Tips for Working with and Sewing Sequin Fabric

Sequin fabric can be really fun to work with whether you're making a really fun costume or you're trying to make a really fancy dress or really dress up maybe a jacket or an area of clothing. But it can be kind of tricky to work with. There are two different types of sequin fabric. Sometimes if you go to a store they're referred to as either type A or B, maybe type one and two and this is in reference to how the sequins are adhered or attached to your fabric. So one way the sequins are attached to the fabric is with glue. This is a very common way to find sequin fabric in the costume section of a fabric store. This is generally the more inexpensive version of sequin fabric, and you can see this is our fabric. It's usually a fairly stretchy fabric, sort of a mesh on the back. And it has these little pieces pieces of plastic sequins that are glued in place. Here's another example of some fun sequin fabric that's in all sorts of iridescent colors. And again, this is sort of just a mesh background not as stretchy as our other one but still has some give to it. And then these little sequins are just glued in place. Again, these are plastic. Other sequence, so type two or B, if that's how you refer to them, are sequins that are sewn in place. So if you can look at these, you can see that they are not completely adhered down to the surface of the fabric with glue, but rather they have a little hole in them somewhere, and they are stitched onto the fabric. This is some sequin fabric here where you can see that there are some spaces in between the actual sequins. So I can still see that it's a white mesh behind the sequent. Another way that sequins can be sewn onto the fabric, is completely covering the entire backing fabric. So this type of sequin looks almost more like fish scales because the sequins again they're still stitched in place there's a little hole of the top of the sequin and they're stitched in place but the way they're stitched on there they overlap each other and you can't see the whole of the sequin and there's even more sequins to the fabric as you go. You can also find sequin fabric again, it's still stitched onto the fabric but it's done in some sort of decorative pattern. So this one, it has some nice little angles or just sections of sequins stitched onto the fabric. And you can see some of that mesh background. Now, when you are sewing with sequin fabric, the type of fabric that you're using is going to depend on how you sew it in place. So if you are using, we're gonna call this type one, this is our glued on sequin fabric. You don't have to do a whole lot special to this. You can actually just stitch normally and stitch through the sequins. You definitely wanna use a heavy duty or denim needle. So if you have a universal pack you wanna pick, if it has maybe light, medium weight and heavyweight you definitely wanna use your heavyweight needle or you can just get a denim or jeans needle, and use that. When you're stitching with sequin fabric they are plastic they are fairly easy to stitch through, but sometimes if your needle hits it just right, you definitely wanna make sure you have that thicker needle in there to be able to go through the sequins. If you are making this for a costume or just some sort of garment that you're going to be wearing, you either want to line it, or you want to make sure that you remove the sequins from the seam allowances because these sequins can be fairly rough against the skin. So if you can cut your pattern to where the the seam allowance or any edge is going to be folded under and against your skin is along the edge of the fabric, that doesn't have any sequins in it, that would be awesome. But if you have to remove some of the sequins, an easy way to do this and a fun little tip is to actually use an iron. Now, if you are worried about anything getting on your iron, if you have a small iron or maybe you have a couple irons in your sewing room maybe one that you don't necessarily use all the time you can use that as well. But all you're going to do is take your iron, You're gonna take the very tip of your iron, cause it's nice and warm and you're going to put it on the edge of the sequin. And you're essentially going to warm that glue up. And once you warm it up, then the sequin. If I grab it right here, just static sticks to your iron. So there's no glue or anything on your iron. See, it's, it's static sticking to my finger. And all I'm doing is using the iron to warm the glue that's holding that sequin in place, so I'm barely touching it. And then as soon as I see it move, I can either use my finger or just take it off using the tip of the iron and then it static sticks in place. And if you're worried about touching your iron like I was just doing with my fingernail to get it off you can just turn your iron off and let it cool down. But it's just the very tip I have this set fairly cool. It's just enough to warm up the glue up and get those sequins off. You only wanna do this if you need to remove those sequins from the area of your fabric, that's going to be turned under, because it's going to be against your skin and you don't want that roughness. Because we are melting the glue, we're taking these sequins off. There really, isn't a way to attach to the sequence back in place. You could try gluing them back on but that will be pretty tedious. So you only wanna remove that if it's from an area that's going to be on the wrong side of the garment and you're not going to see. If you don't want to remove the sequins using your iron or anything like that, you can use something like a hem tape, maybe to cover up or just cut a piece of softer fabric and saw that to the inside of your garment and cover up those sequins, so they're not laying directly against your skin. When you're working with type two sequin fabric, you absolutely need to remove these from your seam line when you're stitching. Whether you're using a denim needle, a jeans needle, the heaviest duty needle you can find. It doesn't matter, you definitely wanna remove these. And there's a couple different ways you can do this. So you really only want to be removing what you have to remove, because this is, you know if you're making a really nice, elegant, long dress those are gonna be some long seams in there and you're going to have a lot to remove from the seam line. So only removing where you need to is, makes it easier. So you wanna take and turn your fabric, so that the wrong side is facing you. And then you're going to mark your seams. So maybe if my seam needed to be, say a half inch in from the edge, I would just take my ruler, lay it in place. And then Mark my half inch seam allowance or my five eighths inch seam allowance whatever it is I'm using. And I can do that a couple different ways. I can either use a marking pen or pencil and draw that line on there, but that is going to be where I'm stitching on. So I wanna make sure I'm either using something that's light enough that it doesn't show through and is seen on the right side or that is something that is removable. Or if you're worried about seeing your marks through your fabric you can Mark your seam allowance with some pins. So I have my ruler, marking where my seam allowance is, and I'm just putting some pins in place, right along the edge of my ruler. Since the fabric lifts slightly, while I'm placing my pins, I wanna make sure I readjust or move the fabric as I need to, when I'm marking that same line and just placement pins, right along that seam line. Then I need to remove those sequins from the area that is going to be in the seam lane. And there are a couple of different ways you can do this and it may depend on the way that the sequins are attached to the fabric. So if you can see on here, it's kind of hard to see the stitching lines just because they, when they are producing a sequin fabric obviously they wanna use a thread that blends in as much as possible with the background mesh fabric. And so this is white mesh fabric and you can see these little tiny white stitching lines and that's what's holding the sequins in place. So you can either remove the sequins by coming in with a pair of scissors and clipping those little threads. I'll probably use a much smaller pair of scissors and just getting under just the thread and clipping the threads. You could also do this with a seam ripper, sometimes can be easier to get under the thread, but you want to make sure that you're not getting underneath that mesh fabric. And you just go and you clip all of these threads, that are within the seam allowance and then remove the sequins. Now, if you are careful when you're doing this and you're using a small enough piece you can just remove those threads right up to the seam allowance, take those sequins off. And then, saw your seam right away if you know that you're going to be say removing the sequins, maybe pinning and then setting aside and not getting to it right away. You may wanna take a hand sewing needle and thread and run some basting stitches, right along that seam line. That way it can hold any of those sequins in place along where you're cutting the thread. So nothing falls out, when you're stitching. Another way that you can remove those sequins, so you can either clip those threads and pull them off. Or if you don't want to clip any threads because you're afraid that those, the rest of the sequins are going to come off, you can take a pair of scissors, take the sequin that you want remove and you're going to cut the sequin. I'm gonna try. You can, if you can't find that it can't hold it easily enough you can hold it using a pair of tweezers if you want. But what I wanna do is clip that sequin down to, where the little opening is, where that thread came through. I think so, and then I can remove it. So if I hold the sequin up, I just made a tiny tiny little cut in it right down to the hole and then just pulled it off the top of the thread. So now all that thread is still intact. None of the sequins also on that same thread are going to come out at all and I've easily removed that sequin. If you're going to do this technique and also when it comes to just cutting out your pattern pieces, you wanna have a dedicated pair of scissors. So there are some other fabrics out there as well that dole scissors fairly quickly and sequin fabric is definitely one of those. Especially if you're using this thicker, heavier plastic type B or type two kind of sequin, you definitely wanna have dedicated scissors. So rotary cutters have kind of out it would be very hard to even try and cut with a rotary cutter on sequin fabric. So I don't recommend using that. These are my fabric scissors that I use all the time for all of my other projects. So these are actually my sequin scissors. They're just an older pair of fabric scissors. They're not quite as sharp as the ones that I like to use all the time but they're still sharp enough that they go through the fabric. And I'm not worried about doling these necessarily with my sequin fabric. So these are my sequin scissors. I also have a couple pairs of snips and they happen to be the exact same brand. They look exactly the same. So these are my sequin snips or my snips that I use on paper or just anything non fabric or thread related. And I've just marked it with a little piece of tape here. So I can differentiate these from my other scissors and snips that I have. So again, when you're using, or cutting out your sequin pattern, pieces, even if you're using this other glue in type of sequin fabric, still recommend having your dedicated pair of sequin scissors to cut out all your pattern pieces definitely use your denim and jeans needle. And in the case of these, saw in a sequin or sequins that are going to be touching your body in any way, you definitely wanna remove those sequins from the seam allowance. Then once you've done all of that prep work, then sewing with sequin fabric is fairly simple and straightforward, you can treat it like any other fabric and create some really fun costumes or some really fancy garments.