Just realized how much fabric choice changes a dress design...

I was talking to my aunt last weekend while she was sewing a dress for my cousin's wedding. She kept going on about how the pattern said to use a stiff cotton but she was using a stretchy knit instead. I didn't really get why it mattered until she showed me two versions of the same dress side by side. One was all structured and held its shape, the other just drooped and wrinkled in all the wrong places. It hit me that you can't just pick a fabric because you like the color or print, the whole design falls apart if the weight and stretch aren't right. Now I'm looking at all my old sewing projects and realizing why some of them never looked like the picture. Has anyone else ruined a project by ignoring what the pattern said about fabric type?

2 comments

2 Comments

jenny_sullivan979d ago

Yep, learned that polyester trash bag lesson the hard way too.

dakota_murphy909d ago

Oh man, "the whole design falls apart" is the story of my sewing life. I tried making a flowy summer dress once with this super cheap polyester that had zero drape. It looked like a trash bag. A really crunchy, static-clingy trash bag. I ended up just cutting it up for rags because even my cat wouldn't sit on it. Now I'm that person touching every bolt of fabric in the store like I'm some expert.