What is a seam? Sewing terms and definitions

I always found it so hard when I was learning about all these strange weird words that everyone kept using that I didn't know what they meant. So learning to sew, there's a lot of terminology that goes with it.

And I have for that reason put together this whole series, that is just that, just for sewing terms and teaching you how to speak dressmaker. So this whole series is actually brought to you by my online school, vintagesewingschool.com , where I teach new sewers just like you how to create their own fashion.

So, let's take a little bit of a closer look at what that means.

This means, any area on a garment that has two bits of fabric stitched together and then is folded apart. The fold or line that is created is the seam.

Have a look on your garment your  wearing, see if you can find the seams! 

But of course, if you look at the lower edge of your shirt, this is not a seam, because it's just the one bit of fabric folded up. It's not two bits of fabric sewn together. So this is of course, a hem, not a seam. ​

And start to notice these things.!

So you can have an open seam - where the seam allowances are folder open. This makes it a lot more flexible in being able to alter it and make any changes you might need to.

Or  a closed seam - this is where the seam allowance is finished closed (see seam finish). Most commonly, if you have any sort of modern made garments, they use a closed seam. It's easier, because they only have to go down the seam one time on one special machine. And of course, for mass producing garments, it's far more economical. 

So, to define seam one more time, it is the areas of the garment that have two pieces of fabric. It's the fold or line created when two pieces of fabric are sewn together and it's the part that opens up, that is a seam.

I hope this cleared up the confusion! And I recommend you check out the other sewing terminology posts, as they all build on one another!

See all sewing terminology here.

Until next time...
Bye!

Evelyn  xx