I attempted to go on a fabric diet this year because my sewing has not kept up with my fabric buying for quite some time. I even experimented with selling a few pieces from my stash via Instagram and Facebook, which you can read about here. Now that 2017 is nearly over (can you believe it?), I’ve been thinking of all the reasons why I buy fabric. Here are my top three:
It was on sale. Yep, if I’m really honest with myself, this is top reason for a fabric purchase. When I started sewing again around 2009, I was a sucker for a sale – whether it was in-store or online. I would buy fabric that appealed to me and I liked it even more because it was on sale. I didn’t yet know what I would make from it.Now I tell myself, don’t buy it unless you know what you’re going to make with it. I’ve even avoided sales because it’s so hard to resist buying more fabric. I love touching fabric and looking at all the lovely designs. That said, I broke my fabric diet in San Francisco when there were sales at Britex Fabrics and Fabric Outlet. Britex was having a “Yard Sale” discounting many bolts of fabric – all in preparation for the store’s big move to 117 Post St. in December. They are now in their new location – a beautiful space that really shows off their wool and silk fabric.Over a two-month period, I got several pieces of fabric from Britex, including a red crinkle cotton and these four fabrics – clockwise from top left: ponte with a huge print (maybe a full-length Pilvi Coat), cotton lawn from Italy (marked down to $10/yard because of a flaw in the print, possible blouse or skirt), a black and silver stretch lace (skirt) and a black lace knit fabric (sleeves for a knit top).
I also got a couple yards of some fun home decor fabric for free because I did a guest post about the fabric for the Britex blog. I also wrote about it here.At Fabric Outlet, which had a 40% off sale, I used a $25 gift certificate one of my sisters gave me for my birthday. So I felt that gave me license to just browse and buy whatever struck my fancy. I got a couple yards of black french terry (Toaster sweater perhaps?) and a berry red stretch cotton, which should make a nice shirt.
It was irresistible. Sometimes you see a piece of fabric and you just have to have it, no matter what the price is. You love the design, the color, the way it feels, the drape, etc. When I saw this fabric at Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics, I just had to get it. I eventually I made this Pilvi Coat from it, which I love.
It was a planned purchase. Sometimes I buy fabric with a specific pattern in mind. I’ll bring the pattern envelope with me or I’ll take a photo of the front and back of the pattern and consult it when I’m in the store to make sure I have the correct yardage. Or if it’s a PDF pattern, I’ll just look up the info on the company’s website to make sure I have the right info.
Now the fabric is piling up. It’s in bags in the closet and in a couple of plastic bins in the bedroom. For 2018, I’m going to do my best to shop my stash and to start making some of the things I planned to make with the fabric when I bought it. My plans have changed for some of the fabric I bought a few years ago (no surprise) so for some of it, I’ll be rethinking my sewing plans.
I have not taken any inventory so I don’t know how many yards are in my stash. I’m not sure I want to know. I don’t have space to maintain a large stash so I am going to try to sew more in 2018 and attempt a RTW fast. Goodbye Valentino is hosting a RTW fast, encouraging people to sew, not buy clothes (see her invitation here sign up by tomorrow, Dec. 31!).
What are your reasons for buying fabric? Please share your thoughts in the comments section. I’d love to hear what you have to say on the topic.
Hi, I don’t have a huge fabric stash but I don’t have much storage space in my apartment. I don’t have a dedicated sewing room or fabric on shelves. My fabric is in a couple of bins and some bags. So I decided to experiment and try destashing fabric online specifically via Facebook and Instagram.
I went through my fabric and found several yards of six different cotton fabrics that were impulse buys or were intended for projects that I never started. I told myself that I would not get any new fabric until I sold some of my existing fabrics. Then I went outside to shoot in natural light, taking many photos, including shots with a tape measure so people could see the size of the design. I also had to measure each length of fabric and document the info, if any, on the selvage.
Destashing fabric on Instagram
I decided my sale would start on Friday, July 21 on Instagram and started a few days before that date, I created a new account – @csews_destash – and posted photos there. I decided against posting photos on my @csews Instagram because I didn’t want my followers there to feel like they were being spammed by fabric sale photos. One of my @csews followers @liblib, suggested that I have a separate destash IG account, commenting “Spam destashes drive me crazy!!” I decided that was good advice. Thanks, Libby!
It took me a while to take all the photos and I didn’t want to start my @csews_destash until all the photos were done. I took multiple photos of each fabric, including a close-up shot of the design, a shot with a tape measure and one of the selvage, if there was printed information there. I also searched the hashtags #destash, #destashfabric and #fabricdestash to see what other people said in their destash posts.
It seemed best to just describe the fabric and include information about the amount of fabric, such as 44 wide, 4 yards. I also mentioned that it was stored in a nonsmoking, no pets home. I told people to comment SOLD to claim the fabric and DM me to pay. I gave people the option to pay via PayPal or Venmo. I limited sales to the US because international shipping costs are so expensive, especially when you factor in customs. Here’s what I said about this fabric:
I didn’t make any sales over the weekend.In retrospect, I could have posted just one photo in the account long before the sale and said that more photos were coming. Then I could have had some followers before the sale began. After all, it’s hard to sell anything if you only have a few followers, right?
But I did sell this cute fabric about five days after my initial post.
The buyer is someone I know because she’s a member of the Bay Area Sewists meetup group, which I organize. She commented that she wanted it and then sent me a DM on IG and told me she could send me payment via Venmo and wanted to pick it up locally, which saved her the shipping fee. I sent her my info and received the money. We’ve arranged for me to give her the fabric at the next Bay Area Sewists meetup on August 6, which is, appropriately enough, a fabric swap.
Setting a price for destash fabric
I really didn’t know what to charge for these fabrics because for most of them I didn’t remember how much I paid. I did some searching for the fabric to see if anyone still sold it but I’ve had some of them for more than five years so I didn’t find them.
Nearly all of the fabrics were quilt-weight cotton wovens. Two had Timeless Treasures printed on the selvage. I did a quick search online and saw that sale prices for that fabric were around $7.50/yard, full price was $10.60. So I decided that about $4 to $7 per yard + shipping, was fair.
I started with Fabric Marketplace group because it was the first one that accepted my request. I decided to start a photo album and upload photos of the different fabrics for sale. Facebook seemed to take a long time to upload the album so I decided it might be better to just upload photos for each fabric as individual posts. I listed my PayPal email in the album description and then one of the group admins told me that I needed to get the PayPal email of the person buying the fabric and invoice that person. Oops.
I did not read the group guidelines in the post pinned to the top. Sorry! The way most of these FB groups seem to work is that you agree that by posting to the group, you agree to use PayPal and invoice the buyer. Once you receive payment, you agree to send the fabric in 48 hours to the buyer.
Once you’ve posted something to sell in a FB group, FB makes it really easy to sell to repost your info to another group. All you have to do is click on the blue button that says “Post to More Places.” Then a new window opens listing all the buy/sell FB groups you are a member of. Just check the groups you want and voila! It’s automatically posted there. I used that button to post to Sew Its for Sale (sic) group.
Sew Its for Sale has very detailed group rules and asks people to comment “agree.” The posting rules ask members to provide detailed information about destashing fabric and to post your own original photos, no photos from other sites, and reminding people that it’s a site for fabric not completed items. I posted my photos there on Saturday, July 22 and two days later I got a message from a woman in Colorado asking if this fabric was still available. I said, yes. I priced it at $15 for 4 yards, 44 wide.
Then she sent me another message saying she was interested in this fabric, too. I was selling about 3 yards of this for $15. it was 56 wide.
I told her they were both available and that shipping would be via a US mail, medium flat-rate box $13.60. She sent me her PayPal email so I could create an invoice and then she could send me payment. I marked them sold in the Sew Its for Sale group and then its status as a sold item was automatically updated on the Fabric Marketplace Destash group.
Once you post something for sale on a group page, it can be tricky to find your posts, depending on how the group uses FB. For example, it was very easy to find my items on Sew Its for Sale because on the left side of the group page, it says “Your Items” directly beneath the “Items for Sale” link. I clicked on that link and all my posts appeared.
Fabric Marketplace Destash group doesn’t have a link for “Your Items,” which means you have to search the posts to find your item. I haven’t sold anything there yet.
Stashbusters isn’t really active. With less than 300 members, there’s not much going on there so I decided not to post anything there. I just posted my fabrics to the Fabric Addicts Destash group so I don’t have anything to report there.
The destash fabric
Here’s a closer look at my fabric that still for sale on IG and FB.
Update: This pink and green fabric is now sold.
SOLD Quilt weight cotton – the selvage says: Windham Fabrics presents Le Poulet by Whistler Studios, Pattern No. 30797. 44 wide, 2 7/8 yards, 2.6 meters, uncut – $9 + shipping. This fabric has been prewashed.
The fabrics below are still available.
This border print is called Natural Effects and was designed by Michele D’Amore. The stripes and leaves (brown background) repeats on the other side of the flower design. It’s a quilt-weight cotton. The selvage says: Windham Fabrics presents Le Poulet by Whistler Studios, Pattern No. 30797. This fabric has been prewashed and is uncut.
I got this unusual dyed fabric from Britex Fabrics. It was a remnant so it still had the tag on it. It’s very hard to photograph purple. I tweaked it in Photoshop to get it closer to the actual color. The lightweight cotton is finely woven.
2 2/3 yards, 44 wide, uncut, $20
My conclusion is that it’s easier to sell destash fabric on Facebook rather than Instagram. I think Instagram would work if you had a big following for your destash account. I don’t plan on selling a ton of fabric there so I don’t see how I’d get a ton of new followers. Destashing fabric on Facebook and IG takes a bit more time and thought than you think but it’s likely easier than doing it on Etsy and eBay, especially if you don’t plan on making it a regular business.
Have you tried destashing fabric on IG or Facebook? Did you sell anything? Please feel free to comment below and let me know what groups worked for you. And if you’re interested in buying one of the fabrics still for sale, please comment below or on my IG destash account @csews_destash.
Hi, in August I wrote Part 1 about DIY Shibori and then a follow-up post about washing indigo-dyed fabric. Part 1 was about the indigo dyeing workshop I organized for the Bay Area Sewists and goes into more detail about mixing the dye and some Shibori techniques. Towards the end of that post I mentioned that I would reveal the results of my additional dye experiments because I had taken a bucket of dye home to try a few more folding and binding techniques.
I had wanted to have a total of eight pieces of fabric, each with a different design so I could use the fabric to make a 16-sectioned skirt. The pattern is from the Japanese sewing book Basic Black: 26 Edgy Essentials for the Modern Wardrobe by Sato Watanabe. The A-line skirt has eight panels for the front and eight for the back. I already had one dyed piece from the workshop so I needed to dye seven more pieces of fabric that were large enough to fit two skirt sections each: four were about 18″ x 20″ (46 cm x 51 cm) and the other three were bigger, to fit the bottom pattern pieces, roughly 18″ x 35.5″ (36 cm x 90 cm).
I made a version of this skirt in a solid black cotton piquet, which you can see here. It’s hard to see the different sections in the finished photos because I’m not great at photographing black.
For my DIY Shibori experiments, I tried doing a variety of things to the muslin – using clothes pins, rubber bands, chopsticks, cotton twine, and curtain rings – and then hand-basting and gathering, pleating and folding or binding the fabric.
After everything was bound, I wet them in my bathroom sink before I took them outside to dip in the dye bath. Pre-wetting your fabric is supposed to make the fabric more receptive to the dye. But what’s more important is that you prewash your fabric before dyeing so you remove any sizing or chemicals that have been used to treat the muslin.
DIY Shibori – Eight variations
Here’s what the fabric looks like when it’s dry. I had photos of the fabric as it was drying but the color is darker when it’s wet so I decided to rephotograph them – thus the additional delay in doing this post. (Please excuse the folds – I’ve had the fabric neatly folded in a bag, waiting to be cut and sewn.)
1.) I randomly clipped clothes pins to the muslin and got this nice result. The clothespins had been dyed from the workshop. 🙂
2.) I folded the fabric lengthwise a few times and then put chopsticks at an angle, securing them with small rubber bands. I copied the technique of one of the Bay Area Sewists members at the workshop. You can see exactly where the chopsticks were on the fabric. The darker parts of the fabric were the two sides that were directly exposed to the dye bath.
3.) Next, I hand basted the muslin like so…
… and then I gathered it, knotting the threads at the ends and put it in the dye bath to get this intriguing result. I didn’t gather it too tightly or else I’d get too much white, which I wanted to avoid.
4.) Here I folded the fabric into wide pleats and then folded that into triangles to get this nice result. The dark edges were exposed to the dye bath the longest.
When I first took it out of the dye bath, it looked like this. The mere act of folding makes it resist the dye – pretty amazing, isn’t it? So I put it back in the dye bath to make it all blue. I think if I had a really lightweight fabric, this design would make an interesting scarf.
5.) For this result, I folded the fabric and wound it around a small water bottle (16.9 oz/500 ml) and then put a bunch of rubber bands around it. The darkest part of the fabric was the part that was exposed directly to the dye bath. The other side of the fabric is a lot lighter.
The water bottle looked like this when I first took it out of the dye bath.
And here’s what the fabric looked like when I unwrapped it. The fabric closest to the bottle didn’t absorb much dye. So I dipped that part in the dye to get that a little darker. If I used something wider, then I’d have a larger dark area.
6.) For this experiment, I pleated the fabric at a diagonal and then used small rubber bands to hold the pleats in place. You have to be careful not to move the rubber bands so those areas will resist the dye. If I try this again, I think I would use cotton twine, which won’t move around so much.
7.) Here I put tied two curtain rings inside the fabric, folding the fabric at a diagonal and then using cotton twine to tie it together. The curtain rings made the two circles in the fabric.
8.) Pleating and folding the fabric means that a lot of the fabric will resist the dye. I didn’t want any white so after the initial dip, which was done at the workshop, I put it back in the dye bath unfolded so the rest of the fabric would be dyed. I wanted all of the muslin to be blue for my skirt.
Here’s what pleated fabric typically looks like after the first dip – a lot of white. So I put it back in the dye bath to make it blue. It’s still wet here so the blue is a few shades darker than the color it is when it’s dry.
So these are the eight pieces of fabric that I will be using to make my skirt. I’ll post WIP (work-in-progress) photos when I cut the fabric. I’m hoping it’ll look good and not too much like some tie-dyed garment.
Hi, earlier this year, I took an indigo dyeing (also known as Shibori) workshop taught by Anna Joyce at Craftcation, which was so easy and so much fun. You can see photos from the workshop in my post My Craftcation 2016 Weekend. When I posted photos on my Instagram feed (@csews), a Bay Area Sewists member Ali (@sewmsboncha), commented that I should teach it to our meetup group (I organize monthly meetups for the Bay Area Sewists). I thought, why not pass along what I learned?
So four months later, I finally taught the Shibori workshop the first Saturday in August, passing along what I learned. The above photo is some of the lovely dyed fabric drying outside. We held this meetup at The Sewing Room in Alameda, courtesy of its lovely owner Jennifer Serr who graciously let us invade her space last Saturday afternoon. Jennifer offers sewing classes at The Sewing Room and sells Tilly and the Buttons patterns as well as her own pattern line, Bonjour Teaspoon, in the shop.
I used the same indigo tie dye kits we used at Craftcation – the Jacquard Indigo Tie Dye Kit. I also bought five-gallon buckets at Home Depot , which we filled with four gallons of water. Here are some of the supplies I gathered: buckets, sticks to stir the dye, and the kits – taken before I left for Alameda.
The kits are really easy to use. You get the indigo powder and two other separately packaged ingredients – thiox and soda ash – to pour in the water. (Thiox is a reducing agent, which means it reduces the oxygen in the water. Soda ash fixes the dye to the fiber you’re dyeing.) According to Anna Joyce, it doesn’t matter what order you put them in because the indigo is pre-reduced, which means it easily dissolves in the water.
However, I just watched this video by Jacquard, which says to put the indigo in first, followed by the soda ash and thiox. Well, we did it both ways indigo first and last and didn’t have any problems with the dye. You can always follow the manufacturer’s instructions and watch their video –Indigo Tie Dye Kit from Jacquard Products:
I got the kits at Artists & Craftsman Supply in Berkeley, which is conveniently located near Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics. 😉 So Bay Area folks, the next time you’re buying fabric, just go across the street and walk a half-block down to the art supply store and pick up an indigo dye kit. You can also buy the kits from Dharma Trading here ($8.49 per kit) or on Amazon for $9.97, affiliate link here. There is enough dye for 15 shirts or 15 yards of fabric.
I also got three different sizes of rubber bands to use (size 8, 16 and 64), plus cotton twine to use to manipulate the fabric. Size 8 are really tiny – they fit around my pinkie finger. I remember that we had tiny rubber bands at Craftcation, which are useful when you want to make small circle shapes in your fabric. I ordered them via Amazon (affiliate link here) because regular office supply stores don’t carry that size. They had a lot of size 16 (thin long rubber bands) and size 64,the thick rubber bands. In reading about Shibori – after the workshop – I see that at Craftcation, we mostly did the shape resist technique – or itajime shibori – where you fold and bind the fabric and a variation of kumo shibori – pleat and bind. Some of just did binding, no pleating.
I gave each Bay Area Sewist a yard of muslin to play around with. (The dye works best with natural fibers – cotton, linen, silk, wool, and rayon.) We folded, twisted, clamped, and tied the fabric and then put it in the dye bath. I prewashed (and ironed!) the muslin a few days before the Bay Area Sewists workshop to ensure that the dye would take. At Craftcation the tea towels and tote bags we dyed were a little dye resistant. The finishing on the fabric was the problem. Anna said she didn’t have any problems at another workshop she taught so she was surprised. I guess the materials came from a different supplier.
One member, Maria, asked if the fabric should be wet first and I said it wasn’t necessary because we didn’t wet it at Craftcation and I prewashed the fabric.
I relied on my Craftcation experience to lead the workshop but in retrospect I should have at least read the Jacquard instructions more thoroughly. My apologies, Bay Area Sewists! I spent more time gathering supplies than anything else. Jacquard says to wet the fabric after you fold/tie/bind it and squeeze out the excess water and air. Then you put it in the dye bath. If I do this again, I’d like to do a comparison – prepare the fabric in the exact same way, then wet one piece of fabric and leave the other one dry and see what happens after dyeing it.
Here’s what I did with one piece of muslin – accordion-folded and then folded in thirds and then I held it together with three rubber bands. The rubber bands weren’t too tight because I was more interested in the folding lines and didn’t really care about the lines the rubber bands would create.
As you can see, there’s a lot of white space. I decided I wanted it to be blue so I put it back in the dye bath and now it looks like the last photo. I think I like the previous version better. Next time!
Everyone had fun experimenting. Here’s how Jacquard says you’re supposed to take your fabric out of the dye bath -” squeeze it just below the surface as you slowly remove it from the vat. You want to prevent splashing as this introduces oxygen back into the vat.” You can read the full instructions here.
One fascinating thing about indigo dye is that the fabric is green when you first take it out of the dye and then when it oxidizes, it turns indigo blue. For a darker blue, you just wait about 20 minutes for it to fully oxidize and then put it back in the dye bath. You can keep putting it back in for a darker color – but you need to wait for it to oxidize before you dip it again. Keep in mind that when wet, the color looks a couple of shades darker than it will when dry.
I took a bucket of dye home and posted a video on Instagram that shows how green fabric initially is. You can see that it gets darker when it’s out of the dye bath – and you can see the other fabric that’s been out of the dye bath for a longer time. (You might have to wait a little bit for it to load because it’s taking the video from IG.)
What I learned at Craftcation was the tighter you tie/twist/clamp it, the more white space you’ll have. So if you want more indigo blue in your fabric, make sure more fabric is exposed to the dye and that you loosely tie/twist your fabric.
What’s so great about indigo dyeing is that you see your results so quickly and you can just have fun experimenting with manipulating the fabric.
At Craftcation we were only using the dye for that workshop, which is likely why Anna Joyce didn’t mention anything about not introducing oxygen to the dye bath. No one was going to keep the dye so it didn’t matter if the dye oxidized. If the dye is oxidized, it will be indigo, .
The bottom line: You do need to be careful about introducing oxygen to the dye bath. This means no splashing when you put the fabric in the dye bath, slowly stirring the dye, and putting the lid on it in between dyeing. If the dye oxidizes it won’t adhere to the fibers as well.
The day after the workshop, I cut up a couple of yards of muslin and experimented with different folding/twisting/binding techniques. I’ll reveal the results of those experiments next week – with plenty of photos – in Part 2. UPDATE: I decided to write a post about washing indigo-dyed fabric before I wrote about my dye experiments.
Meanwhile, check out the Shibori techniques in these articles. (If I do the workshop again, I’ll have a lot more information to pass along!)
Shibori DIY – a Dharma Trading article on three Shibori resist techniques: Arashi (pole-wrapping), Kumo (twist and bind), and Itajime (shape resist).
DIY Shibori – a HonestlyWTF article showing the Arashi and Kumo techniques with photos of the binding and the results.
DIY Shibori Designs – a Design Sponge article on three folding techniques and how to make abstract rings of white.
Have you done any indigo dyeing? What’s your favorite binding technique?
At the end of April Rachel of House of Pinheiro did a post about making her first pair of jeans, which you can read here. She made her jeans using Theory indigo stretch cotton denim from Mood Fabrics (sorry, sold out or I would link to it). And Rachel was offering a giveaway – a $50 gift voucher towards a Mood Fabrics purchase – and I won!
I was shocked and thrilled to win. I’ve left comments on other blogs that were offering sewing-related giveaways but I never won before. So this was a wonderful surprise. Thank you, Rachel! All I had to do was email Rachel my info and she got a code from Mood and sent it to me right away. How exciting, eh?
First, I browsed the denim, thinking I could try keeping with the theme of Rachel’s blog post. Maybe I could find some lightweight so I could try to copy a pair of trouser jeans that are pretty worn out. But after browsing through pages of denim (stretch, indigo, metallic, I got tired of reading the product details. Then I thought, why don’t I get a fabric I’ve never sewn before and that’s a bit unusual?
So what popped in my mind was: silk jersey. I first encountered this fabric at a Bay Area Sewists meetup at Britex Fabrics, which I blogged about here. It was so soft and had a lovely drape but it also seemed a bit slippery. When I searched for silk jersey on the Mood Fabrics website, I found several solid colors and just a few prints. A silk jersey print isn’t very common so I picked this Pink and Red Bold Floral silk jersey print for $24.99/yard. This is the image from Mood’s website:
I really like the bright red flowers. I have to admit that I didn’t really pay attention to the name of the fabric – “Pink and Red” or I may have reconsidered my choice. The background didn’t really register as pink to me. I ordered two yards of this silk jersey. What would you order if you had $50 to spend at Mood?
My order made me eligible for a few swatches so I picked fabrics I haven’t sewn before: silk crepe, cotton dobby, cotton gauze, and silk faille. My fabric arrived in a nice box.
And here’s what was inside…
I guess the website image was pretty accurate. I don’t have any pastel pink in my wardrobe. I didn’t like pink as a young girl either. The closest I get to pink nowadays is fuchsia. But I do like the red flowers so I think I can live with the pale pink background.
Now I just need to figure out what I should make with this fabric. It’s 43 inched wide (about 109 cm) and I have 2 yards (1.8 meters) of it. What would you make with this fabric? I’d love some pattern suggestions – maybe a draped top? The fabric is a little sheer so I’ll likely need to line it. And maybe I could make a scarf from any leftover pieces.
Have you sewed any lightweight silk or slippery fabrics? The Bay Area Sewists meetup group met at Britex Fabrics this weekend to discuss sewing tricky fabrics. This is the second time we’ve held this meetup. There was a wait list for the first one we held last fall (see Fiddly Fabrics & More…). So I thought it would be a good idea to repeat this meetup.
Once again we were fortunate to have Douglas, the store’s very experienced sales associate, discuss his tips and his experience sewing fabrics, such as silk chiffon and charmeuse. And of course, it’s always fabulous to meet at Britex, which has a wide range of gorgeous fabrics.
What follows are my notes, Bay Area Sewist members’ questions and comments, and my observations.
Douglas picked out silk chiffon for us to look at. His tips for sewing delicate fabrics – as well as some suggested by Bay Area Sewists members attending this meetup – are as follows:
Use entomology pins, which are extremely fine pins used to pin insects (yep, if you want to pin a butterfly, you use these pins). A friend of his recently returned from London and brought back some of those pines and Douglas noticed that the box said they could also be used for “fine fabrics.” I did a quick search and found this naturalist store, The Compleat Naturalist, selling a box of 100 insect pins for $7.95. The pins are coated in black enamel, which prevents them from rusting. Douglas said to get the finest size. Merchant & Mills also sells them here for £6.00. Douglas warned that you need to be careful using the fine pine because they are so sharp, they will just go through your skin.
If you’re sewing charmeuse, pin everything, says Douglas.
To hem a silk scarf, Douglas says you could use a very thin line of stitch witchery to hold the hem in place and then sew it with silk thread. He says do not use silk thread for garment sewing because the thread is so strong, the fabric will tear before the thread does. There is no “give” to silk thread.
To cut silk and slippery fabrics, Douglas recommends putting a layer tissue paper on your cutting table, place your fabric on top, then your pattern paper, pin and cut. The cheap tissue paper you can get at the drug store, the stuff some department stores put around your purchases before they put them in a bag. I mentioned this in my post on the earlier meetup – so this may seem familiar if you’ve already read that post. Do not remove the tissue paper before you sew. Keep it in place and sew through your fabric and the tissue paper. This will help stabilize your fabric.
Douglas pads his cutting table so he can pin the fabric through his pad. What’s in his pad? He uses several layers of cotton on top of foam. One Bay Area Sewists member mentioned that you could get a piece of foam core and pin through that. And I just saw a tip the other day on Sew Busy Lizzy‘s Instagram feed (@sewbusylizzy) – put a blanket on your cutting table before cutting slippery and heavy fabric – don’t cut through the blanket though! It stops the fabric from sliding around.
Scissors or rotary cutter? Douglas uses a rotary cutter around curves, scissors for straight lines.
To install a zipper in chiffon – Douglas says to put a strip of organza where the zipper goes. I asked him if he would recommend using a lightweight fusible as well and he said no, the organza was enough.
What about sewing together two slippery pieces of silk along a curve, for example, a armhole? Douglas say to cut a strip of organza (on grain, not on the bias or it will give you trouble) and sew it together. And don’t forget to clip the curve.
At the end of Douglas’s talk, we convened upstairs to discuss some of our experiences sewing these fabrics. Bay Area Sewists member Emily used silk charmeuse to make her wedding dress from the By Hand London Flora Dress pattern. She laid out her fabric on the floor, sandwiching the charmeuse between two layers of tissue paper (a layer of tissue paper, silk charmeuse, tissue paper, then pattern pieces). Emily blogs at Dressing the Role, where you can read more about her dress here.
Sewing Knits
Douglas showed us some lightweight plum wool jersey. You could see through it. He says you could line with Bemberg cut on the bias.
To sew it, your could use a longer straight stitch gently stretching the fabric as you sew, a stretch stitch, or a shallow zig zag stitch. For tips on sewing knits on a regular sewing machine, see this Tilly & the Buttons post. Also, see Sewaholic’s list of tips for sewing knits.
Fabric that Unravels
How do you cut fabric that unravels very easily? Douglas says take some scotch tape (regular invisible tape), put it on your fabric and then cut through the tape. He showed us two samples of fabric made with raffia. You can’t wash this fabric though – you can only spot clean it. You could make a really interesting coat from this fabric.
Fabric Care
Prewash silk with shampoo. Silk is a protein so wash with shampoo in warm water. Cold water can make the fabric stiffer. Douglas says he uses Pert and dries it in the dryer – “no heat” setting. Air drying is also fine.
You may want to test a small piece of your fabric and see how it reacts. If it changes too much, then you may just want to dry clean it. I did an experiment a couple of years ago on prewashing some silk chiffon, which I have yet to sew. Here are my test results using cold water, luke warm water, and water plus vinegar.
Someone asked about Woolite and Douglas does not recommend it. He says if you look at the ingredients – bleach is one of them. So you are making your clothes lighter by using Woolite. Yikes.
Other Tips
When we went upstairs to continue the discussion among the members, here’s what else came up:
Use a Teflon foot for sewing sticky fabrics, leather, performance fabrics, fabrics that stick to your finger when you press on them.
If you wash something and the color bleeds where it shouldn’t, wash it again with a “color catcher.” You can find it in the grocery aisle in the dryer section, according to Emily, who says it will pick up the extra dye.
If you have any tips for sewing tricky fabrics, please share them in the comments section!
By now, you have very likely read stories about California’s drought. It’s been going on for FOUR years. Earlier this month, Gov. Jerry Brown ordered historic mandatory water restrictions. This is a big deal because the state has never required any water restrictions, just voluntary reductions. It’s a huge political and bureaucratic issue, which you can read about in this San Jose Mercury News article.
I’ve become used to sunny skies and no rain but it’s not normal. I confess that when it comes to water conservation, I haven’t done much more than take shorter and fewer showers and be careful of water usage when I’m cooking or washing dishes. If you’re in California, what are you doing to conserve water?
Wind erosion carries topsoil from farmland during the Dust Bowl, circa 1930s (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)
Last week as I was about to prewash some fabrics, I thought, “Uh-oh, I should’t use the washing machine to prewash just a few yards of fabric, that would be a waste of water.” Our apartment has a high-efficiency washer, which uses less water than older washers, which can use up to 40 gallons (!) a load (that’s roughly 151 liters). I’m not sure how many gallons ours uses but according to my quick Google search, high-efficiency washing machines use 14 to 25 gallons (about 53 to 95 liters).
A couple of months ago I bought this 15.25 quart (14.43 liter) dishpan at my local hardware store because I didn’t want to keep using the bathroom sink to pre-soak my interfacing. (Plus the hubby was getting annoyed.)
It’s not very big – about the size of a bathroom sink. I photographed it in my bathtub, which is white so it’s a little hard to see. Here’s what it looks like when you look down on it. The black thing covers a drainage hole, which is rather small and not really useful. It’s faster to just tip the water out.
I got this gorgeous imported rayon knit at Britex Fabrics in March after a Bay Area Sewists meetup there. If you follow me on Instagram, you might remember seeing it on my feed (@csews). I thought about steaming rather than prewashing but as some helpful folks on IG reminded me, rayon knit shrinks so I should prewash. Rayon knit doesn’t necessarily wear well either – it can pill, so I decided it would be better to hand wash cold.
I put the fabric in my tub and turned on the cold water faucet. Once the fabric was soaked, I put a little shampoo in the water, swished it around, and let it soak.
Then I dumped out the water, filled the container about halfway with fresh water and rinsed out the fabric. Next, I gently squeezed it and then rolled the fabric with a large beach towel to get rid of the excess water.
It was only a little over a meter so I thought it would be OK to hang dry. It wasn’t heavy so I didn’t think it would get stretched out hanging on the shower curtain rod. There’s very little humidity in the air in California so I knew this lightweight knit wouldn’t take long to dry. If it were a heavier knit, I would lay it flat to dry.
It’s going to be an Asymmetrical Top from Drape Drape 2. I saw the striped one that MaciNic made for the Japan Sew Along (hosted by Catrin at Tanoshii) and the other striped one she made here. I didn’t find the designs of the first Drape Drape book to be very wearable but I do like a few of the things in the second book so I checked it out of the San Francisco Public Library.
I’m not sure when I’ll get to sewing it. First I need to finish my dress for the Spring for Cotton sewalong hosted by Lucky Lucille. And I’m also working on a couple things from Japanese sewing book She Wears the Pants, the English translation by Tuttle Publishing has just been released. What are you working on?
We had a great Bay Area Sewists meetup at Britex Fabrics last Saturday morning – the topic was Sewing Fiddly and Slippery Fabrics. Douglas, a dapper and knowledgeable staff member at Britex pulled out various bolts of fabric – silk charmeuse and silk jersey as well as this white silk chiffon and silver mesh (see photo below) for us to look at and touch.
We met on the first floor of Britex, where you’ll find all kinds of silk and wool fabrics, including many imported luxurious fabrics – from cashmere and English tweeds to French silks and Italian wool crepe. It’s hard to walk by without touching them! (oooooh so lovely …)
I stopped by the store a couple weeks before the meetup to see about getting some swatches for this meetup and Dina, the store manager, very helpfully pointed out that swatches wouldn’t be large enough to give people a sense of how the fabric draped. So she cut nearly 1/4-yard pieces for a couple of them. Thank you!
She cut the first three fabrics, from left to right: iridescent silk chiffon, silk jersey (silver), and the light blue silk charmeuse, and then I went upstairs to the fourth floor where a staff person cut this fun cobwebby stretch mesh.
At the meetup I brought these fabrics and we passed them around as we listened to Douglas offer his tips and observations about sewing fiddly and slippery fabrics.
He advocates cutting silk chiffon and charmeuse as well as the silver mesh fabric (top photo) together with tissue paper. (The kind of tissue paper stores wrap your clothing purchases in or that you can get at the drug store in the wrapping paper section.) So you cut through the fabric and the tissue paper together. And you sew each of these fabrics together with the tissue paper, using a small needle size and a short stitch length. When you’re done sewing, you just gently pull away the tissue paper.
For the silk jersey, he recommended using a small ball point needle.
A Bay Area Sewists member asked how do you finish your seams if you’re sewing silk chiffon because you can see the seams? Douglas says he would trim the seam allowance close to the seam and then use Fray Check to prevent it from unraveling. Fray Check is made by Dritz and you can get it any fabric store or online.
My experience with Fray Check is that you need to use it sparingly because it can dry rather hard and you don’t want a hard edge to your fabric. Always test your fabric before using it to see how quickly one drop spreads. You don’t want to have any discoloration appear on the right side of your fabric because you used too much. you probably want to use a brush so you’ll have more control, rather than the tip on the bottle. I’ve just used the tip if I’m using it on the edges of a ribbon.
You may want to check out June Tailor’s Fray Block, which is also available at most fabric stores or online, including website here. The thing about using Fray Block is that you’re supposed to run it under hot water for a few minutes before you use it, which is a little annoying. But it is thinner than Fray Check and seems to be more flexible.
Douglas also showed us a few of the other fabrics on the floor, such as this lovely tweed and he mentioned that he only cleans his wool clothes about twice a year. He says when he wears something wool, he just brushes it off at the end of the day and hangs it up. One Bay Area Sewists member mentioned that wool is anti-bacterial so it doesn’t get very dirty.
Douglas also said that fabrics have a finish on them that irritate his skin so he wears gloves when handling fabric in the store. If he buys fabric, he soaks it in cool water to remove those chemicals. Someone asked him whether dry cleaning fabric before sewing would work and Douglas said that that would just add more chemicals. Good point.
Gee, I just got a few yards of wool jersey at Britex a couple weeks ago. I was thinking about dry cleaning it. (sigh) So I asked Douglas if he would soak wool jersey in water and he said yes, but then you’d have to block it afterwards. Shoot. So I asked him if I could just lay it flat to dry and he said yes. I think I’ll cut a small square, stick it in some cool water, let it dry and see what happens.
Then we went upstairs to to fourth floor where chairs were set out for us to sit and hold the rest of our meetup. We were in a space near the windows and in front of these tempting rolls of on-sale fabrics.
I was busy facilitating the meeting so I didn’t take very many photos – sorry!
A few people brought some things they made to show and discuss with the group. I bought a rayon jersey long-sleeved top I made during my anti-interfacing phase a couple years ago. Unfortunately, the yoke sags because I didn’t use interfacing. Edina suggested taking it apart at the yoke and serging clear elastic to it – a nice suggestion.
I also passed around some fusible stay tape that I like to use on knits to stabilize the shoulder seams and along the side seams when matching stripes – Design Plus super fine bias fusible stay tape, which you can find at a well-stocked fabric store or online.
Other members recommend using a walking foot or Steam-a Seam Lite.
Loran of Loran’s World, not only wore a lovely dress she made from a vintage pattern, she brought two garments she made – one was a shirt she made for a Sew Weekly project. But she used cheap fabric from Jo-ann’s and cheap fusible interfacing. She didn’t finish the seams because she didn’t expect to like the shirt as much as she did. She wore it a lot and after a few washings, the interfacing started falling apart and the fabric along the seam allowance near the front collar had frayed all the way to the seam leaving a gaping hole and no way to fix it.
Loran says she now uses woven sew-in interfacing. She doesn’t use fusible interfacing any more. Fro her years as a costumer, she observed that eventually the fusible interfacing would bubble so she won’t use it any more.
I also bought some quilting spray-on temporary adhesive that you use to stick pattern pieces to fabric, asking people if anyone had ever had experience with it. It says that it doesn’t gum up needles, etc. I was thinking of using it to stick pattern paper to a slippery fabric. One member said not to use it because it does gum up on your needle and to use freezer paper instead – an excellent suggestion!
I’ve used freezer paper when I’ve done a little fabric painting. You just iron the freezer paper to the fabric (use a low setting). The paper sticks to the fabric and the paint won’t bleed through. Then you peel off the paper when you’re done.
Another member brought a sleeveless top she made from silk chiffon. She did a nice job sewing it but she wasn’t too thrilled with how it looked on her because she felt it would be more flattering on someone with slim hips.
We also briefly discussed scissor sharpening – where do you get your scissors sharpened? One member mentioned that the San Mateo farmer’s market has a knife sharpener. I also did a little search and found that this San Mateo-based company Perfect Edge travels to a variety of farmer’s markets in the Bay Area – maybe this is the company someone was referring to? You can find their schedule here. I have not used them so I can’t vouch for the quality of their sharpening but their prices for scissors ($12) and pinking scissors ($14) are on this page so they do offer that service – though their main business is knife sharpening. They also have many drop-off locations, which you can find on their website.
I was at Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics earlier this week and asked a sales person where to sharpen scissors and was told to check out Golden State Sharpening – another mobile sharpening business. You drop your knives/scissors off at various designated locations the day before and pick them up the day after ($10 for fabric scissors). The schedule’s on their website. Gee, I don’t know about dropping off my scissors… If anyone has found a scissors sharpener they like in the Bay Area, please let me know!
I remember years ago when was visiting my parents on the East Coast, that Jo-Ann’s had some scissors sharpening day. My mom had written down on her calendar, which is why I remember that. I don’t recall seeing that at the Jo-Ann’s in the Bay Area.
Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention – Britex gave each member a coupon for 20% off remnants and 10% off regularly priced fabrics (good for that day only). So we had fun browsing for fabric.
Of course I had to browse the remnants on the fourth floor and found this red cotton lycra (2 1/8 yards, 50 ” wide) and this hounds tooth print (2 yards, 42″ wide). I love cotton lycra because it doesn’t wrinkle easily and I love this shade of red (more blue in it).
And when I got to the second floor as my inner voice was telling me “leave before you buy anything else!” I nearly made it downstairs to the register before I saw some wax prints – oh, my how interesting they were! I was told that the one I liked was a Dutch wax print, which was printed in Africa – a reminder that the Dutch empire had established a colony in Cape Town back in the 17th century.
I vaguely knew about African wax prints from the outfits I’d seen on Ginger of Ginger Makes who used a Vlisco wax print to make this Alder Dress and Oonaballoona who made a stunning skirt from a Dutch wax print. Both of these gals make me laugh because of the expressions on their faces in the photos on their blogs.
So I couldn’t resist buying this print – just $10/yard – clearly not a Vlisco, which is a pricey luxury brand. Admittedly, the color is not flattering to my skin (too close to my skin tone) but I think it could make a really cool skirt – maybe the Deer & Doe Chardon Skirt with inverted pleats. The fabric will far enough away from my face so it could work.
If you want to find out more about wax prints, check out this interesting New York Times article “Africa’s Fabric Is Dutch,” on Vlisco, the Dutch company that produces wax prints in Holland. Vlisco fabric is very popular in African and has a certain cachet because it is so expensive. (Ginger says “I’d have to sell an organ to pay for this fabric!”) And read this post for more about wax prints, Vlisco and prints produced in Ghana, “borrowed ideas: wax-print,” on African Lookbook.
I noticed that the selvedge of my fabric says “GUARANTEED REAL WAX ORIBA JLM HITARGET.” Well, according to the African Lookbook article, Hitarget is a Chinese company (!) that modifies Dutch designs, reprints them in new colors and sells them at low cost. And the post also stated that an “overwhelming majority (maybe as much as fifty percent) of the African prints sold in Ghana are Hitarget prints.” Sheesh. Well, I like the design – regardless of its origins!
Have you used any African/Dutch/Chinese wax print fabric in anything you’ve made?
My fabric stash is growing along with my list of projects I’d like to make – and my husband occasionally gives my piles of fabric the evil eye, mostly because it’s taking up some space in the bedroom. But it can be a challenge finding the time to sew. So the patterns and fabric keep growing. When I saw the words “Summer Stashbust 2014” on Instagram in June, I thought “A-HA! That’s what I need!!”
I first saw it in @thenerdyseamstress‘s IG feed. She regrammed it from @thequirkypeach. I soon started looking through my fabric and patterns and trying to decide what to make. I don’t have a huge stash of fabric – but I do have a couple large plastic bins and some in a wood chest – no closet or room full of fabric. But if you don’t have a lot of space to begin with, it doesn’t really make sense to keep accumulating fabric.
Some fabric is relatively new to my stash, and some has been sitting around for a few years. For example, in the above photo, the fabric on the far left is from a fabric swap from a couple of months ago. The green print fabric next to that is a Joel Dewberry design that I got about four years ago.
The red print on the right with ying-yang circles on it has been in my stash for a long time. It’s a cotton/lycra blend. I really liked the colors but the circles are rather large and a bit overwhelming. I didn’t know what to do with it. But when I took it out over the weekend, I realized, hey, I could use the fabric on some of the skirt panels of a By Hand London Anna Dress! I could alternate between solid red and the print. (I made my first Anna Dress last month, which you can see here.)
So the next day, I went over to Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics to see if I could find a nice solid red to go with this stash fabric. I looked at several red cotton fabrics but they were a little too crisp. I needed the hand of the fabric to match the stash. One of the store’s staff showed me a Kaufman Radiance cotton/silk blend that was a really good match for the red. I didn’t like the shiniest so I’m actually going to use the other side, which is more matte but has a slight sheen to it that matches my stash fabric. It’s the solid red in the photo above.
Then I finally checked out The Quirky Peach’s post “Summer Stashbust 2014,” and saw that I’m not supposed to buy any fabric from June 21 to Sept. 21. Oops. I bought that red fabric on June 22.
I couldn’t use that stash fabric without buying the Radiance fabric so I guess that’s my excuse but I’ll try to stay on a fabric diet for the rest of that time period! Oh, but I will make an exception for the Bay Area Sewists fabric swap that’s happening on July 26. But I won’t get any more fabric unless I give some away – so technically I won’t be adding to my stash. 😉
Meanwhile I’ve already started used a couple of yards of my Joel Dewberry fabric to make “The Trench” – from Christine Haynes 2009 book Chic & Simple Sewing. I’ve already made two from this pattern and I’ve been meaning to make another one from this fabric for ages and ages. If you follow me on IG (@csews), you’ll already be familiar with it because I’ve been posting photos of it as I worked on it. Here’s one of my WIP (work-in-progress) photos.
I’d like to make more tops, skirts, and dresses. I’m looking forward to sewing up some of my stash fabric.
Do you have a fabric stash? How big is it and how long have you had some of that fabric?
For many months I had a little over two yards of this gorgeous border print, which I bought from Britex Fabrics as a remnant (yes, they have generously cut remnants!). It’s a cotton with lycra fabric from Italy, 60 inches wide, with the print getting larger at the selvages, with the bigger squarish elements about 6 inches in width. The smaller black and grey squares in the middle are each about 1.5 inches wide. I really loved it but I didn’t know what I would make from it – maybe a skirt, I thought. But I had never made anything with a border print fabric. How would I cut the fabric? I was a bit stymied so I prewashed the fabric and put it away.
Every few months I would take it out and look at it but I still didn’t know what pattern would work with it. I pondered a bias cut skirt but then realized that wouldn’t make full use of the border print. Then I considered making some sort of pleated skirt but pleats have never looked that great on me because of my hips.
Then started going through my stash hoping I could find something that would work with one of the patterns. I posted this photo on Instagram and Brooke of Custom Style pointed that it might be tricky to make the print even on the neckline of the Beatrice Dress. Good point.
Then I thought – “Oh, what about the Anna Dress?” And posted this photo on IG and got a lot of positive feedback. But I didn’t have enough fabric so I went back to Britex and got two more yards at full price.
But first I wanted to make the Beatrice Dress but after I realized it was going to take me too long to get it done by the Sewing Indie Month deadline, I decided to go with Anna. You can read more about how and why that happened in this post (plenty of photos of the dress there too).
Once I picked Anna, everything came together. As I was laying out the bodice, I thought about the article on border prints in the April/May 2014 issue of Threads magazine, which I had flipped through at the Berkeley Public Library one afternoon. It made me think about using the border print as an additional design element. I held the fabric against me, posted the image on Instagram and Twitter. Leila of Three Dresses happened to see the tweet and liked that idea. I love sewcialists! They are so helpful and supportive. 😉
With that in mind, I placed the bodice pieces with the grain so that design of the print went from large to small from the left to right sleeve on the front and back. I also paid attention to where the print transitioned from large to small. I knew I wanted the area where the print transitioned to the smaller black squares to start off center rather than dead center of the bodice.
The print is asymmetrical (and busy) so I wanted to cut the fabric so that the print’s design on the individual pattern pieces would not line up. Here’s a shot of the front bodice with the front pleats sewn and facing attached.
In the photo below, the space to the left of the pattern piece is where I cut the back left side of the bodice. The pattern piece for the other side is placed an inch higher. I wanted it to be off by a significant amount so that it would look deliberate rather than like I was trying to match the design and failed. This pattern has a 22-inch invisible zipper in the center back.
Here’s a close up of the back bodice – see where the invisible zipper will go?
For the skirt I decided that I would lay out the pattern pieces so that the border print would be the largest at the hem. The meant cutting the fabric against the grain – perpendicular to the selvage.
There are seven skirt panels – the front skirt has three pieces, the center skirt piece, which is cut on the fold and two panels on either side of the center panel. I put the center skirt panel at the highest position on the border where the squares were the smallest. At that position there was about three inches left of the large part of the border print below that piece. So I planned on cutting the side pieces an inch lower than the center panel and then the two center back pieces an inch lower than the side panels. I thought it might look like the border was moving down the skirt but the print is so busy I don’t think it did that. But it did serve my purpose of not matching the print at any seams.
This is a photo of one of the other panels, with largest part of the border print at the bottom. I folded the skirt up to the hem length I wanted – tea length instead of maxi.
And here’s what the finished version looks like from the front …
and the back!
If you like this dress, you can vote for it today on Lilacs & Lace! I entered it in the Sewing Indie Month Dressed to the Nine Sew-along contest. Voting ends today.
Have you made anything with a border print before? What did you make and did you play around with the border print’s placement?
The timing on my sewing machine is off (I’ll write more about that unhappy event in another post) so this past weekend I decided to do some fabric inventory of my stash. I decided that slide sleeves would be a nice way to organize swatches and brief descriptions of the fabric. I’m going with the low-tech approach rather than spreadsheets or software or digital photo albums.
So last month I stopped by the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse – they have all kinds of stuff there – to see if they’d have some slide sleeves for three-ring binders – and they did! The slots for the slides at 2 inches x 2 inches. I got about a package of 17 slide sleeves for $1 (20 slots per sheet). And these were heavyweight 10 ml plastic. Perfect!
I don’t think I have a huge amount of fabric but I’m starting to lose track of what I’ve got. Plus my husband was rather loudly complaining about my fabric: WHY do you have so much fabric? It’s everywhere!” Well, not quite every where, just in the bedroom, the bedroom closet, on and around the dining room table, and in the tiny back room. No fabric in the kitchen, bathroom or living room. Heheh.
So I’m trying to be more organized about what I’ve got and note when I’ve pre-washed something by using yellow highlighter. I cut small swatches of fabric to go in the slide sleeve opening and I cut 3 x 5 inch index cards into thirds and then trimmed an inch off the bottom to create small squares to go in the sleeve next to the fabric. I used the extra bit of index card left over to push the fabric swatch into the slide sleeve and help keep it in place. You can see the extra bit of white index card behind the denim and red twill fabric below.
I spent half the weekend measuring fabric and putting the following information on the little cards:
type of fabric (knits, cotton, linen, fleece, denim, or interfacing)
where I bought it
what year I got it
yardage
width
As I mentioned above, yellow highlighter indicates that the fabric or interfacing has been pre-washed. Why should you pre-wash your fabric? Check out my 2013 post: Pre-washing Fabric.
Then I organized the fabric according to type and then whether it was a print or a solid.
Here’s the interfacing I’ve inventoried so far – (Yes, I already soaked all of these in warm water!):
I went through about 19 fabrics in my stash and then the four fusible interfacings above. Whew! Now I just need to get a binder to pop to store the sheets.
How do you keep track of your fabric? Software? Spreadsheets? Your smartphone? Piles on a shelf? Bins in your basement? Your photographic memory? I’d love to know how other people are managing their stashes.
I had a little vintage fabric leftover from my Fall for Cotton project so I decided to some of it away. This Swiss dot voile fabric dates back to the late 1940s, according to Maxie’s Daughter Fabrics, the Philadelphia store where I got the fabric. So I thought it would be nice to let other folks see what this fabric looked like in person. (Thanks to Trice of SewTell for telling me to visit Philly’s Fabric Row area when I was there in August!) My original intention was just to cut small swatches – a few inches square. But then I realized that I likely won’t do anything with my remnant so why not give larger pieces? I have three largish scraps, one about 1/4 yard and the other two are more triangular (30 inches on one side). I drew three names for the largish scraps and one will get a swatch. Not everyone who entered a comment wanted fabric so I didn’t have five winners. Here are the winners of my Vintage Fabric Swatch Giveaway:
1 triangular piece – Lyric of Sew and Cro, whose blog I recently discovered. Her tagline is intriguing: “Wardrobe transformation from modern to Regency, Edwardian, 1940s and 1950s.” Her blog covers vintage sewing and crochet.
1 swatch – Loran of Loran’s World, who made an amazing number of outfits for Fall for Cotton. You should definitely visit her site to see what she made! Here’s a link to her second of three (THREE!) posts on her completed outfits: Fall for Cotton – part two.
Congrats ladies! Send your mailing addresses to info [at] csews [dot] com!
And if any of the folks who commented by over the past week would like a swatch, send me an email with your mailing address and I’ll send you one!
I had wanted to have a total of eight pieces of fabric, each with a different design so I could use the fabric to make a 16-sectioned skirt. The pattern is from the Japanese sewing book 
Douglas pads his cutting table so he can pin the fabric through his pad. What’s in his pad? He uses several layers of cotton on top of foam. One Bay Area Sewists member mentioned that you could get a piece of foam core and pin through that. And I just saw a tip the other day on 
