Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm so sorry about these sewing questions, lol. Well, here's the story. My friend bought herself an awesome Singer sewing machine and gave me her old one. Well, the one she gave me is dead now and I can't afford a new one. I'm thinking about hand sewing a costume and I just want to know how durable hand sewing is. I'm scared it'll fall apart in the wash.

It depends, honestly. The type of thread you use, the size of your stitches, and the security of your knots all come into play. I find that slippery thread doesn't really lend itself well to hand sewing, as the knots tend to come undone unless you leave a thread hanging. Smaller stitches take longer, but they're more secure. I have many times quickly whipped together something I needed for Faire that day with large stitches, then resewn it with smaller, more secure stitches later that day.

As for washing safety, I've thrown many a hand-sewn item into the washer and had it turn out fine. I prefer to hand-sew my Faire clothes because it's more authentic, and since I get very hot and sweaty, washability is a must.

I've only really used hand-stitching for small parts of a garment, like the hem to make it invisible, but it's held up great in the washer.

I hand sew pretty much everything and I've never had a problem. I haven't gotten out my sewing machine in 2 years, because I can honestly not figure out how tye off machine stitches. How do you do that? My machine stitched things always come apart. sweatdrop