Someone on an AOL chat suggested French Seams. Going to go read how to do that right now.

French seams are definitely the way to go with your seams, IMHO. They are fairly easy to do and would make a nice finished seam and you would never need to worry about the fraying. Hope it works out for you.

Here's a website that has good instructions on making french seams.

Here is a link that might be useful: French seams

french seams won't handle the edges where you have no facings. those you can serge.

serging all seams first whendealing with very sheer material ( in my opinion) is an awful way to go. you are adding bulk rather than serging the two layers together.

if you have alreadt serged all the edges you may not have enough seam allowance left over to french seams now. so take that into account or your jacket won't fit you.

I got so fed up last night that I heaved the jacket. After getting a good night's sleep I decided to keep on trucking along, so I yanked it out of the rubbish bucket. Am going to only do a bit at a time so that I don't go nuts. This morning I started the French Seam on the sleeves and put it down to continue another day. We are heading North this morning looking for an old trunk to buy. I have tons of watering to do, and some painting tonight. It would be nice to only have to sew, but that isn't in the cards for me.

If I hadn't found this forum I don't think I'd ever sew again. You guys are great!

Thanks.

Try pressing some narrow quilters edge on the cutting line of the material. Just don't put it where your sewing machine needle will run through it, as it will gum up your needle. Then, when you're all finished you can trim the material close to, or through, the iron-on edge, or turn the edge over & press it closed (as if you were hemming the edge of the seam).

I once made some of those gauze curtains for my daughter, and the only way I could work with the material was to iron on this tape & cut right through it. This held the edge together quite nicely so I could get the pieces measured, hemmed & sewn.

The following link will show you what this stuff is like:

Here is a link that might be useful: Iron-on quilters edge

Thanks Loomis.

I checked the site and like how the product seems to work. I need to know if this washes out, though, because if it doesn't I can use this method on the sleeve curves instead of French Seaming them and that would make my life a lot easier!