While creating a dress for my sister’s upcoming wedding, I turned so some of my absolute favorite notions made of…SILK.
Silk Thread & Silk Organza
There’s nothing like silk thread for hand basting!!!!! The main reason is that when pressed, it will not ’embed’ or make pressed lines on the fabric. The color obviously does not matter. This is a fine weight thread, NOT silk buttonhole twist, which is heavier. On this dress, I used the silk thread to baste in the folds of the tucks.
For a pressing cloth, my absolute favorite is Silk Organza. I currently have Black in stock. Just 1/2 yard is an absolutely perfect size. Using this as a press cloth lets you see through to what you are pressing, but still protects the surface of your fabric from the hot sole of your iron. Silk Organza is also the absolute PERFECT underlining for a fabric that needs additional body.
I also used Silk Organza as the interfacing for the collar on my dress. I love it because it is stable. I had underlined the entire dress by cutting the identical pieces of Fusible Tricot – so I in essence, changed the fabric itself. For the collar, I still needed interfacing. Have you ever cut the same pattern piece from 2 fabrics and with as much care as you could muster, and somehow they still end up to be NOT identical in size and shape? That happened to me on this project. I’m sure the large, bias direction of the collar pieces was the challenge, but I learned long ago that when this happens, using something very stable, like Silk Organza can be cut and considered THE BOSS. See the photo below.
I proceeded with the construction of the collar, with the frame of mind that the black Silk Organza piece was the REAL size. The pattern was well-drafted in that the outer edges of the Under Collar Pattern piece were smaller than the Upper Collar Piece. That created the beautiful roll of the upper collar to the underside just a tad so that, once applied, the under collar really can NOT peek out, despite no topstitching. See photo below.
Here’s a quick snapshot of the collar and upper front of my finished dress. I’ll add a photo of it ON me after the wedding!
