Let's explain the edge

Don't anyone get excited by the title of this blog. Sewing on the edge doesn't mean my sewing is edgy, on the leading edge, or other things that might raise your hopes. Take a look at the picture. That's me, a fifty something, closing in fast on that senior's card at Fabricville, woman with her best sewing assistant. Sorry Rascal I woke you up for this picture and your eyes are sort of closed.

Sewing on the edge to me is that my sewing is often done around the edges of a busy life and also, no matter what else I do, sewing is always hovering around the edges of it. I sometimes think, or feel, that my sewing to-do list is the real list of my life and there are not many hours that don't go by without thinking about making something.

Also to me sewing close to the edge, as in really good edge-stitching, which is a much finer version, sort of a graduate version of the old basic topstitching a presser-foot-distance-away from the finished edge, really good, close to the edge edge-stitching is a sign of knowing why you are doing what you are doing, which is to flatten and define a folded or seamed edge of fabric.

And those things I finally figure out, or get, are what this blog is about, because if it is news to me, it might be to someone else too.

Oh and by the way the thinner the fabric the closer to the edge your edges stitching should be. For a cotton blouse, really close. For a mohair coat, back it right up, maybe even as far away as a presser foot distance away.