Fabrics: Charmeuse

Charmeuse is a light weight, satin woven fabric, with a satin finish on the front and a dull finish on the back. It is typically made of silk, but can be made with synthetic fibers like polyester. Silk-Charmeuse is expensive, very delicate, soft and a better insulator. Where as Polyester-Charmeuse, is cheaper, machine washable and doesn't breathe well. So I think the choice of which you would choose to make clothing is already made for you.

Uses for women's wear would be lingerie, evening gowns, blouses etc., and men's wear would be pieces more like jackets and slacks, handkerchiefs, ties and boxer shorts.  Charmeuse does not work well for tailored sewing as it does not hold its shape well, but it is great for flowing dresses.  However, the wedding dress I recently made with this fabric worked well as an over-lay, which I then tailored.

This fabric is very challenging and is not recommended for beginners, because it is extremely slippery and tends to move around a lot through the presser foot of a sewing machine.  At the seams, Charmeuse puckers and pulls but I found finer thread minimizes this.  Some other challenges I went through while working with the sheer Charmeuse fabric were the pins would leave holes and marks where the fabric was pinned. Recently, I found out that a sizing product can be sprayed on before cutting and can be washed when the garment is complete.  At the end of the day, my client was very pleased with the finished dress, and that makes all the little frustrations of working with this fabric worth it.

A few years ago I made my sister's wedding dress with Charmeuse and it was very easy to work with, as it was much thicker then the sheer of its kind.  I had no problems with it then, but it was also a completely different structure and draped very nicely, my sister was incredibly happy with the outcome and so was I. Overall I would say the look and feel of this fabric is amazing!


My Sisters A-Line, Empire Waist Wedding Gown

photograph taken by Lee Sperduti

My Clients 2 in 1 Wedding Dress 

Fabrics: Velvet

Traditionally, velvet is associated with nobility. King Richard II of England directed in his will that his body should be clothed in velveto in 1399.

The earliest sources of European artistic velvet's were Lucca, Genoa, Florence and Venice, which continued to send out rich velvet textures. Later, the art was taken up by Flemish weavers, and in the sixteenth century, Bruges attained a reputation for velvet's that were not inferior to those of the great Italian cities.

Velvet is woven on a special loom that weaves two thicknesses of velvet at the same time. The two pieces are then cut apart to create the pile effect, and the two lengths of fabric are wound on separate take-up rolls. Velvet was expensive to make before industrial power looms became available. Velvet is difficult to clean because of its pile, but modern dry cleaning methods make cleaning more achievable. Velvet pile is created by warp or vertical yarns and velveteen pile is created by weft or fill yarns.

I have yet to use velvet but, to me it is an amazing fabric, as it can be made with many types of fibers, most commonly silk which gives it a very lustrous finish. Cotton, a more breathable fiber, can also be used but results with a less lustrous sheen to the fabric.  I think I would use Chiffon when sewing a dress because it seems very light weight and can be woven with a silk or rayon chiffon base, making it very soft and flowing. Velvet would be an amazing fabric to work with for costumes for plays, because it seems to make structurally wonderful pieces. Overall this is a beautiful fabric.

Types of Velvet:

Chiffon
Cisele
Crushed*
Devore/Burnout*
Embossed*
Hammered*
Lyons
Mirror
Nacre
Panne
Pile-on-pile
Plain*
Utrecht
Velveteen(imitation)*
Wedding Ring

*Types of Velvet for different wear

Fabrics: Rayon

Rayon was the first manufactured fiber developed, it's made from wood or cotton pulp and was first known as artificial silk. The Swiss chemist, Georges Audemars invented the first crude artificial silk around 1855, by dipping a needle into liquid mulberry bark pulp and gummy rubber to make threads. The method was too slow to be practical.

In 1884, a French chemist, Hilaire de Charbonnet, Comte de Chardonnay, patented an artificial silk that was a cellulose-based fabric known as Chardonnay silk. Pretty but very flammable, it was removed from the market.

In 1894, British inventors, Charles Cross, Edward Bevan, and Clayton Beadle, patented a safe a practical method of making artificial silk that came to be known as viscose rayon. Avtex Fibers Inc. first commercially produced artificial silk or rayon in 1910 in the United States. The term "rayon" was first used in 1924.

Rayon is a beautiful draping fabric used to create dresses, skirts, blouses and some gorgeous drapes.  The fabric hangs well on the body and  feels wonderful too.  Sewing together a bodice can some times be tricky but using interfacing gives it enough structure without ruining the lovely drape rayon has.

For more helpful tips visit ' Prudent Baby ' she has some great advise on sewing with rayon.

Fabrics: Silk

When silk was first discovered, it was reserved exclusively for the use of the ruler. It was permitted only to the emperor, his close relations and the very highest of his dignitaries. Within the palace, the emperor is believed to have worn a robe of white silk; outside, he, his principal wife, and the heir to the throne wore yellow, the color of the earth.

Gradually the various classes of society began wearing tunics of silk, and silk became more of a general use. As well as being used for clothing and decoration, silk was quite quickly put to industrial use by the Chinese. This was something which happened in the West only in modern times. Silk rapidly became one of the principal elements of the Chinese economy. Silk was used for musical instruments, fishing-lines, bowstrings, bonds of all kinds, and even rag paper, the word's first luxury paper. Eventually even the common people were able to wear garments of silk.

During the Han Dynasty, silk ceased to be a mere industrial material and became an absolute value in itself. Farmers paid their taxes in grain and silk. Silk began to be used for paying civil servants and rewarding subjects for outstanding services. Values were calculated in lengths of silk as they had been calculated in pounds of gold. Before long it was to become a currency used in trade with foreign countries. It is possible that this added importance was the result of a major increase in production. It found its way so thoroughly into the Chinese language that 230 of the 5,000 most common characters of the mandarin "alphabet" have silk as their "key".

Types of silk:

Chiffon - Works really well for wedding dresses.

China Silk

Crepe de Chine

Charmeuse - Works really well for wedding dresses.

Jacquard Douppioni

Noil

Raw Silk

Tussah

Shantung

http://www.magicalsilk.com/silktypes.html

Silk is one of my favourite types of fabric to work with because it doesn't have to much stretch, it is easy to cut and sew. Anything I have made with silk has always turned out beautifully. For example, my sisters wedding dress, which you can take a look at in the "Portfolio Pieces" post.