Clothing Engineer

NY Fashion Center has a nice selection of solid color silk knits available. They charge about $28 per yard (which is 54″ wide). Shipping rates seem about average for an online fabric store.

Candlelight Valley Fabrics has 60″ 100% double faced cashmere in several colors. (My link shows it in burgundy.) The cost per yard? $175.

I guess they really aren’t kidding when they say “easy to work with,
but mistakes can be very costly”. I feel guilty enough when I spend
$175 and get 15 or 20 yards of fabric. I can’t even imagine how bad it
would feel to make a mistake when cutting out this one. Or to
accidentally spill something on the finished garment. I’m a pretty
careful person, but simply don’t trust myself enough with something
like this.

Wool is usually thought of as a dry-clean only fiber, yet is used for diaper covers.  Can’t get any less dry-clean only than that!  Even though I am far from
being a baby person, I’m curious to know what these actually look/feel
like. There is a retail store located not too far away from me that
sells these; I’ll have to check it out sometime.

You know that neat metallic crinkle fabric that has been so popular in the Burda World of Fashion magazine the past six months or so?

Candlelight Valley Fabrics
has a few colors available in 100% silk. It is $15/yard. Just do a
search for “crinkle” and it will show up. They also give very good
descriptions for how to work with it and care for it.

Another thing I like about this place?  A flat fee of $9 for shipping.

The
only thing is that the description says it is rough on skin, and should
be lined. Perhaps a very lightweight jersey knit in nude would do the
trick? Silk knit would be the ultimate in luxury, but could easily turn
this into a $75 top…

I’ve had some white crinkle batiste on hand since July.  I wanted to make this blouse with it:

Yesterday
I got around to tracing the pattern, and even got it cut out. This
morning I ironed on the interfacing, and did the front darts. Then I
did the back darts. I went to press them. That’s where the tragedy
started.

I noticed a 1″ clip right in the middle of the back of
the blouse. Not at the top, but right in the dead center of the back,
right below where my shoulder blades would go, right where the fabric
was folded. I know I didn’t accidentally snip it myself - I
used a rotary cutter to cut this out and I’m always very careful about
where I cut. I showed it to my mom. She said what probably happened is
in JoAnn Fabrics (where I got it from), they were measuring it out and
started to snip in that area, then realized they had to measure out
more and just rolled out more and made the final cut further down the
bolt. Of course, there was just enough left over for scraps but not
enough to cut another back section. Unless you are actively stretching
the fabric, such as if it were being worn, the snip is nearly invisible
(which is why I didn’t notice it while cutting). But it would be plenty
visible once the blouse was finished.

I was so angry I ripped
the back section in half, then threw the entire thing in the trash. I
pretty much threw a temper tantrum worthy of any artist, since I had
spent hours the night before tracing, carefully pressing, cutting out,
and marking the fabric. And it was all for nothing. My mom told me to
just go back to the store and pick up another yard, but with my luck,
they would not have any more of that particular crinkle batiste in
stock. She also suggested embroidering over it, but it was too low in
the back for that. Too bad I had to cut the stupid little pieces where
the fabric was fine, and the back piece where it was ruined.

I
found some plain yellow cotton batiste in my stash. It isn’t as unusual
as the white crinkle, but it is a bit heavier and less transparent. So
the tracing wasn’t done for nothing…it will just be used with a
different fabric.

One thing I’ve noticed so far with this
pattern is that the sleeve cap has almost 2″ of ease. I think this is
way too much for a thin cotton blouse sleeve! My other Burda blouses
seemed to have too much ease in this area as well. According to Fast
Fit, this is a very common problem with patterns. They’re all
too generous with sleeve cap ease. (I’d love to know their reason for
this.) I used Betzina’s tips on reducing sleeve ease, and scaled it
down to about 1/2″ ease. I hate having tiny little bits of gathers on
the sleeves of an otherwise streamline pattern. It just looks so
homemade. In a bad way. Hopefully Betzina’s book is right, and 1/2″
ease will be enough. I’d hate to ruin another perfectly good length of
fabric on stupidity.

Why is it so hard to find lightweight black cotton/lycra knit?

I
checked just about every fabric source I know of. Fabric.com, Wazoodle,
Denver Fabrics, The Rainshed, Spandex House, Vogue Fabrics, Fashion
Fabrics Club, etc. Either they have black cotton/lycra knit, but it is
mid to heavyweight. Or they have lightweight cotton/lycra knit, but it
is in just about any color other than black. I just don’t understand
it…one would think that black would be easy to find since it is such
a basic, match-everything color. But it is very difficult to come
across.

I did find that Stretch House had black cotton lycra,
along with many other colors, but their online swatch request form
would not work. When I called them, a man with a thick accent told me
I’d have to fax in my request. I don’t have a fax machine, and told
them this; they told me I’d have to go online to request the swatch. I
told them the order form did not work, they told me to fax it *bangs
head*. I decided that if it was that much of a hassle to even get a
swatch, it would be a mistake ordering from them.

I saw that Fabric.com did have a rayon/lycra knit, with 4% lycra and 50% stretch across the grain, in black.  I immediately ordered 10 yards.  At 60″ wide, this should last for quite a few pairs of Kwik Sew 2908,
the reason for my black cotton/lycra search. I will have to wait to see
until it arrives, but I don’t see why a rayon/lycra knit wouldn’t work.
I already plan on hand-washing, since I’m replacing the elastic waist
with a stretch lace trim, and washing machines are brutal to stretch
lace trim.

Silk jersey is the recommended fabric for the Vogue V2925 top, but it is difficult to find.None of my usual fabric sources seem to carry it.

After
much searching on Google and on the Pattern Review forums, I have
finally found a place that has silk jersey in a wide selection of
colors: Mood Fabrics.
It is $25/yard, but this is the lowest price I could find for this
fabric. One woman on Pattern Review ordered it and was very happy with
the quality. It might be worth taking a trip to the city one weekend to
visit the store.

UPDATE: Late yesterday morning I placed an order from Mood Fabrics for one yard of white silk jersey. 

Mood Fabrics has incredible turnaround
time!  My order was shipped within hours of placing the order, and
it arrived at my doorstep (in CT) this afternoon.

As I mentioned
above, I ordered the jersey in white. The description said winter
white. I’m not exactly sure what winter white is, but I would say the
silk is more like like cream or ivory than the average run-of-the-mill
white. I was perfectly happy with this; I did not really want a bright
white for the suit shell I plan on making with this jersey.

The
selvage edges are serged instead of finished with the usual stiff glue.
They do not roll inward or outward unlike cotton or cotton/rayon
jersey. The texture is a lot like one of my store-bought tank tops,
which is a nylon knit: thin, a bit shiny, with excellent drape. The
silk is not as buttery soft as a cotton or rayon knit, but is still
softer and thinner than nylon or matte jersey.

At $25/yard, if I
were doing a more complicated style I would first make a muslin out of
matte jersey. The drape is very similar, and the matte jersey is much
cheaper. The matte jersey is a little thicker, but both are such stable
knits that I imagine the fitting difference would be negligible.

Overall
the silk feels durable and well-made. Like matte jersey or nylon knit,
it is vulnerable to picks and snags, but at the same time feels like it
could stand up to many years of wear in the typical office environment.

I
never dry clean, so my preshrinking treatment will be hand-wash in cold
water with a bit of shampoo, and air dry on an indoor drying rack. I
don’t believe in dry cleaning silk. The Chinese have for thousands of
years cared for silk garments without dry cleaning chemicals, and even
today most Chinese women own silk garments and care for them by gently
hand-washing in cold water. I own several silk garments and have cared
for them this way without any ill effects. I’ve also had good luck
preshrinking wools this way.

I’ve been instead going through my sewing and fabric stash lately,
and picking out the interesting stuff: silks, linen, twill for shorts.
I also found a Wicking Fabrics Color Swatch Set from The Rainshed that I ordered last year.

Coolmax
Doubleplay knit can be described as a cross between a regular t-shirt
knit and mesh. It isn’t as soft as a t-shirt knit, but is easier on the
skin than a typical mesh. It is as light as a feather, with tiny
mesh-like openings and a shiny finish. Be careful when sewing seams
with this one, since it doesn’t recover well from picks. The texture
also makes it difficult to see stitching. Otherwise, it is stable and
can be sewn on the serger like any other knit.

I have a good
friend that bikes a lot during the summer, so I wanted to make him a
t-shirt that would be breathable and keep him relatively dry. I ended
up using Kwik Sew 3299
as my pattern, and the red Coolmax Doubleplay Knit in The Rainshed’s
wicking fabrics collection as my fashion fabric. It was a quick
project, taking less than two hours total to complete. He loved the shirt.  The fit matched the pattern photo shown in the PDF
- not too loose, not too tight. He said it is so lightweight that it
feels like he’s not even wearing a shirt, while at the same time
wicking away the sweat. A year later, it still looks like new. This is
good stuff!

Now that it is in the mid-90’s during the day, I
wish I had ordered some more for myself. There’s lots of nice little
knit summer tops in the latest Burda magazine, and most call for a
2-way stretch knit (like the Coolmax Doubleplay). Usually I shun
polyester, but Coolmax is one of the exceptions. 

This weekend I created a fabric inventory chart to help myself
manage my ever-growing fabric inventory. It has write-in spaces for
fabric content, yardage, price, care instructions, notes, etc with an
area large enough to attach a swatch to. It makes pattern browsing, not
to mention fabric care, a lot easier.

Fabric Inventory Chart (PDF, 90KB)