How to Sew Minky Fabric

If you're accustomed to sewing with quilting cotton, a few simple adjustments will help you work with minky confidently. Nothing about your skills is the problem here. What changes is a handful of numbers, and one of them depends on which minky is on your table.

Most guides treat minky as one fabric. It isn't. A 2.5mm printed base and a 15mm plush behave differently under the same presser foot, and the settings that suit one will fight the other.

The short answer, if you don't know which minky you have

These settings are safe across the whole range, from the shortest printed base to the deepest plush. Start here, sew a test seam, and adjust from there.

Two of those never change. The needle and the thread are the same whatever minky you're sewing, and that's worth saying plainly because the advice elsewhere is contradictory. The needle has to pass through the knit backing, and the backing is the same whether the pile above it is 2.5mm or 30mm. One stretch or ballpoint needle covers the whole range.

The settings that move with pile depth

If you do know your pile height, four of those settings shift. A deeper pile puts more fabric under the presser foot, and the thicker that sandwiched fabric is, the fewer stitches to the inch it wants and the more help it needs staying in place.

Treat the stitch length as a place to start rather than a rule. Sew a test seam and look at it. What pile depth does to the seam itself, and to nap shading, is covered in our guide to minky pile heights.

Cutting without shearing the pile

The cut we use in the cutting room

Turn the fabric over and work from the flat knit side, not the pile. Find the point on the blade that glides without opening and closing the scissors, and cut in one continuous motion. The blade parts the pile instead of chopping through it.

That single change is the difference between an edge that sheds the whole time you're working with it and one that settles after a shake. It also explains where a rotary cutter stops being the easier tool. On a short pile a rotary runs clean, and it's faster and more accurate than scissors for long straight cuts. As the pile gets deeper the blade starts taking the tops off the fibers at the edge rather than passing between them, and a gliding scissor cut leaves a better edge. Neither tool is wrong. They just swap places somewhere around the middle of the range.

Which way the nap runs, and why both pieces have to agree

Stroke the surface with your hand. One direction feels smooth, the other feels like it's pushing back. That's the nap, and every piece you cut has to run the same way.

This is the one habit that doesn't carry over from cotton, and it's the most common way a two-piece minky project goes wrong. Fleece has no nap and can be cut in any direction. Minky has one and can't. Lay all your pieces out in the same orientation before you cut anything, and resist the urge to rotate one to save fabric. Two pieces cut the wrong way round read as two different colours in daylight, even though they came off the same roll.

Expect some loose fiber at the cut edge. It's the fibers that were severed during cutting, not the fabric coming apart, and it settles after a shake and the first wash or two. A lint roller nearby is worth more than any technique for it.

If you work with minky often, a small tabletop or handheld vacuum is worth the modest investment. Cut your pieces, then vacuum up the loose fiber before you sew. It turns the cleanup into almost nothing.

Sewing minky to cotton

This is the seam most people come here for, and it's where the published advice contradicts itself most. Some sources say put the minky on top and ease it in. Others say put it underneath against the feed dogs.

Minky underneath is the rule, and it matters most when you don't have an even-feed foot. Feed dogs pull the bottom layer along more positively than the top layer travels on its own. The layer that wants to slip therefore belongs where the machine has the firmest grip on it. With a walking foot, top feeder foot or dual feed fitted, the top layer is being driven too and the difference between the two arrangements largely disappears. That's why both camps can report success. They're describing the same seam with and without an even feed.

One more thing that saves a recut: cut the cotton to its finished size, cut the minky a little oversized, sew the seam, then trim the minky back. The stable fabric sets the dimension and the one that moves gets trimmed to it.

Left, the cotton ripples because the minky moved underneath it. Right, the same seam with both layers fed evenly.

The seam you'll actually sew

Almost nothing in minky is a single layer with a finished edge. A blanket, a lovey, a cushion cover or a soft toy is a face sewn to a backing, and the construction is the same at every size.

Put the two pieces right sides together. Stitch around the edge at 5/8 inch, leaving a gap of two or three inches on one side. Turn the whole thing right side out through the gap, close the gap by hand, and topstitch around the edge if you want a crisp finish. You don't hem it and you don't bind it.

The reason this works, and the reason the bulk of the pile isn't a problem, is that the pile ends up on the inside of that seam where it's never seen. Seam bulk is the thing to manage, not seam appearance.

The selvage can sit inside that seam too. There's about an inch along each edge of the roll that can look slightly different from the rest. You can trim it off if you'd rather, or you can position it inside the seam allowance where it never shows. Both are fine.

Topstitching so the pile doesn't swallow the stitch line

On anything above about 5mm, a topstitch sinks into the pile and disappears. Two things bring it back. Lengthen the stitch a little further than your seam setting, and run a fingernail or a pin along the finished edge afterwards to lift the trapped fibers out of the stitch line. The stitching stays where it is; the pile comes back over it.

No walking foot, no pressure dial

Plenty of machines have neither, and minky is still sewable on them. Four things carry most of the weight.

Pin far more closely than feels reasonable, every half inch rather than every inch. Lengthen the stitch to the top of the range for your pile depth. Sew slowly, because speed is what lets the top layer get ahead. And support the weight of the project on the table or your lap rather than letting it hang, because a heavy piece dragging off the edge pulls the seam out of line more than any setting will fix.

Basting the seam first, by hand or by machine at the longest stitch, does most of what a walking foot does. It takes a few minutes and it's the difference between a seam you trust and one you unpick.

Four things that go wrong, and what to change

"The two layers finished different lengths"

The top layer travelled while the bottom one was fed. Fit an even-feed foot if you have one. If you don't, pin every half inch and baste first.

"The seam came out wavy"

The stitch is too short for the thickness, leaving more thread in the seam than the fabric can lie flat around. Lengthen it half a millimetre at a time and test again.

"It's skipping stitches"

Almost always the needle. A sharp point cuts the knit loops instead of passing between them, and a blunt or wrong-sized needle deflects in dense pile. Fit a fresh stretch or ballpoint needle before changing anything else.

"It bunched up at the start of the seam"

The pile pushed down into the needle plate before the feed dogs got hold of it. Start half an inch in and reverse back to the edge, or hold the thread tails taut behind the foot for the first few stitches.

The ten inch test that settles it

Before you cut into the project, spend five minutes on this. It's the only way to know your settings are right rather than reasonable.

Pressing, finishing, and what you can skip

Can you iron minky?

Yes, with care, and only on Silky Minky and minky prints at 2.5mm or 3mm. Use a low setting and keep the iron moving, never resting in one place. That works because the pile on those is short. On anything deeper, finger-press the seam flat instead. If you're pressing a minky-and-cotton seam, press from the cotton side.

Does minky fray? Do you have to finish the seams?

No, and no. It's a knit, so a cut edge doesn't unravel. You can leave a raw edge and it will hold. That means no zigzagging, no pinking and no bias binding unless you want them for the look. It's one of the few places minky is less work than a woven.

Can you serge it?

You can, and a serger handles the feeding well because it grips both layers. It isn't necessary, though, since the edge doesn't need finishing. Where a serger earns its place is on a long seam in deep pile, where it trims the bulk out of the seam as it goes.

Cutting from the knit side, with the blade parting the pile rather than chopping it.

If you're choosing between two pile depths for a project, order a swatch of each and sew a test seam in both before you commit. Our Silky Minky solids are the short end of the range and the easiest place to start if minky is new to you. We cut to the length you need, and larger quantities carry a lower price per yard.

For what minky is and how it is made, see what is minky fabric. For how the plush fabrics differ from each other, see telling plush fabrics apart. For washing and care once it's made, see how to wash a minky blanket.

Frequently asked questions