I was sewing the hem on a circular skirt the other day. I had carefully pressed and pinned the very curved hem so it wouldn’t get all skewed as I machine stitched it in place. As I was sewing my hem I paused to remove each pin; there were a lot of pins so I was stopping and starting a lot. Those pesky (but very useful) pins were slowing me down! I thought to myself “I wonder if other people have to pause to remove pins?”

I’ve seen some sewists who remove pins while their machine is stitching and that blows my mind. I’m just not coordinated enough to do that and when I try my stitching can go a bit wonky.

I’ve also seen sewists not use pins at all. I only really do that if I’m sewing straight seams where there’s no easing, sewing on the bias or curves involved. At the very least I pin at the beginning and end and middle of a seam.

I’ve heard some people just sew over pins! Of course there is a time and a place where doing that is helpful, like when matching prints and patterns along a seam, but you have to sew very slowly and make sure the needle doesn’t hit a pin, because if your needle does hit a pin – “Bang! Crunch! Kapow!” – things can go very wrong – ask me how I know 😉

When I’m at my sewing machine I want to be sewing, not fiddling around with seams trying to align them. The last thing I want is having to rip out a line of stitches because I didn’t take the time to pin and pause for the pins as I sew. So I guess it’s a bit of a balance – pinning, pausing as I sew and good seam vs. not pinning, sewing without pauses and having to rip out a bad seam.

So over to you,
Do you pause for pins?
Or do you remove them while your stitching?
Do you sew over pins?
Or just not bother pinning?

Until next time,