Pro tip: never guess the drape on a bias cut skirt without a muslin first

I was making a silk skirt for a client and cut it on the bias to get that nice flow. The fabric just would not hang right, it twisted and pulled for a full day. I had to pin, baste, and re-cut the entire side seam three times before it sat flat. That one skirt took me about 8 hours longer than I planned. Has anyone found a faster way to test drape on tricky fabrics?

3 comments

3 Comments

shah.evan2mo agoMost Upvoted

So you had to redo the side seam three times? That sounds like a total nightmare. What kind of silk was it specifically, like a charmeuse or something more slippery?

the_piper5h ago

Oh man, the microtex needle is a game changer for sure. I had a similar thing happen with a polyester crepe that was acting way too shifty, and what finally saved me was switching to a walking foot. It was like night and day, the fabric stopped trying to escape and actually fed through evenly. Also, I found that using a longer stitch length, like a 2.5 or even 3, helped a ton with the puckering on mine. Just a thought in case you run into it again.

emma_young2mo ago

Actually it was a silk crepe de chine, which isn't quite as slick as charmeuse but still has a mind of its own. The real issue was the thread tension on my machine, it kept getting weird and puckering the fabric. I finally switched to a brand new microtex needle and that did the trick.