The ability to create clothes with your own hands is a unique opportunity to look original, stylish and effective. Today, famous fashion designers offer needlewomen to pay attention to chiffon products. However, it is very difficult to sew a beautiful and elegant thing from this material: it is capricious and requires caution.
Chiffon is a very thin, translucent material, things from which are at the peak of popularity today. However, many seamstresses pay attention to the fact that working with him is very difficult. Difficulties arise both during cutting and during sewing.
Translucent material can be of different origins. The most expensive is natural silk chiffon. A lot of experience is required to work with it: such fabric is very capricious, it can shrink, crumble, and in the process of work there is a high probability of leaving stains that cannot be removed. Synthetic chiffon is more common and cheaper. It is much easier to work with it, and things turn out to be light, beautiful and stylish.
Professional seamstresses recommend starting your acquaintance with a capricious fabric with synthetic chiffon. Working with natural materials is very difficult, and the result may negatively differ from the expected.
Self-creation of things begins with cutting the selected material. This usually happens on a table or floor. When working with chiffon, place some kind of fabric or object under it (linen, cotton blanket, rugs, etc. will do). Alternatively, you can cut whimsical material on an unfolded sofa.
Before work, check the purchased chiffon for evenness of the edges: sometimes in stores the fabric is cut crookedly. To eliminate this defect, pull out the end thread from the corner and cut the edge along the formed line. Some needlewomen prefer to tear it off, but this approach is fraught with deformation of the material.
It is better to cut chiffon in one layer. It will take longer, but the details are guaranteed to be even.
When cutting, chiffon can begin to crumble. Preliminary processing of the fabric will help to avoid this. Some experienced seamstresses dip chiffon in a light gelatin solution before work. This makes the material heavier and avoids severe defects. It is also possible to process only the incision sites. For this, products such as starch water or hairspray are used.
Most needlewomen fix chiffon with thin pins. However, this traditional method can leave marks and even holes on the material. This can be avoided by avoiding punctures in favor of small weights or weights. Place them on several sides so that the chiffon does not slide out during work. It is better to transfer the patterns to the fabric using a thin, mild soap.
Before stitching the cut parts, be sure to check the machine settings on a small piece of chiffon. The needle should be chosen the thinnest, the threads are strong. For translucent materials, nylon is perfect: they will be almost invisible on the future product. Keep the stitch width small, ideally about 2 mm.
For sewing chiffon, professionals recommend using one of two stitches: "French" or "American". The first is an analogue of a standard underwear, when first sewing "seamy side to seamy", and then - front to front. The second is a regular edge seam. However, in this case, it is done in millimeters and very carefully. It can be supplemented by processing with an overlock or special means that help prevent tissue spreading (diluted PVA glue, gelatin, starch, etc.).
