On May 13, 2006, at 22:06, Ruth wrote:
Instead of fighting the wrinkling tendencies embrace it. Use fabrics
like seersucker which are comfortable in the summer but since they
already have less than a crisp appearance should look good for your
use.
You took the words out of my mouth :) I'd go even further: some
wrinkles can look good, even on a plain fabric. It all depends on where
they are.
Dora Smith wrote:
I got a sewing machine and some patterns, want to make some shirt
waist and princess style dresses. Since I ride a bicycle, I need
clothes that aren't wrinkled by the time I rode down the street.
All the material I looked at at Hancock and Joanne fabrics and
Walmart wrinkled - except for one particular rack of cotton that the
salespeople could not tell me how it differed from the other cotton.
The cotton-polyester blends were crisper and just as wrinkly.
Most of the synthetic fabrics don't breathe well enough to wear in
Austin in the summer.
Don't they still make permanent press?
Dora, the "trick" about perma-press isn't so much that it never
wrinkles; it's more about how quickly it gets rid of the wrinkles and
under what conditions. Natural fibers have a longer memory than
man-made ones; double-knit polyester will spring back in no time and
with little effort on your part, while linen will need a steamy iron.
You're right that synthetics wouldn't be much fun for a Texas summer --
they're not much fun for a Virginia one, either :)
When you test the fabric you like, test it both ways: first crumple it
(with your hot and sweaty little hand <g>), then try to smooth it out
-- with the same hot and sweaty hand. If the wrinkles respond to such
hand treatment, they'll respond even better when heated by the entire
body.
Knit fabrics wrinkle less (and release wrinkles faster) than woven
ones. Most sewing machines of today can handle knits and you might want
to consider those for your summer wardrobe. We don't have either
Hancock or Jo-Ann in my little town, but WalMart does carry some
all-cotton or cotton-poly mix knits.
Thicker fabrics wrinkle less/release wrinkles faster than thin ones;
denim won't wrinkle as badly as batiste.
In my experience, the tighter the fabric is woven the less it wrinkles
(that might account for the unexplained rack of cottons). To me, that
seems to be going "counter logic", since there are more threads per
inch *to* wrinkle, but there it is... OTOH, the tighter the fabric is
woven, the longer it holds the wrinkles which *had* happened -- as
expected :)
Look for patterns where the skirt of your dress is full -- gathered at
the waist or gored -- the vertical wrinkles will look as if they're a
part of the "original plan"; it's the horizontal ones which look
peculiar (and are more likely to appear when riding a bike) and they're
more likely to form when the skirt is tight (and might have to be hiked
up to allow for the pedalling movement of the legs).
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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