- It will always amaze me as I look at a pattern then see all the changes that can be done with that one pattern.

Today on Fit 2 Stitch we'll do just that with seams.

How the seams are stitched can have a huge impact on the look of a final garment.

Joining us today is Billie Burk, the queen of seam embellishment.

She has been doing it for over 60 years and has so much knowledge to share.

As we walk down that seam embellishment path step by step, join us.

(bright music) - [Presenter] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Vogue Fabrics, Colorado Fabrics, Quality Sew and Vac, Sew Town, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Fort Smith, Arkansas, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, Bennos Buttons, All Brands, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Clutch Nails.

- I absolutely love what can be done with one pattern.

So many of us as seamstresses, we think we need a new pattern to make a different look.

And really what we need is to understand what we're gonna talk about today, which is embellishing the seams.

I'm gonna invite Billie on, because she is, I mean I've traveled this world and I'm gonna tell you somethin', I don't think I've seen as beautiful of work as what you have done.

And so you're going to share with us today.

How did you even get in the seam embellishment?

- It started for me about 35 years ago with a real nice shawl that was in the fabric store, that was my favorite fabric store.

They had gone in a shipment of cotton batiks, coordinated fabrics, and they had put them out in such a way that it was just irresistible.

- You want it all 'em, one of those.

- All of them, yeah.

And I was about to start on a blouse that needed two coordinated colors, so I bought this.

And I'm sorry to say when I got it home and I made the first seam, I didn't think they made it nearly as well as I thought they would.

- So you know, we all do that.

We kinda decide that we could have done it better.

- Yeah.

- Is that fair?

We could have done it better.

- I could have chosen better.

I was very disturbed by that, so I looked in my stash and found a purple ribbon that was about an eighth of an inch wide.

And there's a spool of it and I used all 10 yards of it-- - Wow.

- To make the blouse with dividing, putting that within in all the seams where the two fabrics came together.

And I thought when I was done that that purple ribbon really married them.

- I think you're right.

I think that's incredible.

The difference to me between this fabric and then of course this fabric here.

It makes to look like this was just meant to be.

So that was the beginning.

- [Billie] That was the beginning.

- [Peggy] First time you've done it?

- Yeah, it's the first time I did it, and I was very satisfied with the result.

- I bet.

- But better than that I realized how much fun I had putting it together.

And so since that time, I am forever looking for different reasons to embellish themes and for different techniques to embellish things.

- So now it's the joy of doing it, not just the-- - Exactly.

- The why.

- Exactly.

- And you actually enjoy the sewing, the stitching part of it.

- Absolutely.

- All right.

- Okay.

Another reason that I found for embellishing, it became evident when I was using a stripe fabric or a print fabric.

Well, I wanted the seams to match, to have everything match.

When you're doing a straight seam, that's easy.

You can match the seam very well, but when you don't-- - Ah, so I can see why this would be hard.

Because of the angles.

- Yeah.

And so I embellished it-- - What a difference.

- Which gave it a buffer, and the buffer made the matching less important.

- [Peggy] It interrupts the eye.

- Yes.

- It's just beautiful.

And so then you apply it to?

- This garment that was a print.

And because it's a thin garment, it has curved seams.

You can't match the whole seam.

You can match part of it.

- Sure.

- As you can see, the pattern flows really well up here, but down here it doesn't match very well.

- Right.

- So I put in a little stripe of black piping.

- [Peggy] It's just beautiful.

- [Billie] It absolutely-- - [Peggy] Just continues that flower.

- Yeah.

- All the way across.

- Yeah, and what it does is hide.

Well, not hide, but camouflage the fact that the bottom area here is not-- - Perfectly matched.

- Matched.

- And you're right.

It looks like there's not even a seam there at all, but the seams are there for fitting.

- That's right.

- That's a good chance to really make it a lot better.

- Right.

- It's just absolutely beautiful.

All right, so this is one of my favorites.

- If you want to add a color to your garment, the best thing to do is to embellish the seam in that color.

And in this particular case-- - Oh, I see.

- The leftover material of the pants or the skirt makes a wonderful embellishment for the jacket.

- So it just ties it all together.

- Yes.

- Oh.

And the color choices, you just create colors you like?

- [Billie] Exactly.

- Well, that was absolutely beautiful.

And you've got the pants and everything already to go.

- Yeah.

- Ah (both laugh).

Well, we've got some more.

Let's look and see what else we've got.

- When I'm looking for a new project, I flip through the pages of the catalog.

- We all do that.

- Yeah, and I find-- - And if you take something out of those catalog pages a little different than I think I do.

(both chuckle) - If I find that I am really drawn to a pattern that has good style lines, and if these good style lines are different, unusual, and if they are innovative, then that pattern gets bought.

- So it's what decides yes.

For you it's what decides yes.

- And because it does that, I think it should be emphasized, so ambitious.

- Makes sense.

I mean it does make sense.

Why have seams that you can't see.

- Exactly.

- All right.

Does make sense.

- This particular blouse intrigues me because the color came together with, it kinda segued into the placket, and I loved it.

- [Peggy] I could tell, it's beautiful.

- So I embellished the seams as you can see.

And you can imagine also if I hadn't embellished it, all the times would have been lost in the labyrinth of line.

- It's beautiful.

And you're right, those lines and the distinction of the lines, they don't actually do anything other than just separate the parts.

- Exactly.

- It's absolutely stunning.

That fabric.

But do you see that in your mind before you do it or do you kind of sit back and play with the colors and figure out what will go well or what not?

- I play with them.

I see them before I do 'em obviously, but sometimes it comes just like that and sometimes-- - Sometimes it takes a little bit of time.

- Yes, yes.

- Love this one.

- And if you choose to embellish the vertical themes as we did on Linda's jacket, we get a very slim silhouette.

And you can loose, very painlessly loose five pounds.

(Peggy laughs) - And we can all use that.

- Yeah, you don't have to diet.

You don't have to do all the hard exercises.

- Just embellish the seams vertically.

- Just embellish the seams.

- [Peggy] I love that.

- No matter what the reason was that I decided to embellish the seams, you get extra benefits from it, because you now have a project that is entirely yours, is uniquely yours.

And there's great satisfaction to that.

- I would absolutely agree with that.

I think it's also as we really wanna create a project that we know is about us.

- And besides that you would have had a wonderful time, a jolly good time putting it together.

- So it's the process that we need to learn to really enjoy.

- Now there are an awful lot of ways to embellish.

It's endless but we don't have time to give you but a few of them.

And the first one I wanna show you was suggested to me by my daughter, Linda, just recently.

It's one of those things that you look at and you just wonder why you never thought of that a long time ago.

- We all do that.

You do that even?

- Yeah, I do that.

- Oh my gosh.

That's hard for me to believe.

- This is one of the easiest ways to embellish.

It doesn't take any extra work at all.

If you have a piece of fabric that is good on both sides and two different colors on both sides.

And if it's a knit, it will ravel.

You simply sew it as you would have except if you put the wrong sides together, press the seams open, and tack down the seam allowance, and now you have lines that really show you why-- - So you're saying to me that this is just a seam allowance pressed open?

- That's just a seam allowance.

- oh my gosh.

And then you just stitched down the edges.

- The edges so that it will stay put.

- So that's why you say it's easiest.

I thought this was such precision that it had to all be, it's just a seam.

- It's so simple and it's the same seam you would have sewn the other way.

- So you're giving away all your secrets.

- Well, sure.

Why not?

- Audience really like that.

- If I could help.

- I really like that.

All right, so-- - Now, this is another easy method.

It uses a double needle, and you sew the seam your regular way, press it open, and then feed this into your machine so that the seam is exactly in the middle of the foot.

And if you're lucky enough to have an edge joining foot, it has a little doohickey on the bottom.

- [Peggy] Okay (chuckles).

- Which really runs right down your seam and then make sure that both seams are exactly parallel and both seams are exactly equidistant from the seam.

- [Peggy] Perfect.

- Perfect and very easy.

- Wow, so they do all the work for you.

- Okay.

- We're gonna see this one then we need to start on piping.

I wanna make sure we get those piping details, shall we?

- Okay, Linda is wearing a jacket that uses a edge raising seam.

A little bit more difficult but not much.

- [Peggy] Yeah, that's beautiful.

- You make the seam and I don't know if it shows up for you, right?

- It is incredible to me what a little tiny impact has on that seam.

- Yes.

Yes.

Her vertical theme, she has six of 'em, and they are all edge stitched this way.

Regular seam pressed open then pressed closed with the wrong sides together.

- Wrong sides together.

Uh-huh.

- And the edge is the seam.

- Okay.

- And with that same wonderful foot, the edge joining foot, you can make a stitch about an eighth of an inch away from the edge, and that will give you the nice raised edge.

- It's absolutely beautiful.

- Okay.

- Now do we get to the piping (chuckles)?

- If you're ready.

- I'm so ready for piping 'cause I love it.

I think there's just so many things that we-- - [Billie] It is my favorite.

- Yeah.

- And my favorite way of, my favorite thing I use is rat tail, which is round and it's flexible and it's washable.

It comes in two widths: an eighth of an inch and a quarter of an inch.

- Okay.

- The hardest part of this is to get the exact carefully cut bias strip.

If you do that, everything else will fall into place beautifully.

- Okay.

- Th bias strip has to be twice the width of your seam allowance and twice the width of your decided tail.

- [Peggy] Whether it be quarter inch or eight inch, whatever that is, okay.

- Okay.

So in this case I needed five-eighths, five-eighths for the seam allowance.

- [Peggy] Okay.

- I needed-- - I folded it in half wrong sides together.

- Yeah, and you need an eighth and an eighth for the rat tail, which means all together one and a quarter inch is for the seam allowance and-- - The two eighth of that.

They can do the math.

They can do the math (chuckles).

Whatever their variables are, they can add it all up together.

- Exactly.

- Okay.

- Make sure that the two edges are even and base close to the rat tail.

- And you can use any kind of foot you want to to get close to that.

- Exactly.

- [Peggy] And this one you've done.

This is beautiful.

- Yeah.

- This is all the way finished.

- Yeah, ready to be put.

- So your precision here is to make sure these edges are even.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Okay.

All right.

- I sew the seam on, I sew the piping on to the half of the seam and this time I'm careful to have three edges together.

- Okay, so that would be the two there and the one bottom.

Okay.

- Then you add to it, you move your needle so that it will sew it.

- [Peggy] I'd cleaned it all up for ya.

To make it nice and crisp.

- And it will sew it by itself very much if you just keep that needle stretched.

- Keep that needle in the right position.

That makes a lot of sense.

- Then put your second half of the seam on top of the first one.

- Okay.

- And make sure at this point that you've got not just that you matched and got the fit that you had originally.

- Sure, sure.

- And then sew it maybe a quick or two of the needle moved over so it's exactly next to the rat tail.

- In that same space.

- And this is what you end up with.

- [Peggy] And that is just gonna make any garment.

It's stunning.

- Absolutely.

I love piping.

- Love piping.

- And when you've practiced enough and you've done it, why not double piping?

- That's like double matting on a picture frame.

It's my favorite.

That's beautiful.

- Or this double here.

And one of these days soon is I'm gonna do a triple.

I'm sure.

Have done two.

- You haven't done it yet?

- I haven't it yet, but I will.

- Oh my gosh.

That's surprising.

All right.

So let's show me what else.

This is just too much fun.

So this is where you've actually done the piping on a jacket.

- I did a piping on a jacket by using this fabric.

- [Peggy] Okay.

- Which is a print.

This is a wool woven fabric.

And I know that the back of it has all the colors of the padding, and therefore it's going to-- - [Peggy] Oh my gosh.

- Be very compatible.

And I used that for the piping, and I got a really nice line.

- It's beautiful.

So this is when you really, more so than this one, it didn't marry very well.

This one marries much better.

- This married much better.

(both laughing) Exactly.

- This one works a lot better.

Speaking of marriage, there's been a few years of yours?

- My anniversary tomorrow is 64 years.

- 64 years married?

So know all about marrying fabrics.

- It's not a very long time.

It's not a very long time.

- But you definitely know what works together and what doesn't.

I like that.

All right.

So then we look like we've got a special visitor.

I think this is a product that some of those years of marriage, right?

- Absolutely.

Linda has done-- - Linda, your daughter.

- My daughter.

- Uh-huh.

- Has top stitched this to perfection.

Top stitching is probably the most popular way to embellish seams.

She has chosen a thread that is contrasting and brings out the little bit of silver that's in her denim.

- Oh, it's beautiful.

Yeah.

- Denim.

And she has done one, two, four rows of it.

And every one of her seams is embellished.

It is absolutely the prettiest jeans outfit that I've ever seen.

- I would have to agree.

I would have to agree because she did not label the jacket but you made the pants as well.

Yeah, absolutely stunning.

Absolutely.

- What I did was top stitch much more subtly.

I used the same color thread pretty much as the fabric color, but instead of pressing the seams open, I pressed them all to one side and top stitched on that side.

- [Peggy] It's almost like a jean that gives like a little ridge in there.

- And I have this little ridge which shows-- - It does.

- The lines that-- - That dimension is amazing.

Look at that.

The style lines that you love.

- Exactly.

And it shows you why I chose the pattern.

- Yeah.

You love the style lines.

I don't think there's any better proof than this one.

Because you know, I love when from the front it's not, I mean, it's wonderful but from the back it really-- - I used two things.

I did piping and I did top stitching as well because I wanted this design to pop.

- Did you create the design?

- No.

- It was in the pattern.

- This was in the pattern.

This is a very old pattern.

- [Peggy] Okay.

- But I liked it so much I want it to be seen and that's what I did.

- And would you say that playing with the pattern is just like, I notice in this one the colors back here.

Like how do you make those decisions?

It's just play time?

- Well, it came along with colors that were in the silk dupioni.

- In the first place.

- In the first place.

- So you just look and study the fabric and kind of just really-- - And this is the color of the pants.

- Oh, okay.

- So the whole thing comes to-- - So you think outfits.

- Yes.

- I knew I liked you.

I knew I liked you from the get-go.

We always think outfits and we can work it backwards.

- This is an unusual embellishment.

It takes a little more time.

It's not difficult.

But when I saw this fabric, it spoke to me of green beads.

And so I went out and bought a box of green beads that had different sizes and different shapes, and I sewed them by hand in between every one of the panels.

And it ended up as a reversible top that more compliments that anything else that I ever made.

- You sewed them by hand.

- Yes.

- It's all done by hand.

Tell me about the outfits you've got on.

- This pattern that I used here does not have any good style lines.

It's a very simple pattern.

It has no, nothing of interest.

But it fits me, I've made it a number of times, and I know it fits me.

And what I did was trace the pattern in my size with all the fitting corrections in place and I, I traced a whole front, a whole back.

- It's just beautiful.

- A whole left sleeve, a whole right sleeve.

- So it's asymmetric.

- Yes.

And I used that pattern as my canvas for the design that I put on it.

- So if you couldn't find style lines to buy, you made your own.

- Right.

- I like that attitude, too.

- And what I did then is make, trace the little pieces that have now become part of this outfit, added seam allowance to each line.

- Sure.

- Added not just so that-- - Head it all back together-- - And put it back together, I don't know which piece goes with each piece.

And I have something that is really mine.

Fun, fun to make.

- I am telling you, I don't think I can say thank you enough to you and your daughter, Linda, for being here because if anyone does a tenth of what you've done.

And I hope that you'll get the joy that you've brought us.

Thank you so much for being here.

- I hope you get the joy that I've brought to you.

- Oh, I know I will.

I'm going home and embellishing.

- Good.

- Thank you, Billie.

Thank you so much.

And you know, there's some key things that I picked up in there, and I think one of them is time to play and the joy, and those are all things that we all think about when we're sewing.

Sometimes I know we struggle with fit, and we struggle will it be this or will it be right, but to have time, and I've learned this in my own life, to have time to just play, to really let your mind work and create, to pull the colors, to pull the textures and the blands and put them all together.

That's really what Billie does and she just does it beautifully.

So let's review some of what she taught us about seam embellishment.

The first technique is adding thread only.

Here we have a simple top stitch, and as we learned a double needle will help to give you a more exact top stitch.

Seam embellishment can help coordinate fabrics as we can see in this sample.

Raising the stitch line is another creative way to add style and contour.

The second technique Billie taught us involves not just thread but adding in another layer of fabric.

This can help to create a buffer so that matching patterns is not as critical.

Piping, besides adding texture helps pull colors together.

You can do single or double piping.

By piping with the opposing sides of the very same fabric, you can create an accent with the seam and achieve a perfect color match since it's the same fabric.

Billie has so inspired us to get creative with seams.

She told me one time she has more clothes than she'll ever need, and that's okay.

Mary-Kate Olsen said, I love getting amazing jackets, because you can wear your pajamas underneath and everyone's like, oh, fabulous jacket.

Next time on Fit 2 Stitch, we'll make fabulous amazing jackets.

(bright music) - [Presenter] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Vogue Fabrics, Colorado Fabrics, Quality Sew and Vac, Sew Town, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Fort Smith, Arkansas, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, Bennos Buttons, All Brands, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Clutch Nails.

(bright music) To order a four DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch series 7, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.