Today is Day 21 of 31 Days of Sewing School.
When I originally previewed the idea of Sewing School, one of the most common questions was in reference to sewing a straight line. I definitely don’t claim to be an expert, but here are a few helpful things I’ve learned.
How to sew a straight line
- Make sure the edges of your fabric are straight.
- As you sew, use the measurement marks on your machine (on the throat plate) as a guide, or alternately use the edge of your presser foot, depending on the seam allowance you are going for.
- Don’t sew too fast, or too slow! Find a pace where you can control it, and keep the speed steady.
- If you need extra guidance, put down a tape line on your machine to use to guide your fabric along I really love Glow-Line Tape for that. As a kid I had a magnetic metal sewing guide that magnetized on my machine’s metal throat plate to help me guide my fabric.
- Use both hands (on your fabric at the front of the machine) to guide your fabric through the machine.
- Unless the fabric is particularly slippery or with thick layers, I like to space my pins a bit and take out a couple at a time. I find that if I’m stopping and starting too much to remove close pins, my line will be less straight.
Do you have any tips for sewing a straight line? Leave them in the comments so we can all improve our skills. 
Tomorrow (or rather, later today, since this post was late), we’ll talk about other stitches!
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Great ideas! One trick I learned when teaching my daughter to sew from a book called Teach Me to Sew is to use lined notebook paper to practice sewing straight lines. Of course, you’ll use another needle to sew fabric, but it helped her tremendously. After she was comfortable with that we used a spiral drawn on paper to help her navigate curves. She was less nervous about real fabric because she had learned how to manipulate the paper with the machine.
Oh, thanks for another great idea! I’ll definitely keep that in mind for when I teach my daughter to sew, and I could use some practice on the curves myself!
When I was in a class a couple of years ago they said don’t pay attention to where the needle goes but to aligning the fabric to the lines on the throat plate. Much like when you drive you don’t pay attention to where the wheels are but where the road ahead is. It made the world of difference for me!
Nice to be here and see your post!