Cheesecake and Slippery Fabrics. - a sewing experiment.

How are cheesecakes and slippery fabric related ? I suppose you might want to eat some cheesecake after the nightmare of cutting and sewing that contortionist fabric . The real answer though is gelantine. My next project is for a semi-formal dress for my middle DD using the fabric above.

It is a very sheer and quite slippery georgette - off white with very large black feather motifs. It is the last of my ebay purchases from September 2010 - positively an infantile piece of fabric in my stash!

It was not quite what I was expecting - I don`t remember the site saying it was sheer and the size of the feathers was not mentioned but I was happy with this fabric as I have nothing else like it in my stash. Last year ( but it only feels like a couple of months ago ) I read in Belinda`s Sew-4-Fun a link for a tip to control slippery fabric. This tip was discussed in Patternreview`s forum and also is found in Lena Merrin`s blog -thesewingspace.com who is the originator of this idea  ( and she said she was happy for this tip to be shared ) .

The tip is to make up a gelantine mixture and soak your fabric in this. THe end result is fabric that is easier to cut and sew. Use three teaspoons of gelantine and put this in a glass of cold water and leave for 30minutes. Then bring this mixture to the boil and then take off the stove ( do not boil the mixture ) . Add this gelantine mixture to three litres of cool water and then add your fabric. Leave for one hour and then drip dry your fabric. Iron and then you are ready to go.

It takes a bit of faith to put your precious fabric in gelantinous water so using a small scrap of chiffon I experimented. I used the above technique and soaked some fabric but cut off some chiffon and left this untreated. The resulting fabric still felt soft but pliable . It only smelt very faintly of gelantine - not at all unpleasant or overpowering.  I cut out three bias cut strips of chiffon  . The top strip is the gelantine treated chiffon and cut out with paper underneath ( another tip for cutting out slippery fabrics ). The middle strip is gelantine treated but cut out with no underlying paper and the last chiffon strip is untreated and cut out using paper. The top strip is definitely the best and the others are a bit wonky ( but the untreated fabric was definitely the hardest to deal with ).

I then practised some gathering, straight stitching and zigzags on the treated fabric and it sewed up nicely. Lastly I washed the gelantinous chiffon and it came up to its previously soft and silky condition. I can now march forth into my sewing room and tackle this fabric without trepidation ( until I get to the next step of ? underlining or ? lining it - lol ).

 Many thanks to the talented seamstresses who share their expert knowledge .