The Coco Challenge

Today did not go as planned so I found myself in the studio despite the sunshine and crisp breeze. It was time to pin the pattern pieces to the silk charmeuse lining fabric. My new best friend, paper, made this task extremely difficult as opposed to impossible. It took the better part of an hour to tape one of the selvages to the edge of the four-foot wide paper. It took another entire hour to tape the other selvage in parallel, with the grain running perpendicular. Once this was done, it was easy to fold the fabric exactly in half for pinning and tracing. By taping the slinky, silky fabric to paper, it becomes manageable, even friendly to work with. Cutting through the paper will be a breeze with my second-best pair of fabric scissors. I can't wait, but I have to because I have been called away to rescue my car from the garage where it is being repaired. Interfacings cut from silk organza. The paper makes the fabric behave so nicely!

My fashion fabric is shifty. My silk charmeuse is even shiftier. I was all ready to pin the pattern pieces and start cutting when I realized I was setting myself up to make a very ugly jacket. Lining up the warp and weft is like straightening cooked spaghetti -- impossible. So, I went online and asked my virtual brain, Google, how to cut slippery, stretchy fabrics. Turns out there is a technique for making fabrics behave: cutting through paper. Luckily, I had some wide rolls of white paper in my supply house. I laid out the biggest piece on the floor of my studio and laid the fabric on top of that. It took about two hours to get the weft and warp more or less square with the edges of the paper, by tugging here and pushing there. Once that was done, I pinned the selvages to the paper. It took another two hours to lay out the disassembled muslin on the fabric so as to leave generous cutting allowances around each piece. With a T-square and clear ruler, I lined each piece up cor...