for this. For piecing quilts and straight sewing for things like curtains, I find I can frequently forego pinning and pretty much never baste. But garment construction is different. If you want the pieces to fit together properly, baste and pin as needed. This includes basting any time you think it might be helpful or when you are not quite sure about the instructions. Basting and pinning can never hurt!

Bonus basting tip: baste slightly inside the seam lines. This way, when you sew the final seam you are not sewing directly on top of the basting stitches, which will make it very hard to remove any of the basting that needs to come out at the end!

5. Get steamed. Press every seam. EVERY SINGLE SEAM. I sometimes even press basting, simply because the low tension of basting can wrinkle up the fabric. Steam-pressing the seams helps to set the stitches. For my money, this may be the single easiest thing you can do to improve your garment sewing.

6. Get on your feet! Your sewing machine feet, that is. Below is a photo of all the feet that I used to make one simple pair of pants: automatic buttonhole foot (for making buttonholes), the zipper foot (for installing the zipper), the edging foot (for overcasting to finish raw edges, since I don’t own a serger), the left-edge topstitching foot (for nearly all the topstitching), and the zig-zag foot for most of the seams and anything requiring bar tacks (like the beltloops).



I would equate using the right feet to using the right tools for a woodworking project. Sure, you can use that one flat-head screwdriver as a hammer and a chisel and a scraper as well, but that project is going to come out much better if you actually use the appropriate tools for each task. The same goes for using that generic zig-zag foot for every kind of stitch.

7. Finish the edges. Okay, maybe this is the single easiest thing you can do to help your garments look more professional! I find it disappointing that patterns rarely include information on which seam edges to finish and when. If you have finished sewing the garment, it’s too late to finish most of the edges. This is another reason that a muslin is helpful, because you can make notes as you go about which edges need to be finished (some will be encased in other seams, so won’t need to be finished), and when the best time is to do that. Raveling is not professional.



8. Use topstitching thread. Look at your ready-made clothing and you’ll see that topstitching thread is usually (though not always) thicker than normal all-purpose sewing thread. For my most recent pair of pants I used heavy duty polyester thread from Coats & Clark that I bought at JoAnn’s. It really makes a difference in how finished your garment looks. While you’re at it, why not use a topstitching needle too (I am just realizing I totally forgot to change needles on my pants! Doh!)



9. Make it special. When’s the last time you heard someone say, “Wow! Those totally basic, non-descript pants are exactly what I was looking for!” Don’t go overboard, but add those little touches that indicate someone thought about the overall look and not just about how to put the fly in. On my first pair of pants, I used contrasting topstitching and added the little ribbon detail at the bottom of one of the front pockets.



For the second pair of pants, I used 9 different buttons instead of matching ones, including a vintage button on the waistband. And I used a fun striped fabric for the pockets and the waistband facing. No one is going to see the contrasting fabric most of the time, but I know it’s there and it feels special.




10. Keep sewing! This one is pretty insightful, I know, but practice does make perfect. After all, it only took me 5 times of doing that fly incorrectly before I finally figured out how to do it right! Learning something new is fun!