 Hi, you guys Lindsay here welcome back to my channel inside the hem so how many times have you gone to gather? The waistband of a skirt and you've got your two long basting stitches, and it's taken you Years and years it feels like to sew those basting stitches and you're pulling them and you're you know trying to get all the Gathers even and then snap one of the thread breaks The most annoying thing ever in the history of sewing I literally hate gathering because of that process Well, there is a whole new way to do it. Maybe it's not new new to me And it's called cord gathering. So it's a trick that makes gathering your fabric Easier and runs like zero risk of the thread snapping So let me show you how it's done and then we'll assess how it worked. Okay, so we have a Loose thread sorry We have like our little mini bodice here so cute And then we have a skirt that we are going to gather and attach to the bodice I have Made the bodice half as long as the skirt I'm not sure what the standard is for gathered skirts and garments, but I figured two times was a good place to start So we'll see but normally whenever you Make gathers in your skirt. You would create two rows of basting stitches one at a half inch and then one just outside your seam line and Then you pull those taut and you create all the gathers in there Well, we're gonna try it. This is called cord gathering and we are gonna try it with lovely Dental floss which we all have hanging around here somewhere So you want to make your dental floss a little bit longer than your bodice You need to trim your floss And so then you lay your skirt at the half inch Seam line Then you lay your floss Over your Fabric like so right again just inside the seam line. So just inside five eights for most skirts I have my machine set at a three millimeter stitch width and A two millimeter stitch length and we're just trying to get it to go just over the dental floss so needle down and That's too far over There we go. That should do it Okay, perfect. And now we are gonna start sewing our zigzag stitch and you are gonna want a back stitch here Okay, and you can kind of test and see if you're catching any of the dental floss at all You're gonna want to widen your stitch width. So just be on the safe side. I'm gonna go up to four And then you start stitching Okay, so you want to go a few Inches or a few stitches and then you gently pull from the front And you'll see it starts to gather in the back. That's what we are aiming for here Pull from the front and it'll gather it nice and taut So you want to make sure you have a really strong thread or cord Which is why dental floss is so great But you can also use like heavy-duty thread would work and you just keep sewing and pulling Like so and remember we only made this a few inches longer than the bodice. So we don't want to pull too tight So i'm actually going to stop pulling And back stitch a couple times here Flip my threads And then we should be able to distribute the gathers evenly across our cord Like so And again, this is only two times as long. So if you want a tighter, um Gather You would need to make your skirt wider, but again So you kind of get the idea there, right? I will say in comparison to the um Traditional method the dental floss is a little slippery. So it's having a hard time holding it in place But I would kind of eyeball Let's eyeball the length we want here like so This is very rough I'm gonna try and tie a knot and see if that helps Keep it in place Does the knot help? No, the knot does not help at all So maybe try a loop How do you do a loop? No, I don't know how to tie a loop. Okay Well, anyways, you guys get the picture. So now we're gonna try and attach this to the skirt or to the bodice um And see how the ruffles look in comparison to A regular method So like usual, we're gonna pin along this line here. I will say I found it a little bit difficult Um to keep the dental floss at the half inch Line I felt like I was doing a wider seam allowance than I should have So there's that already that I'm nervous about but I'm gonna end up stitching over The seam line okay There we have our Pin skirt. Let's go back to our regular stitch length non zigzag Put it at the five eighths. Yeah, I can already tell I'm where you're ripping out some stitches drop a pin And then you should be able to pull out the dental floss But I think I've sewn over it Well, maybe not. I don't know that it's gonna come out guys So now do I want dental floss in my dress for the rest of my life? I don't know probably not Do I have it coming? It's slippery Okay, dental floss is out So let's see how the gathers look So as you can see a lot of the well, here's some more of the dental floss that didn't come out Dang it Okay, so I would need to go in now and pull out all this zigzag I mean, I guess if I practice a whole bunch, I would get better at keeping it at that half-inch seam line But if I am, you know Just trying this for the first time like I am I'm gonna say that's not that beautiful and I don't want dental floss In my dress forever, but I've sewn over it so many times that it's just it's not gonna come out so And then in terms of how the gathers themselves look I will say It's pretty good. What i'm looking for not to happen is to have a whole lot of Places where it's folded over itself. I want it to be actually gathered and not just like made a pleat made a gigantic pleat And like here's an example of a gigantic pleat. Do y'all see that part right there? This is not a beautiful Gathered section in my opinion that just made kind of like an ugly pleat But for the most part everywhere else like all through here. This looks pretty good So be it if you couldn't see my my stitches So all in all I give this mixed reviews. I think that I would try it again And just maybe put a line of basting stitches At the seam line to give me a guide so I would pay closer attention to not Crossing over the seam line like I have on several areas here But I think with practice I could have done a little bit better of a job also Can we just comment on how cute that would have actually been as a dress? I only had these few scraps, but what a cute little girl's dress um anyways so I don't know with practice This could be better. That's my final verdict Okay, so court gathering takes some practice Maybe I needed to use my rubber band trick from yesterday To um make sure that I kept the right seam allowance It's just there's a lot to manage with keeping the floss Where it needs to be making sure the needle is bouncing over the floss like it's supposed to While also keeping your seam allowance. There's a lot going on there So with some practice, I do feel like this could be a really good method certainly more foolproof than the standard Two lines of basting stitches I think that when you get it down and you're able to maintain that seam allowance like you're supposed to I do feel like it would produce some really beautiful Gathers and I also feel like using the dental floss. You could make some marks like every I don't know whatever quarter length of your garment is like if you're trying to fit it to like a 12 inch waistband Just using an easy number like every three inches you would make a little mark on the um Dental floss and that would help you know How many gathers and making sure your gathers are all even I hope that makes sense I'm going to keep practicing this one. I'm not going to say that this is a trick and that it doesn't work But I'm not so quick to say. Oh, this is a treat. It's the best thing ever. I'm going to replace You know the the standard method Um, I'm going to keep practicing and I'll have to get back to you guys on that one But for those of you that have been doing cord gathering for a while, let me know if you have any additional tips in the comments Um things that could make it a little bit easier to kind of manage all of that stuff Maybe you don't use dental floss and you use some other kind of cording um, maybe I don't know. Maybe you just have a way to Make it more accurate. I guess Um, because the lord knows I do not want to go back and pull out all of those zigzag stitches that showed on my little fake mock-up dress that I made um Anyways, so I hope you found that helpful and I hope you will all give cord gathering a try if you haven't already Um tomorrow's video is going to be a neat little trick using your seam ripper If you've ever noticed that little red Like dot on the end of your seam ripper I'm going to show you what that's for and it's going to blow your mind Um, but until then check the description box It will have links for all the videos in this week's series. You can check one if you've missed it or reference back Um, like in the future if your future self wants to come back and find this video Hi future self. Um, so check the description box for all the information About the series and all the other video links and until tomorrow. I will see you all then bye