Types of Seams
In sewing, to tack or baste is to make quick, temporary stitching intended to be removed. Tacking is used in a variety of ways: To easily hold a seam or trim in place until it can be permanently sewn, usually with a long running stitch made by hand or machine called a tacking stitch or basting stitch.
Backstitch is a hand sewing stitch that is useful for when the stitches will not show on the right side of a garment or project. It is an excellent hand stitch to sew a seam because it is one of the strongest and most redundant stitches, making it very reliable.
Basting stitches are sewn to temporarily sew fabric together. There are many reasons that taking the time to baste is beneficial to saving time in the long run. Reasons for Basting. Sewing basting stitches on seams allow you to test the fitting (side seams) or placement (darts) before sewing regular stitches that might be hard to remove.
Mattress stitch makes a practically invisible and nicely flexible seam for joining pieces side to side. You can’t use mattress stitch successfully, however, on pieces that don’t have the same number of rows or a difference of only 1 or 2 rows.
Superimposed seam is the class 1 seam according to British standard 3870; 1991. Features of Superimposed Seam: The features of superimposed seam are given below. One fabric is uniformly placed on another fabric and then stitching done.
used to create neat load bearing seams for lingerie, shirts, etc. Class 2 – Lapped seam(s) In this class of seam, two or more piles of material are lapped (i.e., with edges overlaid, plain or folded) and joined with one or more rows of stitches. One of the most popular of this class is the Lap felled type, involving only one stitching operation – a strong seam with fabric edges commonly used to protect jeans or similar garments from fraying.
Class 3: Bound Seam (BS) In this kind of seam, the binding strip is folded on the edge of the base fabric plies and is stitched at the edges along with the fabric plies with one or several rows of stitches (Figure-3).
This seam class involves seams that require the addition of another component onto the edge of a piece of fabric e.g., elastic braid onto the edge of ladies briefs. This type of seam requires two components. Class 8 – Single ply construction. This seam class consists of one piece of fabric that is turned in on both edges. It is most commonly seen in belt loops or bets for which a folder can be attached to the machine. This type of seam requires only one component.
Class 5 - Decorative / Ornamental stitching The ornamental stitch is a series of stitches along a straight or curved line or following an ornamental design, on a single ply of material. More complex types include various forms of piping, producing a raised line along the fabric surface.
Class 6 – Edge finishing/neatening. Edge finishing stitch is where the edge of a single ply of material is folded or covered with a stitch. The simplest of these operations is Serging, Type 6.01.01, in which a cut edge of a single ply is reinforced by over edge stitching to neaten and prevent fraying.
7. Seam class-7 (Attaching of separate items): These are sometimes called applied seam because they are mainly used to a decorative material to an edge of seam such as lace-elastic. Similar to lapped (class-2) but the joined component is extended limited on both side from sewn line.
This seam class involves seams that require the addition of another component onto the edge of a piece of fabric e.g., elastic braid onto the edge of ladies briefs. This type of seam requires two components. Class 8 – Single ply construction. This seam class consists of one piece of fabric that is turned in on both edges.