Lya This is another Kin Kin’s design. I can’t believe we’ve gone that far from here to here in just couple of months.
This time, I helped her to sew the basic dress, and she did the art work of decorating it.
When we got a perfect pattern, we got a good chance to have a gorgeous dress.
With this design, we use the same pattern with this spring floral dress that we made couple of weeks ago. We didn’t have a single problem making that dress, because it was an easy non-slip cotton. But this time, we got a lot of issues working with this fancy fabric. No matter what tricks I tried, the fabric slid and the pattern on the fabric is not exactly the same with the paper pattern. We could have chosen an easier fabric like cotton, but Kin Kin – our 7yo designer wouldn’t be happy with that. It must be that elegant, delicate bridal satin for her design. So we tried a lot of different ways to work with this garment.
Tips for slippery fabric:
- The table must be covered with non-slip fabric cloth: I got a lot of issue before while tracing and cutting fabric on a table that doesn’t have table cloth. The non-slip fabric cloth will increase the friction that helps to hold the fabric in place. You may increase this friction by laying out the slippery fabric on the tissue paper.
- Spray the fabric with starch water: Wet fabric sticks! That’s what we observed when seeing Kin Kin jumped out of the lake with her clothes on – her clothes sticked to her body! Light bulb💡We tried this trick when making this silk mermaid gown and it worked perfectly.
- Cut symmetrical pieces in one layer: Don’t ever think of cutting on fold with this type of fabric. It will slide and you will end up with 2 completely different parts 😅. So what we should do is to mirror the paper pattern at the fold. I usually use carbon paper to do that.
- No fabric drapes over the edge of the table: Make sure that all of the remaining fabric is on the table. If it drapes over the edge of the table, the gravity will pull the fabric down. For small garment like this 12″ doll dress, I cut out a small amount of fabric to work on.
- Pin the fabric to the table cloth: This is the game changer. Use a lot of pins to pin around the fabric. Pin close to the pattern to make sure that the piece of fabric that we gonna trace pattern will not move. With this delicate fabric, I always use fine, sharp silk pins.
- Use fabric marker instead of chalk: When I use the traditional chalk, I have to press it hard to get a clear mark. Pressing hard on the fabric like that will surely move the fabric. It’s so frustrating. Then I changed into water soluble marker and it works great. It leaves a mark after just very gentle touch. The only problem with the marker is that the ink’s gone so fast 😅
That’s it! When we got the perfect pattern on the gorgeous fabric, things became much easier. Just pin along and follow the seam lines. Make sure to pin the top, bottom and all the notches. You may need to use more pins when dealing with slippery fabric.
That’s some of the main things we’ve faced while sewing this dress. I hope you may find it helpful while sewing along with us! If you have any other problems, or if you have better ways to tackle the issues that we’ve mentioned, please share in a comment below. We’d love to here from you ❤️
