Sewing Velveteen (aka Belated Christmas/New Year's Dress)!

 Last year I took it upon myself to make two Christmas dresses for my girls that were a little outside of my sewing comfort zone.  I used taffeta last year to push past my sewing comfort zone and this year I used velveteen.  After all velveteen is lush, it is soft, it is classic, it sings sweetly of wassail and beautifully wrapped packages tied with satin ribbons and it also happens to be a real pill to sew.  If you've ever sewn with velveteen you know that it is a fabric that likes to shift ALL OVER THE PLACE.  For someone who likes accuracy in sewing it can test your patience!  I ended up using three tricks to get my velveteen to behave (at least as much as you can manage to make velveteen behave).

 Tip One: Use a walking foot, if you don't have a walking foot, in my opinion, don't bother.  The pile or nap on velveteen when you try to sew it to another fabric makes it shift like crazy, things won't line up properly if you don't have a walking foot to help the top layer of fabric walk through the sewing process at the same rate as the bottom layer of fabric.  Now there is probably some other way to manage velveteen without I walking foot but I wouldn't want to be caught in that torturous place.  Even with the walking foot, setting the sleeves in was a real challenge as well as lining the sleeves.  I must have pinned and ripped it all out three times before I gave in to the process of the sleeves not being perfect. 

Tip Two:  Hand baste your seams together, especially if you are easing fabrics together or have multiple layers like gathers and pleats.  For this dress I only had to hand baste the sleeves into the bodice but for my 3 year old's dress I had to also hand baste the pleats.  I have yet to take pictures of her dress on her but will probably tomorrow.  The hand basting kept everything together in addition to pins and the walking foot.  Like I said this fabric shifts and you want to minimize the shifting as much as possible.  Hand basting is a pain but it beats sewing and ripping out stitches multiple times.

 Tip Three:   Lower the pressure on your presser foot.  My machine has a dial that lessens the pressure of the presser foot and this can be helpful in managing the fabric, you might have to play with that a little because on some seams it seemed to help and on others it didn't.  But its worth a try.

Final Tips:
Insert an invisible zipper when using velveteen, I used a regular zipper at first and it looked terrible so that was ripped out and replaced.  Funny enough the Vogue pattern I used to sew my 3 year old's velveteen dress didn't call for an invisible zipper either and it was drafted with velvet in mind- go figure.  But believe me when I say a normal zipper will not look good.

Accept that it will not be perfect, I can get a little crazy about wanting accurate, even seam allowances and absolutely no puckers anywhere but I found it ok to have some spots that were less than perfect by meditating on something a seamstress once told me.  As I was contemplating fabric choices and the various as-sundry little details of a project for one of my daughters, in talking it over with a sewist at the fabric store she said to me "well I always gave people this advice when I worked at a sewing store that taught classes on smocking children's dresses- can you tell the difference on a galloping horse?"  She went on to explain that putting a garment on a child is like putting something on a galloping horse and you probably aren't going to be able to tell the difference in whatever discrepancy your worrying about when its riding past you on a galloping horse.  That piece of advice helped me just move on when a seam puckered a bit or a seam allowance didn't look perfectly even.  Good advice.  Sage sewing advice.  Advice for a Momma to live by!

A few parting details about this dress, my daughter is 7 years old and tall, so I sewed a size 7 dress with size 8 length added.  Its Simplicity 1174.  The pattern is great and I highly recommend it.  I fully lined the dress but lining pieces aren't included in the pattern.  The bottom portion of the dress is satin from Hancocks fabrics.  The velveteen was from a local quilt shop.  This dress would be a breeze to sew in a nice well behaved cotton.  If you've read this far, thank you for indulging me in my velveteen rant!  Its a beautiful fabric, no doubt, and it will definitely push you out of your sewing comfort zone!