Today, I have three terrific turning hole tips for you. Okay, maybe they’re not actually terrific. But the title above sounds better than “Three rather useful turning hole tips” or “Three turning hole tips you may already know but whatever”.
So as most of you, I hate hand stitching. I simply don’t have the time for it, and it’s also not always easy to get a perfect result. Yet I am a perfectionist. So, over the past years, I made up three tricks to close turning holes in a fast yet perfect way. Here we go.
TIP 1: Prepare your seam allowance.
I always prepare my seam allowance before closing my turning hole. Here is how I do it:
1. Where I would normally leave a turning hole, I switch to a basting stitch.
2. I press the seam allowances up on both sides.
3. I undo the basting stitches, and turn my project right side out. The trick left me with a perfectly straight seam, and with two layers which will perfectly match up when I sew them together.
TIP 2: Reduce your hole by machine after turning right side out.
With this little trick, you can significantly reduce the size of the turning hole with your machine, so that you have considerably less handstitching to do. After you turned the coat right side out, just pull out both layers a bit and pin and stitch the seam allowances with right sides together as far as you can. Depending on the type of fabric you use, you should be able to reduce the turning hole to some 5 cm (2″) this way.
I made a little stop motion video to show this technique:
TIP 3: Use Wonder Tape or pieces of double-sided fusible interfacing.
Instead of closing the turning hole with invisible hand stitches, you can press wonder tape or double-sided fusible interfacing (‘Vliesofix’) between both layers. Of course, this trick only works when the turning hole is in a seam which will not have to support pressure. So I wouldn’t try this on the bottom of a shopping bag, for instance. But in other cases, it is a great way to save time, and to end up with a perfectly closed turning hole.