Before you start sewing on actual garment pieces, take time to practice your straight stitches on a scrap of stable cotton fabric. Start by placing your scrap material under the presser foot, drop your needle close to one edge, and stitch one line, ignoring imperfections. This first line is only meant to familiarize you with your machine’s behavior. Watch to see what speed the fabric takes and how your hands feel as it moves. Once you get the feel of a straight stitch, realize that it can teach you many things simultaneously, such as machine movement, speed, fabric feeding, hand position, thread tension, stitch length, and your ability to guide raw edges.
When beginning to straight stitch, many people find themselves looking too closely at the needle itself, as it is moving up and down very quickly. In fact, watching the needle does not help you know where the fabric is going. Instead, look at some point on the needle plate or draw a straight line with tailor’s chalk on the fabric. Try to allow yourself to see slightly past your presser foot where your fabric is heading next. Let your hands gently guide the fabric rather than try to pull it across the feed dogs, which are already pushing the fabric forward. If your scrap is not moving smoothly, stop and make sure the material is flat or try slowing down your speed. Pulling on a piece of fabric could cause the edge to stretch or your stitch line to bend.
In a straight stitch exercise, use more than one straight line. Start by practicing stitching straight lines, then another on a slightly smoother pace, then another with your eye watching the edge and the stitch width staying the same distance away. Stop to examine the results after every line you create. Is your stitch length staying even? Did the fabric begin to veer off to the left or right? Did the beginning of the line bunch up because you were not holding the thread tails? Is your seam pucker, or is the tension too tight or loose? Did you use the wrong needle or thread for the fabric weight? By taking these smaller pauses, you will learn more about stitching and controlling the machine’s speed, fabric feed, and thread tension than you would if you tried to rush your entire row of stitching.
When you are comfortable with straight lines, try stitching around corners. Draw a rectangle on your fabric with a marker or tailor’s chalk, and then trace the straight lines with your sewing machine. When you arrive at the corner, stop with the needle down in the fabric, lift the presser foot, turn the fabric, lower your presser foot again, and begin your stitching in the new direction. This will give you practice controlling your machine’s speed and fabric feed while stitching around a turning, without wasting your actual pattern pieces. It also trains you to sew other parts of a garment where the angle of stitching changes, such as around pockets, waistbands, facings, and the top edge of a garment.
The type of thread and needle you use can have a large impact on how well you handle straight stitch lines. If you use a bent or old needle that has become dull, it will tend to push your fabric rather than piercing through it cleanly. If you have used the wrong type of thread on your project piece, it could make your stitch lines uneven. If your test scrap is showing you uneven stitch lines, bunching, or pucker, do not feel that you have to blame your own hand skills. Replace your needle, make sure your machine is rethreaded correctly, check the thread in your bobbin, and try adjusting your stitch length to a slightly higher or lower setting. If you are using different fabric types, write a small sewing note to yourself of which materials, needle sizes, stitch lengths, and thread weights you used to find the stitch that works best on each type of fabric.
One last step is to make a scrap that closely represents the stitching you are about to sew on a garment piece. Try to use fabric that matches, seam allowance that is the same, and stitch length that matches. When you are done, press it with an iron, and notice how it looks. If you are happy that it stays in line, and the fabric did not get caught, or pucker, you can continue on your garment pieces with the same calm setup. The mark of a successful straight stitch is not that your lines always stay perfectly straight. It is that you are able to see when a piece begins to pull off in one direction, and you are able to guide your fabric back on a proper track.