Tips on sewing velvet needed!?
I love to sew with the beautiful formalwear fabrics. Mostly I’m making American Girl doll clothes and costumes. Anyway, I love plush velvet, the one with a deep pile. It seems like I have to hand baste every seam, though, and even then it’s tough to sew without everything shifting. I’m wondering, would a walking foot really make it a lot easier, or will I STILL have to hand baste the whole thing? The seams shift even when I use the serger, I noticed. Will I always have to put the zippers in by hand?
So summary:
Is hand basting always necessary on plush velvet
will a walking foot make my life much happier
Will I have to always put a zipper in by hand (hand picked)
I have not sewn velour before. Is that going to be just as awful?
Thanks!
Velvet is always a pain in the you know where. I had one velvet dress where I ended up hand sewing the entire thing because it was so slippery and the pile was so thick. I never take on a job if the client wants velvet; i dislike it so much. There are a few things that can make your life easier, and a walking foot is certainly a worthwhile investment if you frequently sew velvet. The roller foot can also be a huge helper for velvet as it rolls the fabric rather than yanking it under the foot. Another helper is a V foot, that is a foot for the sewing machine that has a V shaped ridge on the bottom. It holds the velvet firmly on the seam line while not crushing beside the seam. I’ve seen this foot at the sewing machine dealer’s and I think it’s also available through on line sewing notions dealers.
When I learned couture dressmaking we were taught to gently mesh the velvet layers together, that is, to finger press the two layers so the piles interlocked with each other before hand basting, this made basting easier and then when the final stitching was done, the meshed layers fed through the machine better with less shifting. We used a long stitch length, very loose pressure on the presser foot and held the fabric tight as it went through the machine. It made velvet bearable, almost.
Hand picked zippers look best, with invisibles a close second. I almost never make anything with plush velvet but when I do, I use invisibles. When I learned couture dressmaking we were taught that zippers in the lining were better; the lining would hold much of the stress and the velvet would be simply a small, long, narrow flap covering the zipper. The velvet would be hand tacked to the lining on the zipper tape to hold it in place. It’s hard to explain, and the time needed to do it, way beyond what’s needed for a doll outfit.
Velour, the knit velvet, is a far easier fabric to sew, more like cotton velveteen. The pile is shorter, it meshes together as it is sewn, it shifts less, it’s less likely to crush, and it’s far more forgiving. Shiny knit panne velvet is the easiest of all to sew, which is why most dresses in stores are made with panne velvets and matte velour.
I hope that helped a little.
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