Flat Felled Seams

It seems very fitting for my first tutorial to be on the seam finish method I use most often in the SCA. Flat felled seams! I use this seam finish on linen, almost exclusively. It's a seam finish that can be documented throughout history as being used for linen. Given that I live where the climate is generally hot, that's the fabric I use for most of my clothes, regardless of whether it's 100% accurate or not. I like not dying of heat. But here's a fun fact: flat felled seams are also used in modern sewing! Your jeans most likely have flat felled seams. That's because it's a remarkably strong finish that encloses all the raw edges of fabric, so you have no fraying, and reinforces your main seam stitching. And if you're sewing yourself, you don't need a serger! This seam finish works best on straight or very, very slightly curved seams.  I hand-sew this finish, but it can be done with a machine.

Step 1. I do this part with a sewing machine, usually. Sew the seam with a 1/2"-3/4" seam allowance, as you normally would. I've pressed the seam open in the picture, which is best practice. (That means I don't always do it, sometimes I finger press as I go, but when I'm being *good*, I press the seams open.)

Step 2.  Trim one side of the seam allowance down by half.

Step 3. Fold the longer, un-cut seam allowance over the cut seam allowance, so your seam allowance is all being pressed to one side.

Step 4. Fold the longer, un-cut seam allowance in half, enclosing the shorter seam allowance and all cut edges inside the fold. (Yes, the color of the material changed, the photos are from two different garments. Sorry about that!)

Step 5. Pin this fold in place (optional, but it can help you keep everything sorted). You can see the look of the finished piece now. Everything lays nice and flat and pretty.

Step 6. Stitch this fold down. I like to use a small whip stitch right on the very edge, but you can also edge-stitch with your machine, using a medium straight stitch. (Edge-stitching is when you stitch on the very edge of a fold so you don't have any flappy bits sticking up past your stitches.)

And that's it! It takes a while to do all the seams in a garment, but once you're finished, the inside will be as pretty as the outside. I'll try to update this post with a photo of the outside of the garment, but it will vary by your stitching. If you use a machine, you'll see that line of straight stitches set away from your seam line. With the little whip stitch, you barely see the stitches at all.  There are tons of tutorials for this seam finish all over the internet, but it's the foundation for a lot of what I'm going to put here in the near future. I hope it helps someone!