One thing I've noticed -- both here and over the years in other contexts -- is that Serious Sewers usually do not refer to their scissors as scissors. They tend to call them shears.
I can get with that. In my mind, the change of terms implies an upgrade.
But what are "pinking shears"?
I tend to think of those as the scissors that have the zig-zag edges. I am also trying to relate this to the question I previously asked about cutting along the bias. As general rule, going at angles apparently makes things stronger.
Right?
That seems to be the case, and I do like to understand the concepts.
Pinking would be?
My new 401 arrived today. This has me extremely stressed. It's still sitting in it's box on my living room floor. The box is prominently marked "fragile".
I think I need to discuss this situation with my neighbor. She seems like a very nice lady. I'm pretty sure she would show me how to set it up.
[On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:16:55 +0100, Kate Dicey wrote:]
Take care with that machine - it could put a needle through your finger > if you aren't!
This would have to be a joke.
As with landing airplanes, it isn't an especially funny joke. I have thought about doing exactly this many times. It is my nightmare.
I think you know that.
A common phobia, I suppose. Still a bad one. I get visions of Edward Scissorhands with his orange ziggered Friskies blades all sewn together, still trying snap them.
Shears are not quite the same as scissors, but it's easier to see the differences if you look at them side by side: go and find a pair od 'dressmakers sheers' - Fiskars would be a good start - and look at them side by side with a pair of household, or even dressmakers scissors.
That's exactly right.
No... Cutting on the bias makes things drape and stretch. The fabric has the same strength as before. You will find that the threads that go down the length of the fabric (the 'straight grain', formed by the warp threads on the loom) are stronger than the weft threads - those that are woven in and out to make the fabric.
Cutting in little snips - a 'pinked' edge is jagged. It used to be done by hand, but pinking sheers have been around a couple of hundred years... Now you can get rotary cutter blades that pink, too! :) It was used as a decorative edge from the middle ages right through into the 19th C.
Generally, pinking an edge of tight woven fine fabrics like cotton helps to prevent fraying without adding the bulk of a sewn clean finish. However, it is nothing like as durable as a clean finish. It's a very useful way of softening an edge inside a garment part when trimming seams - see the thread in trimming for more on this. Because of their thick clumsy blades, pinking sheers are not very accurate for cutting out, and are better kept for trimming at later stages.
No! Several folk here have sewn right through a finger when concentration lapsed for a moment. I have yet to do this. You just need to be aware that it can happen and take reasonable precautions. I tend to warn my students about the dangers of going too fast by telling them I will NOT be pleased if I have to extract them from a sewing machine, or send them to hospital to get one removed from their finger!
Start by sewing S L O W L Y ! ! Once you have mastered the machine, you will get quicker. While I may be able to turn out a posh silk evening gown in two days, I would remind you that I have nearly 40 years experience behind me. Sewing slowly is a lot quicker than unpicking errors or having your sewing machine surgically removed from your finger!
The 401 has a reasonably powerful motor, as I understand. Just be sensible.
Not long ago I almost removed part of a finger with scissors when they slipped while I was trimming the boning of my Elizabethan corset: painful and a bit unpleasant. I have a real squeamish streak when it comes to hands and fingers, and I had to apply pressure, a large band aid, and go an lie down for the rest of the afternoon! Didn't touch the machine or the scissors again for that day, partly because it bled every time I did anything with it. I did this because I wasn't really thinking what I was doing. Just a silly mistake - we all do that now and again!
My father once said it was amazing how far and how fast you could run in a full parachute pack and heavy tailored flying helmet if you thought the aircraft you had just leaped out of might blow up behind you... He was a navigator with the RAF for 30 or more years.
Why are you stressed? Is this a Singer 401? If it is, there's no reason to stress. They are GREAT machines. Powerful, yes, but very user friendly. I love 'em - and I have two!
If you don'w want it, I'll be happy to take it off your hands :-)
"> Not with fabric. Cutting on the bias makes a woven fabric stretch along that
I was wondering why bindings are cut on the bias. When I cut them out they don't line up with the piece they are going to face like the arm hole ect.. Last dress I sewed I had to recut the arm hole binding because it was too long even though I cut it to the pattern piece. How come?
My understanding is that the term scissors is used for ones that have holes for only two fingers (the holes are the same size), but shears have a hole for the thumb and then a larger hole for the 3 fingers.
As Olwyn Mary said above, fabric cut on the bias is stretchy. Some fabrics are so loosely woven as to be hard to work with, as they stretch just looking at a bias piece!
Take a square piece of woven fabric and try to stretch it along the length of it. Then along the width of it. Very little 'give', if any. Now try to stretch it corner to corner. It pulls out to a longer length. A narrow bias strip can be sewn to a curve and not have tucks, as it would stretch to match the curve. Very useful for a binding.
Ooh, aghh... That gives me the willies just reading it. Before I got my razor shears, if you'd asked me, "How often do you manage to get your fingers in the way of your scissors while cutting?", I'd have answered, "Seldom, if ever". Only after several shallow but wickedly painful slices caused by brushing my fingers past the blades did that answer become true. So then my mom comes over, and she's scoping out all my sewing goodies, and she picks up my razor shears. "Watch out", sez I. "Those are EXTREMELY sharp". So what does she do? If you said, "Runs her finger along the edge of the blade to test it", you'd be right. While I was getting her a bandaid, I asked her, "If I told you the stove was hot, would you have to touch it to be sure?" "Probably", she admitted cheerfully. "But only once."
The big ones are shears, the little ones are scissors. Sewing shears are bent at the handle so that you don't have to lift the fabric as much to cut it.
Right. Originally "pink" meant to wound slightly. This led to both current meanings: "slightly red", and "cut out small notches".
People used to pink by snipping notches with scissors, or with dies that you whapped with a hammer. Pinking back then was done as a decoration; it was too tedious to do where it wouldn't show.
Pinking shears are nice, but decidedly not essential. I can't remember the last time I used mine. I have used them at least once since we moved here in 2001, however.
Well, if you pink a straight-grain edge, the cuts are all made on the bias. (At least they are when you use my pinking shears; it's *possible* to make pinking shears that cut acute angles, but I doubt that anyone would, unless it was scrapbooking scissors.)
A more general rule is that corners joined together have to add up to 360 degrees, unless you are trying to make a cone or a ruffle. This is easier to do by joining four right angles than by joining, say, one 10-degree corner, one
80-degree corner, and one 270-degree corner. (Of course patchwork does this sort of thing all the time -- which is why patchworkers are so proud of themselves when the finished product lies flat.)
When a seam crosses an edge, if you want the edge to be straight or a smooth curve, the angles have to add up to 180 degrees at the point where they cross the line. The easiest way to accomplish this, when designing a pattern, is to overlap the pattern pieces with the seams lines matching, and draw the neck hole or whatever on both pieces at once.
Technically, "shears" refers to scissors that have cocked or bent handles, so you can "shear" fabric by sliding the blades beneath it, so you don't have to lift the fabric off the cutting table (which can distort the cutting line). Scissors are cutting implements that have handles the same length, and are both in the same position.
Does this help?
Pinking shears are definitely the "zigzag" bladed scissors, which almost always are shears, since they're specifically meant to cut fabric to prevent it from ravelling.
And by the way, nowadays you can buy pinking shears with scalloped blades, as well as other configurations. Scalloped bladed, in particular, are nice to cut out Ultrasuede; it makes a very nice edge. (Yes, I DO have a pair, how nice of you to ask).
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