Author: 459856pwpadmin

A couple of days ago I discussed the fusible interfacings I
have been using along with some ideas as to how things might be changing in the
future. The second drawer of my
file-cabinet contains the sew-in interfacings, my subject for today’s post.

I know that I have probably more interfacing than a lot of
people. This really doesn’t bother me,
but the amount of fusibles will be reduced as I work through the various
samples purchased. Still, I really don’t
mind using sew-in interfacing and there is quite a bit in the second file
drawer, more than I had initially realized.

Silk Organza: I usually keep a variety on hand, especially
in peach, which seems to work well under most things, and off-white or
white. I usually get these from Thai
Silks. I also keep silk organza in other
colors, when I find those I like or think I might use. Sometimes a color is necessary if I think
there may be show through and besides silk organza can make lovely blouses and
nice accents on other garments. Right now I have deep green and a couple of
shades of purple, besides the basics.

Cotton Batiste: Also makes a nice soft underlining for
certain garments and can add a little gentle support where fusibles will not
work. I can’t find 100% cotton batiste around
me so I buy it when I see it; I might have a couple of different weights on
hand. Since this fabric also makes
lovely lightweight summer tops and blouses, I keep colors in stock as well,
especially when I can find the deeper colors I prefer to wear.

Hair Canvas or Hymo: Stocked in various weights and almost always
used in jackets and tailored garments, at least a little piece somewhere. I can’t seem to wean myself away from hair
canvas and move to completely fused garment. Hair canvas has changed a great deal over the years. The stuff of old was stiff and often contained
horse hair. G remembers stiff jackets
from his childhood with horsehair interfacings that would occasionally poke him
through the wool of the jacket.  Today,
the ones called Hair Canvas today are stiffer and often a large part polyester
instead of horse hair. I tend to use the
Hymo or Hymo Hair Canvas products. Now
most of them are at least partly rayon. I try to find blends with a high degree of goat hair or wool mixed with the
rayon and I have several types from several sources, some is fairly stiff, some
fairly soft. I adore the premium hymo
from Greenberg and Hammer called EURO, which is 42% wool,  because it is firm yet soft with good drape
but I also tend to keep a few pieces of their other products, such as LT-030 which is 30% cotton, 34% hair and
is quite firm for those times I need serious support in a garment. I also use MD-021 and the hymo called BLACK,
which is black. The hymo I recently
purchased from THE SEWING PLACE   is a middle weight, between the Euro and the
LT-030. I haven’t used it yet, but I
think it may prove useful. 

Years ago I also used a good bit of Cotton
Organdy. It was great for
plackets and collars in lightweight cotton and handkerchief linen blouses as
well as other lightweight garments. I would also use it to interface button or
buttonhole bands in crisp tops.  I would
get it at a store in the garment district that sold only imported Swiss
cottons, long since closed. It was
available in several colors. Now I can
only find white and usually have to purchase it from an heirloom sewing
store. I like organdy because it is
firmer than organza or batiste yet still light and semi-sheer. As I fashions
have gotten softer, I tend to use organza more than organdy, but I still keep a
small bit around.

Baby Flannel: I started using this many years ago, when I
first read Sandra Betzina’s POWER SEWING, the original version. She used it to underline jackets, especially
jackets made from lightweight silk fabrics. Remember those silk crepe-de-chine and sueded silk jackets of the late
1980’s and early 1990’s? I loved
those. I used the flannel to underline
some of them but eventually, as I noticed that in designer jackets the entire
body of the silk might be fused, I moved on to using fusing my silks to
permanently underline them and “beef up” the fabric. Sometimes the baby flannel is the perfect
thing though and I still use it, it can also be great for underlining a jacket
or coat where the fabric is not quite heavy enough. 

Wool Felt, Lambswool, and Mohair: I keep small bits of these for use in
sleeve heads or occasionally other places. Pure versions of these are increasingly hard to find but the blends
aren’t nearly as versatile for use in garment construction. Sometimes they are purchased. Some of my mohair consists of scraps from
garments or sweaters which I have felted. I don’t usually need large pieces so scraps suffice.

I have a couple of pieces of Coutil
which I purchased as an understructure for corset or bustier-like bodices when
I was sewing more evening gowns. It was
also useful in those wide, waist cinching belts that were popular for a few
years, as well as the boned, corset based blouses, when I wanted something more
structured. I considered using it to
actually try to make a corset last year when I was having increasing problems
standing up straight due to pain or just plain old crookedness in my back. I might still consider this but at the moment
regular Pilates seems to be helping and the crooked days are fewer.

I also have pieces of several products that are sold as
sew-in interfacings, such as VeriShape which is used to stiffen collar stands,
flex weave, and a few others. I am not
particularly consistent in my use of them, but there have been times I have
been very happy to have them on hand.

Oddly enough I may be coming full circle. Originally, when I started sewing, I
exclusively used sew in interfacings and had trouble with fusibles. Then I moved away from sew-in interfacing and
fused almost everything. Now I use both
and have found myself appreciating their different qualities.

As I moved the interfacing supply back into my sewing room I
started to think about interfacing, what I use, what I don’t, and what might
need to be changed.

For a long time I always used the same interfacings. Because I had come to like the performance of
certain interfacings, and because I could not usually get them locally, I began
buying bolts or large pieces to insure that I always had some on hand.  To make life simpler I settled on a couple of
interfacings that I consistently liked and stuck to them.

The first two interfacings that I used consistently were Armo
Weft and Fusi Knit. Armo Weft is used
for support in tailored garments, kind of like a fusible hair canvas I
guess. I used Fusi Knit for everything
else. Probably not very sophisticated
but it worked for me.

Gradually I noticed that designers made jackets out of
lightweight fabrics like cottons and silks and fused the entire body pieces to
give the fabric enough weight to function in the more tailored application of a
jacket. Fusi Knit was too firm for this
and I eventually found So-Sheer. For
years I used So Sheer and eventually, Textured Weft, which came out later. Sometimes people had trouble fusing Textured
Weft and I haven’t found that it works well with all fabrics. It certainly maintains the loft of textured
fabrics better than So Sheer and it changes the hand of the fabric far
less. In time Textured Weft became my
primary fusible for underlining, but I still use So Sheer for some things.

As I mentioned above, I can’t get these interfacings
locally. Most of them are, or were, sold
on 25 yard bolts so I just bought bolts of each so that I would have them on
hand. When I get started on a project,
nothing kills it faster than having to put it aside waiting for interfacing to
arrive. By the time the interfacing
would arrive other things would have happened and the sewing project would be
abandoned. It seemed excessive in the beginning, but I have had to replace every bolt of my original purchases, some more than once.

These interfacings now live in one of the top drawers of the
file cabinets that make up my cutting table.

But my needs or ideas about sewing are in the process of
change.

I have two full or almost full bolts of Armo Weft in two
colors, probably a lifetime supply at this point. I find that Armo Weft is sometimes too firm
for the kind of very light soft shaping that is fashionable in women’s jackets
now and I might want to find something different.

Fusi Knit is still useful, but again is too firm for some
knits and light fabrics, although so-sheer works well for support in very light
knits, and I have been increasingly using it for structural support in knit garments. I might need something in between. Both Fusi Knit and So Sheer change the hand
of some fabrics too much, although on others there seems to be little
difference. I still adore Textured Weft
and am almost out, so you know that will be replaced soon.

BUT

What do I do about new styles in interfacings and tailoring of
women’s garments? I don’t really want to
stock a dozen different interfacings. Life needs to be simple. But I
also want to accomplish a particular look.

My discontent started about a year and a half ago, in
September 2004. I was making a jacket
out of a very nice menswear suiting fabric from Dormeuil. I did need to fuse parts of the front of the
jacket, but the fabric had a good bit of body and I was having trouble getting
the look I wanted. So Sheer was too
stiff. Textured Weft maintained much
more of the drape of the fabric but still made it too “thick” and affected the
drape just enough that I was not satisfied. I did not know how to proceed, so I put the jacket aside.

I picked that jacket up again a few months later when some
of the sewists at Sewing World  were involved in a “January Jacket
Journey”. I ordered a bunch of samples
of interfacings from several places, intending to make samples and compare them
and reconsider the entire interfacing question. In the meantime, while I waited for UPS, I looked at the various other
odd bits of interfacing I had on hand. There was some red interfacing I got from Sandra Betzina called “Armani
Interfacing”, no longer available, which had good drape, but was not as nice as
the Textured Weft in this fabric. And I
had some interfacing called DEEP FLESH COLORED FUSIBLE INTERFACING from Fabric
Collections which I had used for a silk jacket the previous year, finding it to
be much softer and with better drape than So Sheer. I had also used this interfacing on a light
topper made from a hand-woven wool which was something like a cross between
gauze and burlap with a very loose open weave. I ended up using this interfacing on the blue menswear wool as it had
drape and suppleness I wanted. The
fabric was just like a slightly spongier version of itself with more
support. The hand was much more like the
original fabric than with the Textured Weft. The jacket turned out to be wonderful. Fabric Collections no longer imports this interfacing however and the
little bit I have left cannot be replaced.

When I started moving interfacing into its home in the new
sewing room, I began to readdress these questions. I still have those samples, about a yard of
each, waiting in a box. I wondered what to do with all of
them. I also still had some of that
wonderful blue menswear suiting left, the one that gave me interfacing
difficulties.

The solution seemed to be that I should make an interfacing
catalog. I decided, for consistency, all
interfacings should be fused to the same fabric no matter what they were
intended for. That way I would have a
basis for comparison. Each sample should
also be adequately large that I could get some sense of the hand and/or
potential drape of the fused fabric. I
decided to cut 8” by 10” pieces of the navy wool and fuse them, with each
interfacing getting a page in a standard three ring binder. A sample of the same wool, unfused, would be
saved for control purposes.

Here are some of the pages with the fabric samples, and me
squinching one piece to see how it feels. I am learning there are some interesting interfacings out there and I
see several that might be good for light flexible underlinings. I am not sure where I will go with this yet,
but there are certainly possibilities and there are a couple of potential new
favorites. I certainly think that one
of the new ultra-light fusibles will replace so-sheer as my other standard
underlining in the near future. Luckily
I have pieces of several nice things. I
will keep you informed of the changes.

I am also impressed so far with the sample Whisper Weft that
I have fused. It seems something like
Armo Weft but much lighter, with a much softer hand. This may be what I am looking for to achieve
that softer tailoring look.  I will definitely be trying this in upcoming projects.

It seems there have been many changes in the world of
interfacings and I am looking forward to trying some of these new, at least to
me, products. I also think that my new
interfacing catalog will prove invaluable when I am looking for something to achieve
a desired look. Although interfacing
will react differently with each fabric, having the samples gives me a big leg
up on the process of narrowing down my choices. I am sure that eventually my catalog will be expanded to have samples on
other base fabrics as well. In the end,
I think the time spent compiling this book will prove to be time very well
spent.