In my mission to come up with fun and unique fabric manipulations, I thought I would test out quilting (taking a short break from embroidery this week :)). And yes, I said QUILTING! I am not sure about you, but as a fashion designer when I hear the word “quilting” I typically cringe! It’s not that I don’t think quilts are beautiful and I sure wouldn’t want to offend all my friends that have a passion for this art (especially my mother :)) – but the fact of the matter is, the word itself makes many apparel sewer’s run the other way. The term quilting gives me an instant vision of cotton, LOTS of cotton, and bins of more cotton scraps that can be added to some project down the road. I know, I am so judgmental! I obviously overlook my bins of silk scraps that I know will fit into a pocket eventually.
But I think I should really take another look at this art, especially with fabric manipulation on the mind. Besides, who made the rule you can only quilt cotton. What about my favorite sewing technique, that is very Chanel inspired, where the silk charmeuse lining is “quilted” to the jacket fabric. Very luxurious and looks fabulous! Although we call it “Chanelism” not quilting. Go figure!
Or have you seen the quilted leather shown by Proenza Schouler – definitely on the short list for a fall must-have! Givenchy and Chanel both added some form of quilted leather to their collections. I really love the way you can use quilting to create a unique looking fabric or you can place the quilting in particular area of the garment to add a custom design element.
So, as to not risk ruining a large piece of luxurious fabric, I thought I would try a small sample. I am going to use silk charmeuse with batting and create Eye Candy (those of you that travel often will understand the name.) This only requires a little fabric and should be easy for testing the quilting method before I add quilted silk to a garment.
Start with 2 pieces of silk charmeuse and 1 piece of batting.
Pin together the layers.
Use clay chalk to mark a straight line, diagonally across the fabric.
I am using the MuVit Digital Dual Feed Foot on the Brother Dreamweaver XE . You could also use a walking foot or just a standard foot if you don’t have a the fancies
I am going to start the first row of stitching using my laser-vision as a guide to follow my chalk line. Although, the light is a little hard to see, probably because I have the bright light turned all the way up on the machine – I swear I can get a suntan from the brightness LOL!
Then, using my foot as a guild, I am stitching row after row. I noticed that sewing at a medium speed with the MuVit foot works the best, in fact the same is true for the walking foot on my Quattro.
After quilting the entire piece of fabric, I laid my pattern on top of the quilted fabric and cut it out.
I added an elastic band to the back, pinning in place at each side.
Then finished the edges with bias tape. Here is a quick video if you want to see an easy way to make your own bias tape.
That was very easy! In fact this was going to be a gift, but I think I might have to keep this one for myself :) So you can see the technique of quilting is pretty easy and it does work on other fabrics besides cotton. I have a few more fabrics I am going to try, I will let you know how they turn out. But I can definitely see this quilted silk charmeuse used in a jacket or vest. If you any photos of fabric manipulation post them on flickr here is my link to share or add them to facebook! Inspire others by your creativity! Cheers, xoxo Angela
Brother™ has provided me with the DreamWeaver XE, but all opinions expressed are entirely my own.