All posts tagged: crepe

Tips and tricks for sewing bias seams in chiffon & other lightweight fabrics

Published by The Dreamstress

Let’s face it:  sewing with really lightweight fabrics can be hard, even for the best seamstress.  And it only gets worse with fabrics like chiffon and silk charmeuse, which twist and warp as you work with them.  And it get’s really tricky when you try to sew on the bias of the grain, either with a bias cut garment, or with a skirt cut with multiple A-line panels. Shell’s dress has multiple A-line panels in the skirt, so I had to be really careful in sewing it. Here are some things that I have found that make working with chiffon and lightweight silks easier, and that increase your chances of a good finish. Cutting: Lay your fabric out on a surface big enough that you won’t have to move it to cut out all your pieces.  Once your fabric is laid out, go away for half an hour so that the fabric completely ‘relaxes’ before you cut it. Lay your fabric piece over tissue paper to cut them, and cut the fabric and the tissue, …

‘Them’ and the silk trade

Published by The Dreamstress

Things I love about this article: ‘Them’ is used as a (relatively) good term Lots of fabric history! Fabrics named ‘Billowee’ and ‘Krinkle Krepe’ are considered elegant in comparison to ‘Necking Time’ and ‘Razzle Dazzle’ “It was not exactly something new; it was merely old enough to seem new” Reprinted from Times Magazine, Monday September 12, 1932 The U. S. silk industry, to its intense delight, last week found itself suddenly in the midst of a boom. Unlike cotton and woolen men, silk men are much at the mercy of THEM and last week it was gloriously plain that THEY–the fashion designers of Paris, the style buyers and editors from the U. S., and the 40,000,000 U. S. women who wear dresses–had decided on a style change which would require the U. S. silk industry’s most diligent services. THEY do not decide all of a sudden. The blessed event which now delights silk men really began last February when the U. S. style buyers found nothing to excite them at the Paris salons and bitterly …