Time Study - Using Sewing Clips for Drapery Pleats with Susan Woodcock
- Susan - Workroom Tech
- 19 hours ago
- 2 min read
Updated: a few seconds ago
Drapery workrooms find many uses for sewing clips. I like the large sewing clips from Wawak that come in a handy storage box. They are great for holding thick layers of material together and to secure side hems in blackout lined drapery where pins would make holes. Sewing clips are great to use when gluing to hold materials together until the glue has dried.
There is one common use of sewing clips that I have seen workrooms share on social media that I wanted to try - using clips to hold pleats on draperies after they are shaped (as a french or euro pleat) before they are stitched. I admit, the colorful clips do make me smile but I wasn't sure this was a necessary step or a time saver. The only way to find out was to do a time study.
In the video below, you will see a side-by-side comparison of 1-1/2 width, bump interlined drapery panels with French pleats. For one panel I added sewing clips to hold the pleat shape and for one I stitched without using sewing clips.
As you can see, using sewing clips added two minutes to the time at the beginning. I am not showing the entire video here, but at the end after sewing all the pleats, the panel with the sewing clips took 2 minutes longer than the panel without the clips.
Is that a big deal? Absolutely! I finished one pleat in the time it took to add sewing clips which I had to remove to stitch each pleat. Small time savings add up. Pre-forming pleats and holding them in place with clips does not help me to be more efficient.
I have not studied using sewing clips when using an industrial tacker or machine tacking on the walking foot, but I suspect there would be similar results.
If you use sewing clips in the workroom and would like to share, get in touch or tag Workroom Tech on social media with your tips @workroom_tech on Instagram or @WorkroomTech on Facebook.