You should never neglect the home décor section when shopping for costume fabric. You’ll find patterns and colors there appropriate for a surprising swathe of history and some drawn characters too. For instance, when you need emergency princess gear, pintuck taffeta can be a lifesaver. Sheer gauze curtains can provide material for fairy wings. I’ve lost count of… Read More »
I’ve encountered samite in I don’t know how many bits of historical fiction, but it’s only now that I wonder what it actually is! According to good ol’ Wikipedia, samite is a heavyweight silk fabric with a twill weave, although as time passed, the term came to be applied to any heavyweight fabric with a… Read More »
Taffeta is a plain-weave fabric with a very stiff – or crisp – hand. It has a very distinctive rustle when it moves and heavier weights will stand away from the body when gathered to any degree. It’s gorgeous stuff and I love it. Historically, taffeta was made from silk – here’s a separate entry about silk… Read More »
This really should be included with the sheers, but what the hell, I’m writing this and decided we should talk about it separately. This is a sheer fabric, as you can see, and what makes it noteworthy is this feathery, opalescent sheen to it. Left to itself, this fabric can attract every little girl under… Read More »
I know I’ve already written about taffeta in general, but I wanted to give a quick shout-out to silk taffeta in particular. Mostly because it’s one of my favorite fabrics. Silk taffeta is usually light to very light weight – silk is expensive and heavy weight silk is even more so, so textile mills stick… Read More »
Sequin trims are discussed over here. Indulge me, I’m going to get even more preachy than usual. It used to be that “sequin fabric” meant this. That fabric features thousands and thousands of round sequins machine or hand-sewn onto a fabric base. But in the past decade or so, manufacturers have realized that there are cheaper… Read More »
Silk shantung is a plain-weave silk fabric that’s often confused with silk dupioni. The name derives from the Shandong area of China. Both fabrics feature ‘slubs’ which are natural irregularities in the silk thread from the silkworms’ cocoons. Shantung is smoother than dupioni, with fewer slubs in the weave. From more than a few feet away,… Read More »
Silk dupioni is plain-weave silk fabric with a distinctive “slubby” surface. Those slubs are from the silkworms’ cocoons, and they add a bumpy, almost rough texture to the fabric. In any other silk, these slubs would be a defect but, in this case, they’re a feature. I sometimes wonder if it was created as a marketing… Read More »
Crepe is a type of fabric in which the yarns are given a pronounced twist which results in a nubby texture on the surface. The texture may be subtle, or it can be quite pronounced. Crepe may be woven from almost any yarn and there are dozens of fabrics out there with a crepe texture.… Read More »
Charmeuse is a satin-weave fabric in which the weft threads float over three or more warp threads at a time. It’s different from satin in that it uses a different ratio of warp to weft threads (over and under) than satin does. Wonderful. What does that mean? That means charmeuse is a lightweight, shiny, slippery fabric, with a… Read More »
Fabric For Cosplayers