Difficult Fabric Session 5: Quick Tips

This session is full of just little quick tips that you can use with different fabrics that make working with them a little bit easier or maybe teach you something that you didn't already know about a certain type of fabric. So I'm gonna set some of these aside and we're going to start with this one here. Now, this is just a velvet and you can get these usually on a bolt or sometimes you'll see them, they'll be big and wrapped up and actually hanging on hangers in the fabric store. And it looks really good, it drapes really well. And then you take it home and you lay it out to start using it and you can't ever get the edge to stay straight. Like anytime you start touching it it just starts rolling to the wrong side. Now, what I like to do is this was actually came from the little scrap bin, they have little rolled up pieces of fabric that someone has either bought and returned, or they bought too much of it and returned, so as soon as I buy a piece of fabric like this, I take it home and I immediately along all of the edges put some fusible interfacing. I didn't go out and buy any extra. These are just little strips, little pieces that I may have leftover from another project that I've already cut pieces out of. I really just need a little tiny strip. I can just take it over to my iron, put it on there, and you can see the difference here between the section that has our feasible interfacing on it and the section that doesn't. This just makes it much easier when working with this fabric you can actually lay it out much more easily, put your pattern pieces on there and cut them out. If you are maybe cutting out a pattern piece and say part of your pattern piece falls over into the area where you do have that interfacing on it odds are that's going to be caught in the seam allowance that you can then either try to tear away, you can cut that off, trim it away, or you can sort of just work around that. But that's just a quick thing that I like to do as soon as I buy this fabric and bring it home, it helps me keep it folded and more organized in my sewing room. The next one is some velour, and this is actually a really easy fabric to work with it. It doesn't ravel very much when you're working with it, it's really easy to put right sides together and stitch 'cause it sort of grabs onto itself. But the one thing that you want to take into consideration is the nap of the fabric. Now we worked with some faux fur earlier, and it was really easy to tell when you were sort of brushing that fur, which way it went down, which way it went up. It was easy to make sure all of your fur was going in the right direction. A fabric like this can also that same problem but it's much less apparent. And so if you are making something really big, you've cut out a bunch of different pattern pieces or maybe you're using a bunch of already cut up fabric to then cut out your fabric pieces. You need to know which way that fabric goes. So if you can see here, if I brush this way on one side and this way on the other side I can almost get like a definite line. And these almost look like two different colors of fabric. I have light and I have dark. So if you are making a jacket or something that has maybe a front piece and a side front, you want to make sure that your pieces are going in the same direction. That way, if you accidentally brush up against something maybe putting your hands in your pocket, you don't get this weird line where one piece is light and one piece is dark. So it makes sure all of your pieces, all this is going in the same direction. So if your piece was here, you'd have, you know top and bottom, not top and bottom here. So you have one going one way, one going the other. So just a little thing to think about when you're working with a fabric like this, is that you want to know which direction that fabric goes. All right, our next one here is fabric that's embellished with other fabric. And by that I mean something like this where we have a very open almost netting type fabric that has been embellished with other strips of that fabric stitched on, or in this case, we have, again the same almost lacy fabric and we have a thicker fabric that's been stitched on in a very fun pattern. These are really pretty, but they can be tricky to work with when it comes to the edges. So you can see here, I have the edge of my fabric and say I want to hem this, this is a very lightweight fabric. I could either, you know, try and use some sort of him tape on there but that's really not gonna work because it's so open. It would just sort of ooze through there. Odds are, I'm going to try and stitch this on my machine using maybe that rolled hem foot that we worked with in our shear section. But all of these different little embellishments are gonna get caught in it if you try doing that. So what you're actually going to have to do is just like we did with the sequins, is remove the embellishment from the seam allowance. Now, in this case, it's stitched on. Now they do this on purpose because you don't want to see how your embellishment is stitched on. So it's going to be very hard for you to see it unless you actually get your own and look at it really close, but it's stitched on with a monofilament or invisible thread. So if you just start pulling your embellishment away from the fabric, you can see these tiny, tiny little invisible threads that I'm just going to be snipping, removing the embellishment from the fabric. I could do that all the way along the edge, pull it back. I now could do my narrow hem and I wouldn't have anything impeding my foot if I'm using that or getting in my way and causing that him to be bulkier, I could then just trim that off. Or if I wanted to somehow fold it over and incorporate it to secure it down into that hem you could do that but you want to remove your embellishments from your hem to make it easier to go through something like a narrow hem foot. Now, if you don't want to do that and you think that's a little bit too tedious you can actually bind the edge of this fabric. So here I have a long piece. It's just a quarter yard of this really pretty fabric. That's a lace fabric embellished with some other fabric on top. And just a courting out of this fabric alone would be enough to make a fun decorative scarf. You don't even really have to do anything other than finish the edges. So there's a couple of ways you can do this. So what I've done here is actually taken. Let me just see, it's just a piece of lace and all I've done is made a sort of faux binding for my fabric, folded my lace in half, laid it over the edge of my fabric, I pinned it and I stitched right along the edge. Obviously I used a white lace on a pink fabric, so you could see it even though I do like the way it looks, you could pick a lace that matches your actual lace pattern and sew that on there. This you can find all sorts of lace ribbons like over in the embellishment section of a craft store, they come in different widths, different patterns, different colors. You could find one that either coordinates or compliments your fabric and just stitch that onto the edge. You can do the same thing with ribbon. So you can see here. This is a very, very thick piece of ribbon. All I did was cut off a length of it. I took it to my iron. I pressed it in half, did the same thing, overlapped and just stitched. This is very big, a thick ribbon. So it's gonna be a little bit sort of sturdier along the edge, make it a little stiffer, that was this ribbon here, but you can absolutely do that with different widths of ribbon. This one is very, very, very small. Once you fold it in half it's going to be little more difficult to use but enough pins in place and you could do that. This one would be another good size you can use if it's folded in half and overlapped makes a very nice edge right along that. But whether you're going to use this for, you know, a scarf and you want to finish the edge, maybe you're making a very open sort of shirt that you're gonna wear over the top of a tank top or something. This would be, you know, a fun way to actually make the sleeve edge of the shirt. Very easy way to finish that off. You don't have to worry about binding, it then gives you a place to put a button hole, a button snap, something like that to sort of secure the sleeve on the shirt if that's something you're making. So much quicker and easier way to finish off that edge. Now I'm gonna give you a little tip for working with felt because felt is oftentimes considered a very easy fabric to work with. And it is in the fact that the edges don't ravel, it's easy to cut out, and it's usually pretty easy to sew. But there are different types of felt. These are obviously the craft size pieces that you can get. They come on racks and all different colors and you can buy them in this size. You can also get felt on a bolt and buy it in much larger sizes but there are different qualities of felt. So I have two here, and you can see I have, this just happens to be the brand that they sell at my local craft store is this Eco-fi felt. Yours might be a different brand, but you have a classic felt and you have a premium felt. The premium one is going to be a little bit thicker and it holds up better. So if I hold this piece of felt up like this I can actually see pretty much see through it. The light comes through very easily. Even when I lay it down here on the cutting mat you can tell that I have a dark green cutting mat underneath this piece of felt because it's very light and thin. Whereas with this piece, if I hold it up I can't see through it near as much. If I lay it down on here, I don't see the difference as I did with the pink on top of where the dark mat is and where the light fabric is. So keep that in mind when you're picking out felt, if you're going to be making something that you're going to be using a lot or maneuvering around a lot, you want to make sure you get the premium felt. Another thing that actually comes in handy when you're stitching your felts, if you have a bunch of different layers, maybe you're layering felt on top of something else is to actually use your walking foot. We used our walking foot earlier when we talked about faux fur and faux leather and leather, and it just helps to feed your fabric through your machine evenly. And that's because if you're using a felt like this one that isn't that thicker premium felt, if it gets stretched or pulled at all when you're stitching, you're actually going to permanently distort that fabric. So I'm just barely, barely pulling on this. Just lightly pulling. You can see I've already permanently rippled that edge. There's no real way, even when you press it, it's not ever going to lay back exactly how it was before. Even if I get it to lay flat, you can see I've made it larger, there's going to be pucker somewhere. So I want to keep, especially with this kind of felt, it doesn't matter what I'm stitching it to. I need to keep it going through the machine evenly and a walking foot can help with that. All right, the next fabric is a silk or a satin or some sort of slippery fabric like this used for, you know, evening wear nice fancy dresses, fancy shirts, things like that. So when working with something like this if you're having, you know, you have a pattern piece and you're going to work on cutting it out, there's a few things that you want to do. First is to always start with a flat pattern piece. So I'm actually gonna press my pattern piece. I'm turning my iron on real quick and I'm going to take it over to my pressing mat. And I'm actually just going to run the iron over it really quickly. Again, cool iron, all I'm doing is flattening out any wrinkles that may have been in that pattern piece. Now I have a much flatter pattern piece is going to sit better on top of my actual piece of fabric making it much easier to cut out. The other thing is when you're cutting out your pattern pieces, let me put a couple pins in to hold it. So it doesn't shift on me too much. Again, using those silk pins that I've talked about so many times, again, they just are much sharper, much finer. They go into the fabric much easier. And if you were using a really thick pin in this fabric you run the risk of actually getting a run in this fabric that may be hard to try and work around or get out. Okay. I have my pattern piece right here. I'm probably going to be cutting out most of my garments or anything I'm working on with my scissors versus my rotary cutter. When I'm cutting out a pattern I want the scissors to always be between myself and the pattern piece or right next to the pattern piece. I never want my pattern piece to be between me and my scissors. This is because if I'm coming along cutting this side you can see that my fabric is barely lifted up just only as much as the width of the blade of the scissors and it's very easy to cut accurately right along that line. If I come down here, again very easy to accurately cut right along that line, the fabric's not lifting up very much. I'm able to stay right along the edge of my pattern piece. If I come out here and I'm trying to cut this far away from me, not only is the fabric going to be lifted up more, but unless I physically move my body way over to see down on top of the pattern piece, I might end up cutting further away from the actual pattern piece or closer to it than I mean because I'm trying to move around the pattern piece. So I want to make sure that again my scissors are between me and the pattern piece or right next to it. Now, if you're working on a space or in a space that it doesn't work for you to walk around your cutting table to make these adjustments, you may want to think about getting something like this rotary mat here, give myself enough space to show you that this mat actually spins. So it's on a base. There's a circle in the middle and I can simply spin this mat around. And now my pattern piece is lined up, I can cut right along this. So again, this is just a mat. It has a base with a circle in the middle. There's a circle on the bottom of this mat that fits right in the middle there. And then I can simply spin it wherever I need my pattern piece to be lined up so I can cut it. With this kind of fabric, it doesn't matter how many pins you put in. You don't want to be halfway through cutting your piece and try and be lifting it up to move it around. It's hard to get them laid back out flat and make sure nothing moves. So if you can't walk around your space, get a mat or something that spins. Now, my last little tip for working with this fabric is to actually use some kind of adhesive. And honestly, this could work with tons of different fabrics. I use this when I'm working with cotton, with felt, not just with tricky or difficult fabrics. I actually use adhesive almost as much or more often than I use pins. What this is is you can find it in most paper crafting sections of a craft store. And this is what's called a repositionable adhesive. So it opens like this, and it's just a little runner and it's the adhesive on this little strip and you just run it along and it comes out. Generally, these are meant for if you're making a scrapbook that you might be changing out or putting different pictures in, you use this product, put it on the back of your picture and you can then move your picture around to different pages. But it works really well for pattern pieces, too. All I do to use this is put, you can hear it coming out. Just a few little dots of that adhesive in the corners of my pattern piece. You can take it over, lay it down, smooth it out. And now I have my pattern piece secured and I'm ready to cut it out. Again, it's that repositionable adhesive. So when I'm done, I simply pick it up and it comes right off the fabric. Nothing is left on the fabric. The adhesive is on the pattern piece. Now, if you reuse your pattern pieces, you will want to remove that adhesive from the back of your pattern. I don't know if you can see where the adhesive is but I have a little bit of it here in the corner. It's just shiny little dots. This is actually a removable adhesive as well. You simply wipe it off like that in all the corners, just wiping it away. It feels almost like I'm brushing away little bits of sand, but they just roll up. They go away, and just like that you can use your pattern piece again. So you can see, I don't have, there's no adhesive left on this pattern piece. It's not sticking to anything. So just like that, you can roll some adhesive on put it down, make your cuts and take it right back off. Now, if you're not sure where to, to find this kind of repositionable adhesive again, you can find it at most scrapbooks sections of your craft store. This is a 3L product. And if you're just in a hurry and you want to run in and grab, you know, your repositionable adhesive 'cause you want to go home and sew, the good thing about their products is they color code everything. So just run in, grab a green one and you know you're gonna get the right one. Again, that's repositionable, you can just take it right off. So those are all sorts of just fun little tips that you can use when working with all sorts of different fabric to easily cut out pattern pieces, easily finish edges, and just overall make working with these fabrics a little bit easier.