Top Stitching

The most obvious way to use stitching is to hold two pieces of fabric together. In that case the stitches are nearly invisible from the right side. They are not a feature.

Top stitching is different. It's done from the "top" side of the fabric and it's designed to show. So it's decorative. Sometimes it's only decorative. The stitching line on the right in the photo--the one that's being made where the needle is--is just for decoration. The stitching line on the left--the one that's finished and you can see on the patterned fabric--is decorative plus. It's also holding down the seam on the underside of the fabric. So it's helping to keep everything nice and neat.

Since top-stitching is designed to show, it's important to make the line of stitching as accurate as possible. I like to do that by using the edge of the presser foot as a guide. In this case the left side of the presser foot is lined up with the seam line where the two fabrics are joined.

The third fabric in this piece is a fine stripe. I tried to-stitching on that, parallel to the stripe and it was terrible. Stripes are so unforgiving. It was really obvious every time my stitching wasn't quite straight. So I pulled it out.

Now I need to collect as many pins as I can from around the house and pin this thing together along all four sides.