Ashley Hough

Sewing Essentials Session 4: Fabric & Interfacing Guide

Ashley Hough
Duration:   19  mins

Description

Some fabrics can be easier to work with than others – learn which is which! Ashley will break down dozens of fabrics into either easy to work with or not and explain why. You will learn what fabrics are best to learn with and how to select the right interfacing for your fabric as well.

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What I think is one of the best parts of sewing and what has always been my favorite part of sewing is actually getting to pick out the fabric. Now, there are so many different types of fabric to pick from whether it's colors, to textures, to weights of fabric. It can be a little bit overwhelming, there can be a lot of them. So, I have quite the fabric selection in front of me and I have them stacked by easy to sew great for beginners, a little bit tricky to sew for some reason and then the ones that are difficult to sew. So we're gonna go through some of those right now.

So we're gonna start with our easy to sew pile, things you want to get if you're a beginner, starting out with sewing. We have just some cotton fabrics. Now these can be some cotton, some broadcloth, linen. They are very easy to sew, very easy to cut something that I definitely learned sewing on and what I would recommend that you get when you're just starting out with sewing. You'll also find shirting fabric.

That's in a whole specific section, though it'll look like something you would normally see on like a men's shirt. It's like a cotton fabric, in it sews very, very easy. That's also one, that's a fun one to start out with, very easy to work with. Then we have fleece, flannel and felt, all very easy to sew with. The fleece and the felt they're not going to ravel, you don't have to worry about doing any sort of edge finishes.

Felt, of course you can get the fun little craft sizes that can be found in certain areas of your store or you can also buy felt. You can find it in large bolts, on rolls too so you aren't limited in size there. But again all three, very easy to work with, very easy to cut out, great fabric to start with if you're just starting out with sewing any of these choices, again, very easy to work with. Now, we have some that are a little bit trickier and I'll tell you why. We're gonna start out with what is called eyelet fabric.

An eyelet fabric is anything that has sort of these little holes in 'em. You can see, you can see right through them. These are just little holes, maybe you have a flower designs. Again if I put my hand under here you can see how you can see through those eyelets. Or you might even get a fabric that you didn't even know it was an eyelet because it was all folded up but in the of these little flowers, we have little holes.

Now this can be tricky because when you're planning out a project, maybe with your pattern pieces or whatever it is, you're sewing you might need to take those holes into account or even do twice as much sewing. If you're making a garment you're going to need to put something underneath this so you don't see through it. So it can just be a little bit tricky in that you have to account for these holes in certain areas of your pattern piece and maybe put something behind it, if you don't wanna see through it. Also on some areas of eyelet fabric or any fabrics they can have a fun little edge to them like this. Now this can be fun, if you wanna incorporate this into maybe the edge of a pillow, the end of a skirt but when you are buying a fabric that has some sort of ruffle or edge on it, or something like this that you want to incorporate into your project you may end up needing to buy extra fabric, so you can always line things up along the edge.

So that's something you want to take into consideration if you're buying any eyelet fabric or fabric that has a ruffle like this. Another fabric that can be a little bit tricky to work with is, this is a faux suede. So it looks, let me see, it's nice. Has a nice feel to it, can be really good lining for maybe a jacket, it's actually what I use it for, what it's left over from is a jacket lining. What's frustrating about working with this is the amount of static that comes along with this fabric.

You may not think it when you just get it off the bolts but when you take it home and you really start working with it, you'll find that it sticks to everything and everything sticks to it. So it can be a little bit frustrating to work with and again, frustration is something we wanna avoid in our first few sewing projects because we don't wanna get discouraged. So that's what I say about this kind of fabric is that a lot of static involved. If you have any sort of of silks or satins or sateens or anything like that they can be fairly easy to sew with because they are pretty stable, you don't have to worry about stretch. There's not a whole lot of things you have to worry about that way, but they do ravel quite a lot.

You can see this is just a fabric that I got off the bolt, I folded it and I took it home. I haven't done a lot of manipulating it around, doing anything with it, but again it ravels so much so that again, can be something that adds a little bit of frustration when you're working with it because you have all these little ends to deal with. Not only while you're sewing, but whatever it is you use this in you'll then have to finish those edges in your project, or your project will continue to ravel. Now we're gonna move on to what I'm gonna call our trickier pile of fabrics to work with. Now, this fabric is super, super lightweight which can make it a little bit tricky to work with.

And it has sequins which are also a little difficult to work with. I'm gonna pull the next one out too because it's also a sequined fabric. Sequins can be tricky because they can actually break your needles. And you might think it was just a little flimsy thin piece of plastic or something on there, I'm gonna be able to sew right through it. But you'll actually be surprised that you will break a needle if you try to sew right through those sequins.

So if you're going to maybe be sewing along an edge, you might actually have to remove all the sequins in your seam allowance and that can be kind of tedious. When they are further spread out, like these ones here you won't have to remove as many, but again you want to look out for 'em 'cause you don't wanna just sew over them. That goes for sequins or any other maybe bead or a pre embellishment that's on your fabric when you purchase it. So again that's just something that adds a whole other step to prepping the fabric and working with it that maybe you don't wanna deal with right off the bat. We also have...

As you can see the sequins and all that glitter gets over everything as well. So you'll do a little extra cleaning if you're using those fabrics too. Now, we have any sort of stretch fabric whether this is a jersey, a knit fabric, if you have some sort of Lycra or spandex or anything in the swimwear or dance wear section of your fabric store. These can be a little bit tricky to work with also because they do stretch they require a little extra prep and consideration when you are working with them which is something you can do. But again, if you're just starting out maybe not one you want to dive right into first.

The next thing we have that's also a little bit tricky to work with is lace. And this is for several different reasons. Lace often has that finished edge on it, like we were talking about that if you want to incorporate means you'll have to buy additional fabric but it also is difficult to sew with if you're going to make it a project entirely out of lace. Because as you can tell, see I have an edge and I wanna fold it over for hem, I can see through it so I can see everything I'm doing. There's no way to hide any little imperfections, if I don't have my hand perfectly folded under, if my stitching isn't straight everything is gonna show up in this lace when you can see through it like that.

So it can be a little bit tedious to work with if you're just starting out. Also, if your lace has a pattern like this one does, you can see there's sort of all these little flowers all over it. If I'm cutting out a pattern piece and I have to sew two parts together, you may actually want to line up the patterns within your lace to make everything look like it still flows which is a whole nother process to be able to line up your lace so it doesn't actually look like it was just cut and then sewn together. So lace can be a little bit tricky to work with for several reasons. Again, maybe not something you want to just dive right into and start with.

So we'll move all of our tricky and difficult fabric aside and I'll bring back in the... Again these are the ones we'll wanna start with. So some cottons, fleece, flannel, shirting fabric those are really easy to sew with. And if you just go to your fabric store and just tell them, "I'm a beginner what's a good fabric to start with?" They may point to the entire like quilting department 'cause all of that is quilting cotton and that's very easy to work with. So find your fabric that you want to to work with to start with and get some fabric.

Next thing we were talking about is interfacing 'cause a lot of projects and including the one we're gonna make at the end of this class require interfacing. So interfacing comes in a few varieties as well. We have sew-in and iron on interfacing. So this is a piece of interfacing that I would sew or baste in place. So I can feel both sides, they feel the same, they both feel soft like fabric that's how I know that this is a sew-in place interfacing.

If I was going to use this, I would simply cut it out it'd be the same size as my pattern piece, and I would baste it in place. I would just stitch at a very long stitch length all the way around the outside edge and that would hold it in place. If I don't wanna have to do that, which most of the times I don't wanna have to do that so I buy the fusible interfacing. Now with this, it will have some sort of glue on the back. So again, if I'm just gonna feel it I can feel one side is very smooth, very soft and the other side, I feel all these little bumps and those are the little dots of glue that when I use my iron and press it that's going to fuse it right to my fabric.

Interfacing comes in a variety of different weights and I have several weights here to show you. The first one I have here, this is what's called a featherweight interfacing. It is even lighter than lightweight interfacing and I would use this if I want to just a tiniest amount of stability to a fabric or if I'm using an already lightweight fabric this would be the type of interfacing I would use. Next I have again, lightweight. And a lot of the selecting of interfacing if it's not clearly labeled, it's really just going to be by feel.

You're gonna have to pick it up and you're gonna have to feel whether it's a really stiff interfacing or in this case whether it is a lightweight interfacing. Again, I can feel I know that it is a lighter weight interfacing. Again, moving up to a little bit heavier weight, this one again, I'm picking it up to feel. When you buy them, they will say, they will be labeled as to what weight they are. But I can feel that this is a little bit heavier than my featherweight and lightweight, but again it's not overly heavy and this side I can feel that it has that glue on there, so I know that this is a fusible interfacing.

Medium weight is what I generally use. If I'm doing any sort of garment sewing maybe I wanna put some interfacing in a collar or a cuff, I will use a medium weight interfacing. So this is one that I have the most of at home. Now another one is heavyweight interfacing. I think you can see it with this how really stiff it is.

It's almost like a piece of paper, it's so thick and this is again a very heavyweight interfacing, fusible interfacing. But this I would use maybe on a home dec project, if I really wanna give a lot of stability or rigidity to something, I would use a heavyweight interfacing. And I have a extra heavyweight interfacing right here which for the longest time, I didn't even know that this even existed because it so, so heavy. It's almost like if this one is printer paper then this is construction paper. That's the difference in how thick they are.

And again, this would be something that I would use in home dec project. Or maybe I'm gonna make some cute little Christmas ornaments or something that I really want to stay flat. I could fuse this in place, fuse this to the back of something and it's gonna have a lot of rigidity to it. So you can see again, this is very, very heavyweight. I have one more product over here that I'm gonna show you and then I'm gonna talk about how to fuse everything in place.

But if you are unfamiliar with interfacing and maybe you even forget what it's called and you just go to the fabric store and you say you're looking for something, you forget what it is but you know that it's ironed in place. They may point you towards something like this. You can hear, this has some paper on the background, this is not interfacing. This is fusible web sometimes called wonder under, and this you would fuse if you wanted to stick two things together, it actually has glue on one side on both sides I'm sorry. You'll iron it to your fabric, peel the paper off the back and then you can stick another piece of fabric to it.

So that's not something you're gonna wanna use if you're just expecting to have a fusible or sew-in interfacing where it's only sticky on one side you want interfacing not a fusible web. So don't get those confused because if you end up putting this in a project and you're wondering why you have this extra paper involved, that's why, so this is fusible web. So now, I'm gonna show you how to fuse your interfacing in place. 'Cause again the interfacing that I like to use is fusible, it really is to save some time. I don't have to do the extra step of stitching with the basting and I think it's a lot easier.

So when it comes to your iron for doing your fusing or interfacing mine's been sitting over there, so it's turned off. So I'm gonna make sure that my iron is warm before I start, I want it turned on and getting warm before I start trying to press anything. With my iron, I wanna have an iron that I'm able to change the heat settings on my iron and feel confident that it's changed to the setting I want. So if I have a really old iron, maybe I'm gonna put it on a low heat but I don't really know for sure if it's gonna be low. Maybe I wanna go ahead and get a new iron one that I know it's gonna be at the setting that I put it at.

Also, you want to be able to turn your steam function on and off. So with this one, we even have a little button that we could push for extra steam. When it comes to fusing your interfacing in place a lot of them, you don't want to be using any sort of steam and the instructions will tell you, turn your steam off. So make sure you have an iron that allows you that capability. So I'm just going to take and cut out just a little rectangle of our interfacing.

And again, this is one of our heavier weight, medium to heavy weight interfacing. And then I'm just going to get a small piece of my shirting fabric. Now this is just a small little square, I'm going to cut to show you how to fuse your interfacing and in most times, if you are applying it to a pattern that calls for it, you will be cutting out two of the exact same size pieces. Meaning your fabric and your interfacing would be the same size. In this case, I just have some squares, but what I wanted to make sure was that my fabric square was larger than my interfacing square.

And that was because if my interfacing overlapped onto my pressing mat and I went ahead and just press down onto that, that's going to fuse that interfacing in place to the pressing map. I'd have to pull it away and that would actually get stuck to my pressing mat and could ruin it. So I didn't wanna ruin my pressing mat. Also I wanna make sure that I have my fusible or glue side down on the fabric. If you have it the wrong way, and you put your iron down it's gonna stick to your iron and it's gonna be there probably forever and you'll have to get a new iron.

So make sure you have your fusible side down. What I'm gonna do is take my iron and I'm just going to set it on there and I can just leave it. Your manufacturer's directions for your interfacing will tell you approximately five to eight seconds, maybe even 10 seconds. You just wanna leave that heat in place. Then I'm gonna pick it up and I'm going to move it, what I'm not gonna do is my iron back and forth.

I'm not going to press or pull my iron because I can distort my interfacing. And that's especially the case if I am using a lightweight interfacing because it is a little bit more delicate and I could actually rip my interfacing while I'm trying to put it on. So again, I just want to pick up my iron, move it around. I'm making sure that I am covering all the corners of my interfacing. So I have this corner covered, I may need to move down maybe do this corner down here again.

And I'm just gonna keep picking it up and moving it around until it's fused in place. And what I can do to check those in place is I'll just take my fingernail and I'm gonna pick a corner, maybe this upper corner right here and I'm just gonna be like this. And I'm gonna go around the edges and I'm gonna see if it moves. If it's not moving, I know it's fused in place. Rotate this, try this corner, see it's moving it's peeled up just a tiny bit.

Now up here seems fine, over here is fine so it's just that tiny little corner I missed. So I do wanna make sure I get back on there, make sure it is fused in place. What I don't want is to partially fuse my inner facing in place, and then as I'm sewing or as I'm putting everything together it starts to peel away or fall apart. So I just wanna make sure I have everything nice, pressed in place again, I'm not moving my iron back and forth, I am just setting it on there and moving it to press it. And that's how you want to put all of your interfacing in place.

Now, once I'm done, I'm actually gonna let it sit there. I wanna make sure it is cooled before I pick it up and move it. Because what I just did with the iron was I melted all those little glue dots on the back of my interfacing and that's what sticking it to my fabric. Once that is cooled, that means it's dry, it's like the glue is dry and now it's stuck in place. Everything is still warm I might be able to skew it just a little bit so I would let it completely dry and then I would pick it up and I'm good to use my interfaced pattern piece on whatever project it is that goes on.

So that is how you would do your interfacing again, you'll select your way of interfacing that you want depending on either what your pattern calls for or the desired look for your project. And just again, an overview of the fabrics that you want to go and look at and pick if you're just starting out in sewing and ones you may want to save for later until you are a little bit more comfortable with sewing. So I'm gonna get all this cleaned up locate my rotary cutter, my scissors and my mat and we're gonna talk a little bit about cutting out all of our fabric.

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