Natalie brought in tried and true McCall’s #3830 to make a skirt. So far so good.
Then she pulled out her fabric after having made the muslin: a $170 a yard upholstery velvet from Fishman’s. She got it on sale for $50 a yard and wanted this to be right.
When you are sewing with velvet this dense, you have a couple of options:
- Sew it together as you normally would and deal with the bulky and unruly seams, or
- Sew it together as you normally would with plenty of basting and then trim out the pile with a razor, scissors, or a hair trimmer.
We opted for the latter to keep everyhting under control and give us a better result.
The first thing we did was to thread trace the legs of the darts and seams to give us a clean trimming line. She then trimmed out all of the excess pile within the lines. You have to be careful or you will over-trim.
She tried a couple of different ways – after an accident with the razor blade, she decided that a combination of sharp scissors and trimmer was the best bet.
We then basted up the trimmed-out darts and seams, stitched them, and…
Voila! Nearly perfect darts and seams in a fabric that is not terribly friendly with detailed sewing!
We would also suggest that you look at how well planned out the pattern is on these darts – when you are sewing with symmetrical shapes, you should try to get the match as close as you can, even if it means that the dart has to be relocated a few millimeters left or right.