How to Sew Pintucks; Sewing Tutorial for Beginners

Instructions

First I'll show you how to make pintucks with the presser foot that comes with your sewing machine. It's important to have the right size twin needle for the pintuck foot.

Bernina pintuck presser feet are numbers 30, 31, 32 and 33. This is a groove foot. In this pintuck tutorial, I'm using the #30 foot and the 4mm twin needle.

TIP: When threading the two threads, place one thread on each side of the tension discs.

TIP: Pintucks are best on light weight fabrics. I've used cottons, linens and light weight wools.

1. Start by changing your needle to the appropriate twin needle. Change your presser foot to a pintuck presser foot. I'm using the #30 foot and a 4mm twin needle.
2. Now it is time to thread your machine. I like to use the same color thread in both top threads and in the bobbin thread. You'll be using two spools of thread.
3. When you are threading your machine, put one thread on each side of the tension disk. This helps make sure the threads don't get twisted while sewing.
4. Thread the needles. Unfortunately your automatic needle threader doesn't stitch to thread each needle, you'll need to thread them the old fashioned way - by hand.
5. Okay. We are ready to make pintucks. Place your fabric under your needle and just sew. It automagically make the pintucks! NOTE: Always test first on a scrap of your fabric. If it's not drawing up the tuck correctly, check your threading and make sure you have the right needle size for your presser foot.
6. If you are making several tucks, you can either mark your fabric with a removeable fabric marker, like a Frixion pen, or just use your presser foot width for the distance between your tucks. For this sample, I used the width of the presser foot.
7. Here is the finished sample for the straight pintuck using the presser foot as the width between the tucks.

It's fun and easy to make curvy pintucks using your pintuck presser foot. Set up your machine and thread as outlined in steps 1-4 above.

1. To make a curvy pintuck, start sewing like we did before. This time, start moving your fabric around. (NEED PICTURE)
2. Here is a finished sample of curvy pintucks.

Don't have a special presser foot to make pintucks on your machine? No worries! With this method, you use an edge stitch or topstitch presser foot. If you don't have one of those, you can use a piece of painters tape to mark the sewing width, or the edge of your all-purpose presser foot.

1. Here is how to use an edge or topstitch foot. Put your special foot on your sewing machine. Use a single needle for this method.
   Prepare your fabric by marking lines for your pintucks with a removeable fabric marker. NOTE: Always test your marker on a scrap of fabric before marking your fabric.
2. Fold your fabric right sides together along the drawn line. If you are using a heat-sensitive fabric marker like a Frixion pen, don't press the fold - it will disappear from your fabric! 🙂 Using the edge of your foot or tape on your machine, sew a narrow straight line along the folded edge of the fabric with a straight stitch.
3. Here is the sewing in progress for the first tuck using this method.
4. On this sample, I didn't mark the lines. I wanted random tucks at different angles. Here is the sample in progress.
5. Here is the finished sample of making pin tucks without a pintuck presser foot.