silk

Visit to Beckford Silk, Gloucestershire

Posted on September 23, 2017September 23, 2017 by Janet

I managed to wangle a day off work yesterday, so to get over missing out on the Sewing Bee Live event this weekend, I took a trip to a local fabric producer up the road near Tewkesbury. I thought I’d share a few pictures and some info in case you’re curious.

Beckford Silk is a family-run silk printing and dyeing business that’s been going for around 40 years. From their workshop in Gloucestershire, they use screen and digital printing to create some beautiful designs on around a dozen different silk fabrics. Lots of their fabric is turned into scarves for museum and heritage clients (think National Trust gift shops), but they also sell plenty of solid-coloured and printed silks by the metre for dressmaking.

If you visit, as well as the shop and a cafe (with sublime fresh scones!), there’s also a small visitors’ centre room. Here you can watch a film about the printing process and the history of the business. There are large swatches of the different fabrics to examine and a fantastic display of old printing blocks on one wall.

A scarf-sized swatch of each fabric is available to handle so you can examine the different weight, drape and feel of each one.

There’s a range of different printed silks available to buy in the shop – my favourites included this, and this. Plus there’s a even larger range of solid colours. If it were payday, I think I’d have succumbed to this oxblood silk velvet, and a metre or so of this deep red heavy crepe de chine – perfect for a slinky-but-office-appropriate woven t-shirt.

After my first experience of working with slippery silk fabrics earlier this year, I’m now definitely inspired to try something else in silk soon. The new Liesl + Co Chai Tee pattern stood out as a potential silk make for me this week. Or a dressing gown, perhaps?

Have you sewn with silk, and which substrate would you recommend as the easiest to begin with?

If you’ve got a bit longer to spend in the area, there are two awesome things to do nearby:

On a clear day, take a walk up Bredon Hill for fantastic views of the Cotswold ridge, May Hill, the Malvern Hills and beyond to the Brecon Beacons.
On a cold, wet day, head over to Tewkesbury High Street and seek out Cafe au Chocolat. The speciality hot chocolate is to die for…

J x

#sewtallandcreative2017 – my finished dress…

Posted on May 20, 2017May 21, 2017 by Janet

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It’s finished! Two months after a beautiful box of fabrics arrived in the post from MARGE, I’ve sewn a silk and crepe dress. A big thank you to Sallee at TallGuides for inviting me to get involved in this, it’s been a lot of fun and I’ve learnt a whole sackful of new skills.

I, and the other fabulously tall sewists who took part, have enjoyed mixing and matching the different fabrics and puzzling over how best to incorporate two of them into a new dress for summer – or winter in Allison’s case perhaps, as she’s in Oz! Tiffany, Allison and Beth have produced fabulous dresses, and I confess to being just a bit in awe of each of them.

Details

I used view B from B6169, part of Liesl Gibson’s line for Butterick. I love pretty much everything Liesl does, and although this dress didn’t scream my name when it first came out, the pattern has everything I like in a relaxed summer dress.

The belt gives it shape – although you could leave this off for an easier life and use a RTW belt instead; it takes full advantage of any drape; and the gathered shape with no closures makes it fairly simple to construct. Princess seams make fitting easier (other than a swayback adjustment…) and the instructions are clear and straightforward for a Big 4 pattern. Plus it also includes a great-looking moto jacket that’s going on my list for the autumn.

I picked the rough side of the coral crepe and the pale pink spotted silk from the four fabrics we were all given. The colours are in my comfort zone, and I was fairly confident they’d combine well. Both were a little trickier to work with than I’d anticipated – the crepe creases like mad and doesn’t drape quite as much as I would like, and the spots on the silk drove me to distraction.

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I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out, and especially because I was trying so many of the techniques for the first time. Cutting out was awkward – I sandwiched everything between two layers of tissue and cut with shears, which worked pretty well.

To sew up, I used the walking foot throughout. The crepe went through the machine without any problems, and I used my overlocker (serger) to finish the seams. The silk was tougher to sew – I switched to fine cotton thread and went down to a size 60 needle. Even so, I still needed tissue under the fabric to stop it being dragged into the feed dogs, and each time I hit one of the spots my seam line wobbled a bit. I used French seams on the yokes to seam and finish in one go. Both fabrics were tricky to press though: the silk wouldn’t press cleanly over the spots and the crepe didn’t stay pressed for long. But I got there in the end.

Overall, I love the relaxed feel of this dress and I think it works dressed up or down. I opted for down for these pictures, but I reckon a pair of heels and some bling would glam it up enough for a summer wedding or you could toughen it up with boots and that moto jacket.

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Catch up on the other posts in this series:

Sewing with slippery fabrics – B6169

Posted on May 14, 2017May 20, 2017 by Janet

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As the final reveal for the #sewtallandcreative2017 design challenge approaches, I and the other three participants (Allison, Beth and Tiffany) have been working hard to complete our dresses. I am dying to see what they’ve made, and I’m not sure I can hold out until the end date of 20 May!

Construct_2b — No fancy pattern weights here!

In my sewing room, I’ve been getting to grips – quite literally – with silk and slippery crepe we received from MARGE/Tall Guides.

I started by using a polyester crepe de chine to sew up a toile. This dress is fairly forgiving on fit, but I still made some alterations:

I added 1″ to the length above the waist
And another 1/2″ to the length between waist and hip
I took in the vertical back seams a little around the waist area
I nipped 3cm of length out of the centre back seam to compensate for my swayback
I let out the side seams around 1/8″ from the hipline downwards

The swayback alteration isn’t the easiest thing to do in a dress with no centre back or waist seams, so thank you to Pattern Scissors Cloth for this excellent tutorial. Making the adjustment itself isn’t too bad, but getting the grainline and centre back straight again afterwards was messing with my head.

Cutting out was a challenge, even with the crepe. I don’t own a rotary cutter and mat, so I heeded the advice in this post from Grainline Studios and sandwiched the fabrics between two layers of tissue paper before cutting out. Genius – no slipping, no shifting and I saved about £100. No long-term damage to my shears, although I should probably sharpen them again soon.

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To sew up the crepe, I used a size 70 needle, and sew-all thread. I installed my walking foot and shortened my stitch length to 2.2. I finished the all-crepe seams on my overlocker.

For the silk, hmmm. The polka dots create a raised bump every inch or so, which causes the fabric to skip about under the needle, and pressing across them is a nightmare. A size 60 universal needle, some fine cotton thread and the walking foot were all deployed on a stitch length of 2. But for this fabric I also layered the fabric over tissue paper and stitched through that as well, tearing it away afterwards. Not bad, but there are still some wibbles in some of my seams…

I used a French seam finish where I could for this fabric as it’s sheer, but on the belt (which is stitched and then turned inside out) I had to try something else. I used the selvedge as much as I could so the edges wouldn’t need finishing, and on the rest I tried out a double zigzag seam, as recommended by Threads magazine.

I’ve just got the neckline and the hem left to do now, so hopefully I’ll be sharing pics of the finished article with you next weekend!

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#sewtallandcreative2017: design

Posted on April 29, 2017May 20, 2017 by Janet

For the next part of the MARGE/Tall Guides sewing challenge, each of us now has to decide what we’re going to make, and which fabrics we’re going to use.

Getting down to practicalities, I started by measuring the four fabrics. With between 2m and 3m of each, this ruled out some of the floaty maxi-dress options that had been running through my mind. Sigh.

Incorporating two different fabrics, getting a good fit, and working with drapey fabric was going to be enough of a challenge for me so I wanted a pattern with a simple silhouette to exploit the drape, without fiddly closures or lots of darts.

I also needed a pattern that could be easily lengthened above and below the waist without disrupting its style lines. So I’ve settled on View B from B6169, using the coral crepe and the spotted pale pink silk fabrics.

It’s a pull-on sleeveless dress with a tie belt and a high-low hem by Liesl Gibson for Butterick. The princess seams should make fitting easier and I can alter the skirt shape and hem if I change my mind. I can’t find many in-the-wild examples of this dress (overshadowed by the jacket, I suspect), so I’m intrigued to see how it’ll turn out. The examples I have found so far are:

Liesl Gibson’s own version in specially dyed silk

Helena’s dress with pom pom trim

Elise’s denim version

I’m planning to cut the main body of the dress in the coral crepe, using the spotted silk for the yoke pieces and the tie belt. I’d love to layer the two fabrics over each other, but there isn’t quite enough of either to make this work.

I’ll use french seams on the yoke pieces to give a neat finish and perhaps play around with different options for the neckline binding. But first, I’m going to make a toile to test the fit in some polyester crepe de chine. I’ll let you know how it goes.

You can see the dresses Allison, Beth and Tiffany are planning to make over on their blogs. I have a feeling they’re going to produce some real showstoppers…

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#sewtallandcreative 2017: inspiration

Posted on March 30, 2017May 20, 2017 by Janet

So a couple of weeks ago, a box of fabric arrived in the post…

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These are the four fabrics for the MARGE/Tall Guides design challenge – all remnants from the MARGE clothing range. Left to right, they are:

A polyester stretch lace with a dark green leafy print, as used in the JORGINE wrap dress
A dark purple, very sheer silk chiffon, which was used for the *gorgeous* INGA dress
An embroidered, sheer-ish pale pink and white silk, as used in the ADA top
A coral, acetate/viscose mix crepe, originally used for the LIV slip dress.

There’s between 2 and 3m of each one, and MARGE also included plenty of delicious Bemberg rayon lining in ivory and black.

The guidelines for the challenge are:

Each of the four tall ladies (the other three are Allison, Beth and Tiffany) must make a summer dress
We have to use at least two of the four fashion fabrics.

Clearly time for a rummage through my pattern library and Pinterest for some inspiration!

So many possibilities, and I expect I’ll probably change my mind about eleventy billion times between now and the next stage. I think the trickiest part for me is the idea of combining two fabrics. I don’t often colour-block or use multiple fabrics in the same make, so it’ll be good to expand my horizons.

So (or should that be ‘sew’?), what would you make? Which two fabrics do you think would combine most successfully?

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