Something we notice every year: the sewing videos people come back to aren’t the flashy ones. They’re the ones that answer a question you’ve been quietly avoiding.
Nobody wakes up excited to learn what a twin needle does. But an awful lot of you have arrived here with a knit hem that keeps popping its stitches — and that video has been watched more than a million times because of it.
So here are the ten videos our readers watch more than any others, in order. If you’ve been reading the blog for years but never wandered over to the So Sew Easy YouTube channel, start here.
1. Sew an easy cosmetics bag — 1.5 million views
Our most-watched video by a comfortable margin, and it isn’t hard to see why. The flat bottom means it stands up on the shelf with everything still inside it, rather than collapsing in a heap. Free pattern, quick to sew, and one of the few things here people make to sell as well as to keep.
2. Sewing with a double or twin needle — 1.1 million views
This is the one that fixes knit hems. A twin needle gives you a neat, stretchy hem that doesn’t snap the first time someone pulls the garment over their head — and the same needle does rather nice decorative stitching once you’ve got the hang of threading it.
3. How to sew a hanging hand towel — 718,000 views
A small project with a suspiciously large audience. It uses very little fabric and makes a genuinely useful gift — the sort people sew several of in one sitting. Note that the free pattern for this one lives over on Little House Living rather than here.
4. How to sew an invisible zipper — 545,000 views
The one that rescues garments. Invisible zippers have a reputation for being fiddly, and they are — right up until someone shows you where the needle actually goes. Worth watching before you need it rather than during.
5. How to sew a recessed zipper in any bag pattern — 505,000 views
The useful part is in the title: any bag pattern. If the bag has a lining, you can split that lining and add a recessed zipper even when the pattern never mentions one. Just place your inside pockets with that in mind.
6. How to sew on a button using your sewing machine — 451,000 views
Most machines will do this. Most people don’t know it — and you don’t need the fancy button foot to manage it. It will save you more hand-sewing than you’d expect over a sewing life.
7. Three methods for boxing the corners on a bag — 445,000 views
Boxed corners are what turn a flat pouch into a bag that holds something. Three ways of doing it here — two are close cousins, and the third is different enough that it’s probably new to you.
8. How to transform a sweater into a cardigan — 404,000 views
For the sweater in the back of the wardrobe that you never wear because you’re simply not a sweater person. Cut it, finish it, and it becomes the cardigan you would wear. The full written tutorial is on the blog too.
9. Sewing the Small Backpack — 360,000 views
The full build, start to finish, as a sew along in three parts. Backpacks involve straps, zips, strap hardware and applied pockets all at once, which is exactly the sort of thing that’s much easier to watch than to read.
10. How to sew a Teeny Tiny keyring zipper pouch — 358,000 views
Sometimes you don’t want to carry a bag at all — just a lip balm, a card and a few coins. This clips onto your keys or your bag strap, uses a scrap of fabric, and the pattern is free.
Why we keep making them
Some things simply don’t survive the trip into text. You can write out how to ease a sleeve into an armhole — and we have — but watching a pair of hands do it at normal speed is a different kind of understanding altogether.
The list above makes the point better than we could. Half of it is techniques, not projects: a twin needle, two zippers, a button, a boxed corner. Those aren’t things you search for while browsing. They’re things you search for when you’re stuck.
We also read the comments. A fair few of these videos exist because enough of you asked the same question on the same pattern until it became obvious we should just film the answer.
Come and join us
Every video above is free, and most have a written tutorial and a free pattern to go with them.
If you haven’t subscribed yet, the channel is here: So Sew Easy on YouTube
Subscribe and new videos will turn up in your feed as we publish them. And if there’s a technique you’ve been dodging for years — the one that makes you skip a pattern rather than deal with it — tell us in the comments. That’s honestly where most of this list came from.
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