Fabric Selection 101

Beyond a doubt, fabric selection is the most crucial part of sewing – it literally is the costume. When I was a starting seamstress, my fabric choices were ALL over the place, especially for skirts, I used lining fabric, charmeuse, silky solids, and a myriad of completely inappropriate fabrics for the styles I was making. Best part? They fell apart. Not just because I didn’t finish my seams, but because the fabric was quite literally, wrong.

You can learn from my mistakes! Save yourself some coin to spend on the appropriate fabrics for a project. I’m going to talk all about wovens today and save knits for another. If you have questions, ask away.

Let’s dive right in!

I separate my fabrics into two categories: Shine and No Shine. Why? Because these two categories rarely if ever go together in a single costume, the uses for each are quite different from one another.

No Shine fabrics are my favorite! I’m talking matte natural fiber fabrics in the cotton, linen, rayon, silk world (and matte polyesters of course).

Shine fabrics are meant to make a statement. In your design, be very careful to balance your shiniest fabrics with something matte so that you do not look like a shine ball in photos.

And there you have it! Simple guidelines to follow that make life very easy and picture perfect!