Faux Flat Locking the Easy Way!

Hi all! I’m Eva and excited to guest here on Greenstyle Creations which happens to be one of my absolute favorite places for  patterns. I wear a lot of athletic wear… between working out, running and my work as a competitive gymnastics coach 6 days/week, I usually go through at least 10 different combinations every week. Variety is important to me and I may or may not have a slight addiction to sewing cute workout clothes..!

Which brings me to one of my favorite construction methods for exercise gear. It looks sporty, is durable and extremely comfortable and EASY!

Today, I’m going to show you how to construct a pair of Greenstyle Creations Super G leggings using this method, but it can easily be used on tanks, hoodies and so much more. You DO need a serger to do this, but it doesn’t have to be a fancy one.

 First thing we are going to do is take a needle out. I prefer to take the right needle out because that makes the stitch slightly wider and I like that look.

I’m adjusting my tension for the remaining needle (in my case, the left one) and setting that at around a *1* (yes, really low).

The tension for the upper looper should be somewhere in the middle range, I like to use a *4* on my machine, and the lower looper is going all the way to somewhere between *8-9*. You can play around with these settings a bit to see what works best on your serger.

 

Now, you have the choice between 2 different looks. No choice is wrong here, it’s just what you prefer, but it does make a difference as far as how you are going to construct your garment.

When you serge your pieces together, what these settings do is create an “unbalanced” stitch and the whole idea is that once you have serged the pieces together, you then pull them apart at the seam. That will lock the constructed seam and make it lay flatter. There are other ways to accomplish this look but this one works for me and is super easy!

You can choose to have a super smooth look like this, which is what I prefer personally:

Or, you can choose a more rustic, chunky look for even more contrast:

The advantage of the smoother look is that you only have to worry about color matching the needle thread to your fabric (or choosing a coordinating or contrast color, whatever you want). The important part here is that ONLY the needle thread will show on the right side of the fabric. For the smoother look you will also construct your garment in the same exact way you normally serge it together, right side against right side.

 For the chunkier look (which is technically more resembling real flatlocking) the looper threads show (on this particular pair of leggings I used black in the loopers and teal in the needle) AND, and this is ** super important**,  you have to reverse your construction method and sew everything together wrong side against wrong side.

For my pair of Super Gs, I am choosing to go with the smoother look but will show you the inside of the seams here and there so you can judge what it would look like using the chunkier method.

So, we are serging the pieces together in the normal way (right side against right side). Now, after every seam we stitch, we are going to pull it apart to flatten it out. Here you can see that one side only shows the teal thread before pulling the seam flat, that will be the part that shows from the right side once the seam has been pulled flat.

 

 Once that seam is pulled and flattened (inside view):

And from the outside (smooth look):

 This makes for a really nice finish on the gusset as well, both with the smooth look as well as the chunkier look:

 When sewing the gusset and any other joining seams, it is really important that you pull the first seam flat before joining it to another! Shown here attaching the long side of the gusset to the crotch seam, notice how that seam has been pulled/flattened already.

 

 The seams remain strong, they still do overlap a bit just get significantly flatter which also makes them more comfortable to wear especially while working out.

Here is the completed gusset, nice and flat!

Same goes for the waistband, on this pair I didn’t succeed in matching up the waistband seams with the front inset seams as perfectly as I wanted, but it won’t prevent me from wearing them… Now, the Super Gs just need a quick hem (I normally use my coverstitcher but obviously you can hem however you want!) and that’s it!