Tips for Sewing Lycra Mesh??

Yeah, tricky!

Lay mesh fabric out flat on the floor, over pattern. Put masking tape or similar over the seams, cut out through tape, then sew through the seams. Then spend some time removing the tape. A bit messy, I agree, but it does work.

Cheers

Michael,
I've had luck with using ball point needles and a 'honeycomb' stitch – it looks like little diamond-shaped stitches in an alternating off-set pattern.

If your machine will do the honeycomb using scraps of light woven polyester knit, it might work on the lycra also. You can adjust the width of the honey comb as with most fancy embroidery stitches.

I would also talk to Kay at Quest. She's the best in my book.

Thank you both for the replies.

Roger: I'll try the tape method. Other ideas I've come across included using tissue paper but I like the tape idea better. Less fiddle factor (but trickier clean up, no doubt).

Samuel: I put an email in to Kay. Thanks for the tip on that. I have tried "zig-zag" and "rick-rack stretch" settings on my machine. The rick-rack is the closest thing I have to what you've described. So far, that stitch is the best result I've had, so thank you for steering me in that direction.

I had no problem with stitching the lycra to grosgrain. I theorize that the grosgrain had the same impact that the tape/tissue paper would have.

If I really wanted to be lazy, could I use bonding tape for the hem? I'm making pockets where the two sides and bottom are sewn to grosgrain. The grosgrain is then stitched to the nylon backpack. The top serves as a stretchy opening for some gear items, so it would be the part that gets pulled away from the backpack body. Would the bonding tape keep the hem together instead of putting up with the headache I'm having?

Again, thanks for your help.

Michael

i like the tape idea.

the heat applied glue might work well too. the issue with netting is that as the thread pulls under machine tension, then it sort of smushes the fabric, and you get whatever is the result. on occasion it can take a pretty violent amount of thread tension to pull everything nicely together. you may need to experiment with more and more tension until you pass thru a zone and get to the promised land. (jury still out on that theory, but it's working here… today)

strips of thermal glue can be applied to the netting and not look too awful if you use a silnylon, to which glue sticks only poorly, shield to keep it off the iron.
once cooled, the glue will prevent the netting/mesh from collapsing, and you'll not need absurd tension to make a neat stitch.
they sell rolls of thermal glue down to very narrow, so that may be one salvation.

also with mesh/netting there is the issue with "spacing". the thread can/may/might grab a full bit of it, or .. it may take two bits . or, it might land in such a spot that you get no bits at all, and the stitch sort of misfires.
the solution seems to be a combination os appropriate tension, and playing with stich length (more is often better) so you do not land on the common denominator of missing bits/spaces.
consider as well that netting/mesh may have a grain, in that the spaces in one direction are larger/smaller than spaces in another. if thee ist sewing a curve, you will get to deal with several combinations of these spaces, and effort may be required to develop a process that renders a nice stitch.