Sewing with lace fabric
Tuesday, April 5th, 2016
Lace is such a dreamy fabric and with the summer just around the corner we’re going to see more and more of it in the next few months. It never goes out of fashion and is so versatile. Of course if you’re a brushing bride-to-be then lace is probably on very much on your mind right now.
There are lots of different types of lace with wide ranging price tags. You can get poly lace from as little as £5 per metre which is great for day to day wear or smaller items. Or expect to pay £300 plus per metre for the best top quality lace – great for those very special occasions.
Like a lot of specialty fabric, lace is a little trickier to handle than say cotton, but armed with a bit of knowledge, everyone can enjoy this lovely treat.
There are lots of different types of lace, here are the most popular of 2016:
Chantilly Lace – a heavily corded lace, often used in bridal wear. It is on tulle, if often beaded and as an ornate edge. Most commonly comes in black, white and ivory
Alencon Lace – this all over lace has a design incorporated into a tulle background and it may or may not have a decorative border. It’s an easy lace to work with and comes in lots of colours
Guipure Lace – a heavily embroidered lace with no tulle backing, but open spaces. This lace is really in fashion at the moment and also comes in lots of colours
Cutting Lace
The pattern on lace runs across the fabric, selvedge to selvedge and because the selvedge is often also a decorative border, it needs to be cut with the grain line at 90 degrees to the selvedge (or border).
Use the border as the finished hem of the garment if you can as that will look fab. But if you are making a garment when this just won’t work (a circular skirt for instance) then the border can be cut off and sewn back on later. It’s worth taking a good look at the pattern on the lace before you cut and cut in a single layer to make sure you have the pattern where you want it to be – avoiding large motifs on the bust or bottom for instance. It’s also just a lot easier to cut single as it can move quite a bit when it’s folded double, even when you’ve pinned it.
Darts
Darts can be sewn just like regular darts. If you’re making darts in the lace only, to reduce the bulk and make it look a little tidier, sew another row of stitches 3mm away from the first and trim off the surplus fabric.
Sewing seams
If you decide to mount your lace onto another fabric, such as silk or even cotton, then the two fabrics can be treated as one with no special requirements.
If you want to have the illusion of lace you may need to be a bit more careful. When sewing a seam just in the lace, if you’re working with lace with tulle backing your machine may be OK with stitching through the lace. Make a regular plain seam and then gently press open using a pressing cloth – it will be hardly visible. But, the tricky bit is stopping the lace from disappearing down your feed dogs. To help with this, start on a piece of freezer paper, or stitch and tear paper and run the lace on to it. You can then tear the paper away without any damage.
Seams on Guipure Lace can be more troublesome as the seam won’t blend too easily when stitched. A good option is to sew the seam as usual then wrap bias binding around the seams – satin or poly-cotton. Although it will be visible through the holes, if you choose the right colour it will blend in nicely and make a very strong seam too.
A very useful sewing site
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