French Seam Outside French Seam Inside
Flat Fell Seam Outside Flat Fell Seam Inside
After doing the tutorial on how to make a French Seam, I had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind. While in school, back in the dark ages, or at least the dim ages, I remembered my professor using the terms French Seam and Flat Fell Seam interchangeably. To alleviate my nagging feeling, I did a Goggle search and found some differences of opinion on the two. Some people lumped the 2 terms together BUT there is a distinction between them, and since my sewing prof could walk on water, I’m going to suspect she knew the difference between them, and back then I did, too! Erroneously, I’ve been calling a Flat Fell Seam a French Seam, and what I refer to as an Encased Seam, really is a French Seam. Confused? Well, you should be, and I’m just feeling awful! Well, okay, not awful, more mildly amused than anything, however, I couldn’t sleep nights unless I rectified my faux pas!
Given the fact that I have the power to erase the past and set things right, I am going to Marty McFly backwards in time and correct my mistakes. Anywhere in the past several posts when I said French Seam, it will now say Flat Fell Seam. (Isn’t editing wonderful?) I will go one step further, though, and actually do a tutorial on a true French Seam. There is on upside to this. Anyone that totally wants to finish off their inside seams of a pair of pants or pajama bottoms (Tina), can now do a Flat Fell Seam on the inside of their pants and a French Seam on the outside of their pants since it does not need to be top stitched.
I apologize for the confusion, and I’m sorry if this reads with as much clarity as directions for setting up computer equipment! In our FREE Open Patterns there will now be a tutorial on Flat Fell Seams and one on French Seams. Hope I haven’t set sewing back 50 years!
While you’re at it, (corrections and stuff, LOL), remember that it is a Flat FELL (not felt) seam. And since I was beginning to think that you and your blog were perfect, I’m so glad to know that even you can make a mistake. Great info is great info – keep up the good work! Hugs, Cathy
Ya know, I’d go fix it all tonight if I had it in me, but I don’t, but as God is my witness, I will get it all corrected tomorrow! I was jumpin’ around all over the place this afternoon scrambling to fix everything, that I didn’t catch everything! Going through about 8 different spots where I had to change French Seam to Flat Fell Seamed, I successfully called half flat fell and but the other half was dubbed flat felted! I think I do way to much felting on this site to have it totally out of mind! And way too much blogging in general!!! Thanks for the heads up. I get by with a little help from my friends!
Actually, it is a flat felled seam.
Actually, I think you will find that both terms are correct, although flat felled is used more commonly, and flat-fell usually has a hyphen between the words. Michelle and I do all the work by ourselves on the blog. If we had an editor more items could be caught and discussed. Some people dream of tropic vacations… we dream of editors 🙂 ~Kimara~
Hehe. Poor baby. If you hadn’t said anything probably no one would even have noticed. You have an awesome blog and I’m always getting great ideas from it. French seam/flat fell seam, who cares? Just keep the ideas coming! BTW now that I read about them, I’m going to use both seams.
i will still hang on to your every word even if i wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a flat fell and a french seam.
you are now my official sewing guru. 🙂
[…] I sewed a French seam and it turned out great (and I learned the difference between a French seam and a flat felled seam great explanation here) […]