A comfortable blazer and jeans

Lately I have had the bright idea of actually sewing clothes that I would wear everyday, be comfortable in, and go together. An outfit.

Crazy radical I know and let’s not talk about how long it took me to get here.

Specifically I wanted something I could wear to pick the kids up at school, wear to go to the grocery store to get the one thing I meant to get last time but didn’t, or meet the mouse exterminator in.

Real life, my real life, clothes.

What I came up with, this time out, was the idea of a comfortable blazer, a sharper replacement for that old sweater with the pills on it that is a current tired day default, and some jeans-like unit. 

I am on a sort of jeans/pants sewing tear at the moment, and am highly motivated by the fact I am getting sooo over skinny jeans. The truth is that if you are not yourself skinny you end up with long layers to cover it all and a midriff that feels more compressed than it deserves.

I have been eyeing this unlined knit blazer pattern for a while. It had some of the hallmarks of a good pattern, separate upper and under collar pieces, darts in the sleeves at the elbow to give shape, and larger pockets for the longer view and smaller ones for the shorter view - all indications someone was on the case when this was drafted.

I made the longer view and used some navy and white striped knit pique I found at my local Fabricville. Interestingly I see Fabricville now has an online store so I can link directly to the fabric here so you can have a look.

Here is me in my version:

My best church lady pose. This was after the first take where my daughter kept saying "Mom you are always talking and gesturing in the pictures. Try to look more normal."

Another version where you can see the line of the pants too. Really for an outfit that has the comfort level of sweats I am pretty pleased

I am so happy with this pattern I am definitely going to be making it again. A simple classic but without all the work of tailoring and ten times less restricting to wear.

I made the size 14 as is with some construction changes.

These were:

• To add stability to the knit I applied a fusible knit interfacing to both the upper and under collar, the facings of course, and also to the sleeve and jacket hem allowances so they would hang better.
• Because top stitching a knit pocket onto a knit fabric can be tricky to hold still, I interfaced the pocket with a woven sew-in interfacing. I actually made a sort of a pillow case bag, right sides together, woven interfacing to knit, with a small opening in the top hem for turning rather than turning under the raw edges etc. on the pocket. I hate having to fuss doing that and find just lining the pocket and turning it so much easier. Here is how that looked in construction:

• To avoid fish lips buttonholes that look like this:

I made corded buttonholes, which simply are buttonholes made by hooking a heavier thread like a buttonhole twist or pearl cotton over the back of the buttonhole foot and letting the machine stitch over the cord. 

When the buttonhole is done simply pull on the free ends of cord, the back loop will be pulled under the bar tack at one end and hidden, and pull the free ends to the wrong side, knot and tie off.

A buttonhole made like this will not stretch out of shape:

And finally, I have to share the buttons. Love it when they match. It is just luck but I take credit for it:

Now onto the pants.

Since I am so newly committed to comfortable pants I have been looking for some version of "Mom" jeans. Yes, I know, but they are the new big thing (saw them all over Manhattan last month) and personally if anyone has earned the right to wear Mom jeans it's me I figure.

I have had this pattern for a couple of months and been meaning to try it:

When I was down at Fabricville getting my blazer knit I spotted some very nice blue stretch denim, good quality, nice hand, and decided to just do it. I believe this is the fabric here.

I really enjoyed the top-stitching:

Before you get any idea I know what I am doing I have to tell you I just threaded two spools of jeans top-stitching thread in my cover hem (you could do the same thing with a twin needle) so I cheated completely.

If you are wary about using a heavier thread like this in your machine don't be. All you have to do is make sure you have an eye in the needle big enough for the thread to pass through easily. Look for something called a top-stitching needle. I used two in my cover hem machine and put another one in my regular machine when I had to do single line top-stitching.

The pattern went together very well and I didn't have to make any alterations apart from taking in the back waistband 1 1/2" 

Note that the waistband for the size 16 was nearly 36" (mine is 34" and the size 16 is supposed to be drafted for a size 30" waist). It pays to measure the pattern sometimes before you cut. The crotch curve and hips were perfect though. 

You can assess the fit from the photos yourselves but really the only major change I would make next time is to take out the hip curve a bit because my own hips are totally straight without any curve at all. I have in fact already done that to the pattern pieces because I am definitely making these again.

You can see exactly where I bent my right leg the curve I am going to be eliminating next pair. Not hard to do but really when there are no wrinkles anywhere else and the crotch was great right out of the envelope, why not?

On the construction side the only really, really important thing I need to mention is that the pattern envelope calls for a 7" zipper. This is really interesting because the fly extension is, without seam allowances, only 5" long, a more standard length for zippers in women's fly front jeans.

I of course discovered this when I went to put in my 7" zipper which meant I actually had to do the last couple of top-stitches around the fly by hand to get it over the metal jeans zipper teeth. No surprise there are no close-up shots of that here. Ideally you should be able to place the fly front top-stitching just below where the zipper teeth end.

This means, for the next person, you are going to have two choices, zipper wise:

1. Buy a 5" and not a 7" jeans zipper. Easy to do.
2. Lengthen the fly extension by 2," Also easy to do.

All in all I am pretty pleased with myself. 

I felt I took a chance with some nice fabric and two totally new patterns and got lucky. These are both basic staple type garments and they will get a lot of wear. I should probably do more of this type of sewing and continue to explore really day-to-day outfits that to my own mind at least look sharper than their comfort level suggests.

More to come.

The question of finding a basic fit pattern

My friend Robin got me thinking with her thoughtful comment to my last post.

Obviously what I am providing here are some first principles for flat pattern alteration to help new and returning sewers get started, and to help them understand why patterns are not fitting exactly right straight out of the envelope.

For real fine-tuning once you understand the basics, or to establish a good fitting basic garment you can use to overlay commercial patterns, or even as a basis for your own designs ideas, a sloper - a custom fit garment is a great idea.

You can learn how to draft these, Craftsy has good courses and Robin is a grad of many of them, or develop them through your own trial, error, and efforts.

Full disclosure here, I am not myself a person with a lot of time (humane wildlife removal going on here all week plus I am committed to helping my middle guy paint his new B and B) or more to the point a lot of patience for those processes. I am more a sit and sew when I have a few minutes kind of  girl these days.

So all of this made me perk up with interest when I saw Bootstrap Fashions has introduced some new dress slopers for wovens and knits.

I was delighted to see the fit specs included things like belly protrudence, posture and shoulder slope which indicates to me that these patterns, very reasonably priced too, might be very helpful in automatically sorting out some common fitting issues.

I haven't tried these patterns myself, but they are moving to the top of the to-do-list, and I would be most interested in anyone else's experiences.

Handy sewing hint of the day #17

Before we get into the weeds of fitting there are a few important first principles we should talk about. 

These, like nearly everything I write, are primarily the result of my own observations after decades or working with sewing students and in sewing for myself and my family.

Here we go:

There is a lot made of the big three- bust, waist and hip - but IMO some of the most potent body parts, when you are working towards fit, are lesser known measurements, or shapes. 

These include:

1. Shoulder slope. I talked before about the importance of getting a good upper body fit by working with the chest/high bust measurement rather than a bustling but as important as fitting the hanger is knowing what the shape of the hanger looks like. 

Some women have your so-called average shoulder shape for which average patterns presumably fit, most of us have shoulders that are either square (like mine, boney and they just go straight across like a ruler, detected by collars that seem to ride up) or sloped (if you have always thought you have had "small shoulders" in fact your shoulders might just be sloped, think duck, not trying to be rude here but need to give you a clear image) meaning your tops seems to just hang too loose on the shoulders or even feel like they are sliding down.

Look for where the extra fabric is on your shoulders. 

If it seems to be bunching up at your neckline, particularly at the back and your collars seems to stand away from your neck you might have square shoulders - basically the pattern is providing fabric where there is no you.

If you feel you have extra fabric deposited below your shoulder line and just too much hanging off your shoulder you probably have sloping shoulders (a good look in the mirror at your bare shoulders will actually tell you everything you need to know here).

My good friend Debbie Cook at Stitches and Seams does a nice easy description here of how to do a fast easy pattern adjustment for either of this issues.

2. Arm length. Actually no human measurement IMO can vary as much as arm length which seems to have nothing to do with your height. It's easy to measure on a set-in sleeve pattern, straight down from the shoulder notch to the wrist. Many folks need sleeves shortened.

3. How high and low your fullest part. These would be the three Bs - bust, belly and butt. Bellies are often higher than patterns think and busts and butts lower. This matters because your darts- bust, front and rear- need to end about 1/2" or more bit before the fullest part and aimed right at it. 

It's pretty simple really-  the darts pick up fabric where you don't need it and release it where you do. 

If that extra fabric is released too high, too low or too early or late you are going to get an unattractive bubble sitting in the middle of nowhere. Shortening and lengthening darts is easy, just move the last dart marking in or out, in a skirt or pant waist dart this just makes a shorter or longer dart (I personally lengthen all my back waist darts about 1 1/2" which is all you need to know about gravity and me).

In the case of a bust dart you can both move the dart end in or out so it is about 1/2-3/4" from your nipple (the more fitted the garment the closer the dart end to the bust point) but you might also have to raise it, or more commonly for larger busts lower it, so it is aiming at your nipple and not some random spot on your chest. If you do this of course you will have to redraw the dart legs so the lines from the side seam are properly aimed at this new end point.

I apologize here for not offering tons of great and useful pictures for all you visual learnings out there, but that would require far more time than I have right now, hopefully my words are clear enough, and if not let me know and I will try again.

Of course too you don't need to put a dart where you don't need them. For instance if you have a full tummy and basically your waist goes straight down and right into it, you don't need a front dart at all in fitted skirts (not sewing your darts will also add greatly to the fabric available for your front waistline too) or even only a small one. 

Remember darts are for shaping and not necessary in cases like this where there is no smaller part to be released to a larger one.

All of this brings me now to the really, really important facts of pattern choices.

Because you have shape and it is an individual shape, you are going to have to add (see previous post about making larger not making smaller for the pattern size chosen). The basic rule of thumb is to compare your pattern's ideal measurements and your own and add the difference to the seams.

Classic example would be you have a 34 inch waist and your pattern bought for your smaller 40 inch hips says the waist in that size should be 30 inches. This means of course that you have 4" to add and with two side seams this would be 1" added to each (2 X 1" for the front and 2 X 1" for the back), tapering in the top of say your skirt with this addition to the pattern's hip.

The principle applies for additions everywhere in your pattern but the big trick is that the more seams you have to divide these additions among the more subtle and successful your pattern alterations will be and the more able you will be to target them.

Listen to this, it's important, the more seams you have to play with letting out here and there taking in where you might need to in areas where you have hollows like the front of your chest or at the back or your neck where it slopes forward, the easier it is to fine-tune fit.

By contrast a seemingly "easy" few pattern pieces pattern can be a fitting nightmare because there are no shaping features for you to work with - and instituting those, adding seams or introducing darts, are fairly sophisticated and very easy to mess up.

On this basis princess seams (all those places to adjust along their length, so easy to make room for a large bust exactly where the bust is larger and return to a smaller upper chest) are terrific for fitting (enlarging darts is so much harder), as are two piece sleeves (smaller armhole and bigger biceps, smaller wrists) or panel seams in skirts and pants.

Sometimes nothing is harder to fit than a "simple" to sew pattern.

Does this make sense?

Some illustrations.

The pattern below is hard to fit, only places to add anything is at the side seams and that might not be where you want it. What about a full bust or hollow chest?

In an exaggerated contrast look at all the pre-set places you have in this pattern to adjust, you could make this one fit anybody:

Or less intimidatingly, see the adjustment spots here:

See the fitting difference between view B and the others?

Far easier to get a smooth fit here than with darts

Wonderful pattern if you want to take in the back neck and upper chest but increase for the bust or hips

 And finally, I know this is a lot right now, it is useful, ending with shoulders which is where we started, to match the lines of your shoulders with the seam lines of a pattern, this allows for adjustments in synch with your shape.

Folks with sloped shoulder for example do well with raglan sleeves, and folks with square shoulders with set-in sleeves:

Enough to think about now. 

To be continued.

Handy sewing hint of the day #16

I should call this the can of worms entry.

The last week I have been busy. I made a blazer, more on that later, did family stuff, and visited with my niece who will be coming to live with me in September while she is in nursing.

We have been working on some long overdue basement renovations to make a sort of apartment for her to stay in, and yes my mouse saga continues. Suffice it to say I now have a close business relationship with a company called Skedaddle.

Now onto the hint.

Fitting.

Obviously this is going to set off several posts at least but I think it important not to disappear into the weeds too quickly without an overview of what personally (and this really is my own opinion) I feel are the basic principles.

It is going to take me some time to get to all I want to say, but we better start somewhere.

Principle #1:

It is always easier to make something bigger than it is to make something smaller.

Think about it. 

If the neckline is too big (I have said elsewhere that sewing the facings of a neckline first and trying it on to see how the opening looks before you jump in and make a top that has a neck that swims on you is a good idea, and that is worth repeating here) you can't make it smaller really. I mean the fabric you wish you had is already gone, you cut it away and there is no way to get it back.

This matters because it leads you directly to what size pattern to buy, and to the universal truth that most women measure in odd numbers and most patterns define measurements in evens.

What are you supposed to do if you are "between sizes" or, just as typically, not one of your measurements is in the same category?

This brings us, without really answering this question yet, to:

Principle #2:

Fit the parts that the garment is going to hang on first and adjust the rest.

For an upper body garment this is the shoulder/upper chest area (essentially above the breasts, which we all know have nothing to do with your frame size) and your waist/pelvis area.

Specifically this means buy a pattern for a garment that hangs from the upper body according to your "upper bust" chest measurement - that number you get when you wrap a measuring tape across your shoulder blades (this will catch bone/frame size) high under your armpit and across your upper chest, avoiding your bust line all together. A pattern sized to fit this part of your body will most likely fit your neck, shoulder and frame pretty well (with only minor adjustments for things like a forward shoulder etc. or shoulder slope if you need them) and eliminate a lot of that awkward mobile neckline or bunching you can get if, like most woman who have matched the pattern size to their "bust," you are making a garment that is too big for the hanger.

In your head you have to translate the upper bust measurement to what the pattern calls "bust" and add extra to the bust later (two methods, remind me to write about those) and of course if you fall between sizes buy the smaller size.

So if your upper bust is 35, your bust is 38 you buy a pattern for a 34 bust and add 4" to the bust line. Try this, just doing this will eliminate an amazing number of fitting issues.

In sewing pants or skirts however you have to look at your waist and hip (the later universally defined as the largest lower body circumference) and decide what is the smaller measurement and select a pattern that matches the smaller, waist or hips, of those two measurements and then add accordingly.

So much easier to add to the side seams of a skirt or pants to fit a larger waist or too try to take in excess fabric from the crotch area and above, in a pair of pants.

To help you visualize this think of how so many older women look in pants they buy, particularly from the back view. Tons of extra fabric flapping around their hips and legs am I right? This is because, in order to get enough space to fit larger, older waists, they have had no choice but to buy a size that is way too large for their frames, legs and hips. How much easier would it be to get that fit right out of the envelope and just to cut a wider waistline?

Conversely how many of you have seen photos of sewn pants that suffered from smiley crotches and baggy fronts (some of these are even in the pattern books). Again adding to the legs as necessary and even altering for a fuller seat (will show you how to do that too) is a lot easier that trying to get rid of extra wrinkles and fabric.

Principle #3: Keep it simple and do only one adjustment at a time. Wrinkles point, literally, to the area you need to work on and let them tell you what you need to do first.

Try the suggestions above, do some simple flat pattern additions where your measurement indicate you are going to need too (as above where you can see the need for an extra 4" coming around the bust) and make up a trial pair without any further changes (if you want some "muslin" I have a vast collection of mouse pooped sheets I no longer trust).

The fact is that each pattern change you make has sort of a ricochet effect, improving or worsening another area, and if you fiddle too much in too many areas too quickly you won't really know what is working and what isn't.

And a final few words on some things I have noticed in the vast number of alteration and fixes available all over the internet.

a. Don't be freaked out by fitting. 

If you have the general idea of the why it really isn't that hard and don't let anyone tell you it is. A Ph.d. in civil engineering is not required. It's the why not the how that matters really and I am going to try to help you with that. A whole lot of adjusting without knowing what's going on is sort of like that cooking you did in the early days where you knew it needed something and kept dumping in seasoning until you ruined it, probably egged on by a younger sibling.

There really are easy ways to fix most things and IMO we can leave the complicated ways to folks who actually have a Ph.d.s in civil engineering.

b. Figure out your own body and clear your head of any misperceptions about it. What your family told you was probably wrong. I spent years altering for the big hips I was told I had and it wasn't until one high forceps, one broken clavicle delivery (poor baby and not me) and a C section that I realized I have narrow hips but a big butt. Completely different alterations. I will do my best to help you figure out where you might need to alter, keeping it simple of course.

c. I dispute all that advice about measuring clothes you like the fit of and using that as your personal ease preference etc. If you had that many clothes that fit maybe you wouldn't need to sew. Sewing your own clothes means you hope for better that RTW, and fortunately that's not all that hard.

More later, busy week but my mind is going to be churning on this one. 

Handy sewing hint #15

As promised here are some thoughts on sewing machine feet.

To zoom out a bit, many of us struggle to perform a variety of sewing jobs perfectly at our own domestic sewing machine without fully realizing that in mass factory sewing industrial machines are all special purpose built to do only one function and to do it perfectly. It is to be expected that we have our difficulties trying to do so much more with so much less.

This fact really connected with me when I once complained to an industrial sewing machine technician that I struggled to produce identical pairs of welt pockets every time. 

He told me that in suit factories the machines that did welt pockets were often the size of ping pong tables and although the did an infinite number of perfect welt pockets, that is all they did.

Quite a change from the home sewer and her little multi-purpose sewing machine.

There is a point here to consider. 

There are devices that exist to extend and standardize the performance of any machine and many of these are available as attachments for you own sewing machine.

Here are some I have used and many I own:

• Flat felling feet that turn under the edge of the seam allowance that needs to be topstitched from the right side evenly and holds it still so you can stitch it down a consistent distance from the seam line.
• Feet that hold two pieces of lace together so they can be joined by zig zagging ( I once lost my mind and did some heirloom sewing - temporarily)
• Feet that let you feed in rows of strung beads and stitch the down ( the 80s were weird man )
• Button hole sewing feet that hold the buttons still so you can zig zag them on ( you are kidding, you haven't had the pleasure of sewing your buttons on by machine?) although often you can get the same result by snapping off your snap on foot and just lowering the shank directly onto the button to hold it.
• Wide and narrow hem feet. Once these are mastered, and this does play a game on your nerves,  these feet roll tiny hems and feed them through under the needle more finely and accurately than you could ever do with an iron and your fingers. 
• Pin tuck feet that do an outstanding job of sewing little pin tucks, again from my brief, but intense foray into heirloom sewing.

There are tons more speciality feet out there, do a surf or visit your sewing machine dealer. The right sewing machine feet can make the difference between a hard sewing job that sails right through your machine and one that makes you go back to crochet as a hobby.

You will note too, before we go any further, that I have not listed gathering feet here. 

If you want to speed gather you are far, far better in investing in a good serger gathering feet - these little miracles actually evenly gather and finish long lengths of ruffles (and if you are on the A team and practice a lot you can even serge the ruffle onto a flat piece too at the same time). IMO sewing machine gathering feet are not nearly as effective.

If it were me and say I was making some home dec thing that required a lot of ruffles, ike a bunch of dust ruffles for a bed,  I would invest in a serger gathering foot as soon as I could.

The sewing feet I have listed above are really useful and interesting if you want something job specific but there are a couple of more basic feet (some of which you might even already own and don't know how to use) I consider essential.

These are:

1. A satin stitch a.k.a. an appliqué foot. You might have two standard looking pressor feet (you can spell this presser btw, I got used to writing pressor, also correct I think) that appear identical.

Turn them over.

One of these two feet is probably totally flat on the bottom (this is a good thing, the more contact between the foot and the fabric, the more stable the stitching area and the nicer the straight stitch, so important when you are top-stitching) and one might have a ridge or cut away area on the underneath side. This second foot, the one with the tunnel on the bottom side, is a satin stitch (as you would use for applique) foot. The idea is that those closely packed satin stitches (closely spaced zig zags) need somewhere to go so they can slide out from under the foot.

If you have ever tried to sew a satin stitch, or even a button hole, and the stitches seem to stick under the foot, chances are you were using a foot that did not have this cut away area.

Note too that many of these satin stitch feet also have the toes set wide apart so you can see where you are going with your stitches - so important when you need to make sure you are covering a cut edge with the zig zag totally, centring it in the swing of that stitch.

Sometimes when I have something really nerve-wracking to sew I also use this foot because I like the visibility for tricky construction jobs.

A few pictures:

2. A straight stitch foot. A few handy hint posts ago I talked about how containing the stitching area improved straight stitch quality and talked about straight stitch throat plates. A lot of machines, particularly older ones, come with these plates. For most newer machines they are after market items and quite expensive. An alternative, and far more reasonably priced, is a straight stitch foot that actually has the small needle hole in the foot, rather than the plate. As quilters, those kings and queens of careful straight stitching, work with 1/4" seam allowances, many of these straight stitch feet are also narrow feet with the edge of the foot an exact 1/4" from the needle- pretty handy if you are going to spend your life trying to keep your seam allowances all 1/4".

Here is a picture:

Note the bottom of this foot is solid, not cut away, again adding to fabric stability and stitch quality.

3. An even feed or walking foot. These fix that annoying problem of having the top layer shoot forward of the bottom layer in a seam by introducing a set of "feed dogs" over the top layer of fabric too, in synchrony. 

There can be added to most machines in attachments like this:

It should also be noted that some sewing machine companies make machines with a walking foot built right in. 

For a long time, I believe 50 years, Pfaff had the sole patent on this, in their IDT integrated feed system, but that patent ran out about 10 years ago and since then a number of other manufacturers offer this feature on some of their machines. In all cases the built-in walking foot looks like a set of upper feed dogs that can be snapped down to walk along the top of the fabric behind the foot, eliminating layer slippage:

4. An invisible zipper foot. Listen IMO every new sewer should start to learn to sew zippers by inserting invisible zippers. They are the bomb.

Just think about it, the part that is invisible is your own stitches, that can be done over and over again, getting even and close to the teeth if you need to work on that, without any need to take out previous, maybe messy or mistake stitching. All this stuff will be hidden on the wrong side and no one is to know.

Compare this to the stress of trying to make sure both sides of the stitching on a centred zipper are even, or that the top stitching on a lapped zipper is straight.

Make it easy on yourself zipper wise. Invest in a decent invisible zipper foot and learn how to use it and you will thank yourself you for this for the rest of your life.

Would I lie to you about a thing like that?

Here is a picture:

So that's enough for one evening. 

I am sure I will think of more on this subject, say at 3:00 a.m. tonight, but it has been a full week what with mouse control and clean up and actually beginning some sewing, a pair of jeans and a blazer, more on those later.

I also want to thank you for you comments. 

So much. 

Both to the experienced sewers who contribute so much of their own expertise on the subjects that come up, and on the new sewers, like I was once, teaching myself to sew during nap time really resonated with me.

I want the new sewers in particular to know that I am taking note of requests for more on specific topics, fit issues is a good one for example, and I will return to these in future posts.

For the time being however, good night, and thank you. 

Handy sewing hint of the day #14

O.K. 

I have more or less settled in. As much as anyone who wakes up in the night and says "what's that noise?" can be. I have two versions of mouse traps on the go (just spring out of bed every morning to check the trap line I can tell you) some chemical warfare, that I don't really believe in, going on deep inside the joists, and some new gadgets plugged in to the wall that are supposed to emit radio waves that only little pink ears can hear and nothing outside the rodent bandwidth can. Philosophically I am more of a catch and release type girl but do suspect these mice have homing instincts.

You crossed the line kiddos when you decided to sleep on my pillow.

Normal life is resuming around this. All my bought in the U.S. fabric has been pre-treated.

I have also been thinking about what handy hint number 13 should look like.

In particular I have been thinking of sewing machines and of the new sewers I have watched in classes and what I would like to tell them.

There are so many things, where to start?

Maybe for this one a general list would work best.

1. Use your hands to steady the fabric on either side of the needle (I actually tend to stitch a hand length at a time, stop and re-position - this works really well when sewing knits or other mobile fabrics.) 

A sewing machine is not like food processor. You don't just push the button and wait for it to do it's thing. The machine's main job is to form the stitch (see previous post) and by the action of the feed dogs (those teeth under the pressor foot) move it along regularly. Your stitch length dial/setting controls how big the steps the feed dogs take, and consequently how long the stitch is.

Your job here is to control fabric wobble so the machine can do its job. This means hands on either side of the pressor foot, steading, not feeding or encouraging.

Pins of course help too but make sure you take those out just before you get to them. The real danger of hitting a pin is not just breaking the needle and bending the pin but that the shock of impact will knock the "timing," that precise synchrony of the up and down needle and rotating bobbin that meets in the stitch, out of whack. 

Resetting this all up again, a repair job known and "fixing the timing" is tedious to do and therefore expensive. 

Take out those pins.

2. You will notice I said steady the fabric not feed it through. 

The number one disastrous thing any sewer can do at the machine is to try to force feed the fabric through. 

Yes I know there is a thing called "taut sewing" that involves a hand to the front and one behind the needle but that really is an expansion of steading the fabric so it feeds well, not "helping" it through. Keep your hands beside the stitching area until you and the machine are totally fused as one spiritual unit and you can guide without interfering with the rhythm of the machine. 

A dead give away that you are force feeding your fabric, apart from uneven stitches and a general negative response from your machine, can be seen on the throat plate area just around the hole where the needle goes down into the bobbin area. If you can see faint scratch lines around this hole then what is happening is that the poor needle is being bent along as you try to override the feed dogs with your hands, leaving marks. 

To be honest if you find your machine doesn't go through your layers without "help" you might have already knocked the timing out, be using a too large and too blunt needle, or simply expecting your domestic machine to sew boat covers and car upholstery.

3. There are some things a machine does that is just not its fault. Right now, while I should be making dinner, I can think of four.

a. The fabric gets all jammed up and down into the bobbin area at the start of the seam. This is worst of course in thin fabrics. The issue here is back to the large wide hole in the throat plate that has been built in to accommodate the sideways swing of zig zag type stitches. The needle just pushes the softer fabrics right down this hole with the first stitch and usually you get a thread knot up too.

The fix is to move the cut edge back a bit, sew forward then back, then forward to start off so the needle never has a cut edge hanging over the opening for the first stitch (this is what I do), or start stitching on a scrap butted up next to the cut edge to achieve the same thing (what a lot of other really good sewers often do).

b. The beginning of the seam line has an ugly ball of messy thread in the first few stitches of the seam. This is partially caused by the famous mentioned above zig zag chasm and partially because those long thread tails you start with are unreliable and flop around and are vulnerable to getting tangled once the action starts. If you remember to hold both thread tails, top and bottom, to the side to keep them still once you start stitching you can make this problem go away.

c. When you turn a corner when you are top stitching, say around a collar, the stitches get all short and stupid looking and you have to force them to go around the corner (see point two on the issues with force feeding fabric). 

Again this is not the machine's fault. 

If you were to take a side view of the position of the pressor foot when you make the pivot at the corner you would see that the foot goes from the nice level incline it had on the straight path, same number of layers behind and same number in front, to a steep incline at the corner, with the toe up and the back of the foot much lower. 

What is happening of course is that the front of the foot is still on fabric and the back of the foot is now fabricless (at least until it can get a foot hold on the fabric again, which is why once you have negotiated that corner that the stitch gets nice again). This unevenness is exactly what you don't want to happen when you are trying to form a stitch - the more contact between the fabric and the throat plate, back to the steadiness principle- the better the stitch quality. To get this back what you need to do is put a little shim ( a carpenter term and very appropriate here) under the back of the foot to maintain the foot's levelness.

This shim can be anything you can reach that is as thick as the fabric layers you are working with. This may be a folded up scrap of the same fabric, a piece of cardboard, or if you want you can buy something made out of plastic called a hump jumper, doesn't matter, all does the same stuff.

So stitch up to the point of pivot. Needle down. Lift your pressor foot, turn your fabric. Put your shim under the back of the foot. Check the foot is level. Continue stitching in from the corner and once the foot moves off the shim remove it.

d. You pin what look like fabric pieces that are the exact same length together and when you get to the end of the seam one layer, invariably the top one, is longer. This is sort of inevitable unless you are using a walking foot (an add-on loved by quilters) , and even feed foot (some machines now have these built in) or are careful to sew hand length to hand length and pin.

All that is going on here is that the tiny teeth of the feed dogs pick up the bottom layer slightly as they move and the pressor foot, whose job it is to make sure the fabric layers are pushed well and evenly into the feed dogs so they can do their job, pushes the top layer ahead slightly. 

It's them not you. If you understand this and try to sew with some control beside the needle area you should be good, and in many cases the right attachment or foot can help.

Which leads me to what better be my next topic. Machine feet.

The fun never stops.