How To Sew With Silk And Silklike Fabrics

Hi, and welcome to Professor Pin Cushion. In this video, we're going to be talking about silk and silk-like fabrics. These fabrics are very beautiful, but they can be little difficult to work with. So, we're going to go over some tips and tricks, hopefully to make them less difficult for you. The nice thing about these fabrics is that they come in variety of textures and weights. You can be dealing with something sheer and lightweight or something little bit heavier. The first thing you need to pay attention to is how to care for these fabrics. You'll be surprised as some silks are washable and some fabric that feel and look like silk are actually polyester and are also washable. Then there are going to be some fabrics that are dry clean only. So, you're definitely going to want to consult the fabric bolt information tag that you can find at the end of fabric bolt and read exactly what your fabric is and how to care for it. You can reference our tutorial fabric bolt information tag on our website to get more information. So, now we're going to get started on those tips and tricks and hopefully help you out in working with the silk and silkike fabrics. The first thing we need to do is make sure we're working with the right equipment. Now, normally when I'm using straight pens, just use my regular ballpoint pens. Unfortunately, it's not fine enough and sharp enough. So, you can either use silk pens or like using these extra fine pleading pens. If you look closely under microscope at the tip of ballpoint pen, it's actually going to have blunt tip. Why? This has long taper and sharp point at the end. So, that's why these are handy because not only do they make it easier for you to go through your delicate fabric, but they're less likely to snag that fabric. When it comes to machine needles, you're going to want to use something that's sharp and lightweight. So, have the sharp needles. And for size, you're probably going to want to use 70 or an 80, depending on the weight. If you're doing sheer, it's probably going to be more of 70. And if it's sort of midweight fabric, you can go ahead and do the 80. When it comes to thread, you have couple of different options. have sample here of 100% silk thread. It's really nice quality. It's really strong and it has nice soft texture and also has little bit of sheen to it. So, it's really nice thread. Sometimes though, if you're doing really lightweight fabric, the thread can actually cut through your fabric. So, you need to be careful. And it's also not necessity. You could get away using an all-purpose thread or 100% cotton thread. In fact, some silk manufacturers actually recommend using 100% cotton thread when using their fabric. So, now we're going to get to cutting out our fabric. One of the most difficult parts in working with these fabrics is just cutting them out. They're all slipping and sliding everywhere, and it's hard to get the pattern on straight and cut it out and all that stuff. So, the trick is you lay down piece of tissue paper on your table, put the fabric on top of that, and then pin all around the perimeter that you're working on with the tissue paper. So, the tissue paper helps stabilize the fabric and helps the fabric stay in one spot so it's not shifting around everywhere. So, after finish pinning it, then going to grab my pattern piece, lay it on top of that, and then I'm going to pin through all three layers. So, I'm going to pin through the pattern piece, the fabric, and the tissue paper. So, the tissue paper gives us something to grab onto underneath, and it should cooperate lot easier. So, you're going to do this for all of your pattern pieces that you have. Now, cutting it out, you can just cut it out as you normally would with regular scissors. If you tend to have fabric that frays lot, you can use pinking shears to cut out your your pattern pieces or your fabric pieces. Now, if you look at the blades of the pinking shears, you'll notice it has zigzag blade. This zigzag design actually helps prevent the fabric from fraying. It's because of the way it is cut in the grain line of the fabric. It won't stop it completely, but it'll definitely cut down it lot. So, you just cut around your pattern piece as you normally would. You just use these scissors. When it comes to interfacing, if you're using really lightweight fabric, your best bet is going to be sheer weight interfacing. Now, you're going to have to consult your fabric bolt information tag to see what heat settings you can use on your iron. If you can't use really hot iron, then you're not going to be able to use fusible interfacing. You'll have to use the sewing interfacing. If you have really lightweight fabric such as silk chiffon, you can actually use fabric called oranza instead of using the interfacing. So, that way you're keeping everything extremely lightweight. Organza is fabric that is sheer just like have right here. And it has little bit of body to it. It's little stiff, so you can treat it just as regular sew in interfacing. If put it under this, you're not going to be able to see it very well because it is sheer, but it gives my fabric little bit more body and it stabilized that fabric for if you're needing to use it for collar or some such thing. If you're sewing your fabric and you tend to find that your fabric as you start gets sucked into this hole right here, there's few things you can do to prevent this, the first thing you can do is put some tape over this hole in your needle plate here. So, have little bit of clear tape. And just be sure that your foot is near nowhere near the petal because we don't want our finger to get stabbed by the needle as we're doing this. That would be bad. Just like that. So now when the needle goes through, it'll go through the tape, but the other area will be covered by the tape. So the fabric should not be able to go through. The other trick, let me bring my fabric in here. and need my foot, is not to start directly at the end of your piece. So if this is my fabric piece I'm sewing, I'm not starting here at the edge. Instead, could start little ways in. If your project is using, let's say, 5/8 inch seam allowance, you technically could go to the 5/8 inch edge. So, instead of right here on the edge, you go 5/8 of an inch in. For that, typically probably want to go more of half inch and then do my back stitch. So, do couple more stitches and then move forward. And that way you see my fabric is not getting sucked into the bottom of my machine. Another thing you can do is if you still have your tissue paper attached to your fabric pieces, just keep them on. Again, it stabilizes the fabric and it's actually really easy to rip off after you stitch it. If you don't have the tissue paper, you can go ahead and just cut slits of tissue paper and lay it over the part where you're going to be doing your seam. It actually goes over pretty smoothly. And I'll show you after I'm done with this how easy it is just to take it off. So, let's say that's our end. Cut my thread. And have it on the top. My fabric pieces are inside and my tissue paper's on the bottom. So, the tissue paper actually sandwiches the fabric. And you see it just rips off just like that. And underneath we have nice clean straight seam. And can just rip off the bottom as well. Sometimes when you're sewing silky shiny fabrics, what happens is you'll get these little puckers that appear on the side of your stitch, such as in my example right here. They're not exactly wrinkles. They just don't look very nice. On this side, actually have it so it lies little bit more flat and looks little neater. So, I'll show you how get this. So, we don't have to get something that looks like this. So, I'm going to get my sample here, and I'm going to sew it just as would sew any normal seam. The difference is I'm going to grab my fabric from behind and in the front and I'm going to make sure to hold my fabric really tight. So, it's going to be as tight as can get it. Now, I'm not forcing it. I'm not like yanking on the fabric or forcing it to go in any direction. I'm still letting the feed dog do its work of feeding the fabric through the machine. I'm just making sure that hold the fabric as tight as can. And you definitely want to be careful with your hands so they don't get caught on any part of the machine. So, let's go ahead and start this. And I'm just holding as tight as can as run it through the machine. All right, that should be good. So, there's with me holding tight. And I'll grab my sample again of me not holding it at all. And you can see this side definitely looks little neater and it looks more professional. So that's why you want to hold it tight when you're working with this kind of fabric. So we hope these tips and tricks really helped and will make working with these kind of fabrics little less intimidating.