
I've had a dream of a Fabric Godmother Peony Dress in velvet for a while now, and bought this polyester velvet over a year ago at B&M fabrics in Leeds. Then as always I procrastinated about it for months... But eventually this month I finally sat down to create the look that I had dreamed about for a year. It didn't all go smoothly...here's what I learned about sewing with velvet.
Cutting out
Firstly, and probably most importantly, make sure you lay all of your pattern pieces in the same direction. Velvet has a nap, meaning that the fibres are raised and can be brushed in different directions. This is what makes velvet feel luxurious, but it can also causes issues for sewists: the direction of the nap will change how the fabric looks and feels. You could play with the nap to create different effects, but in this case I planned to cut the Peony with nap. However, best laid plans and all that...

How do I check the nap direction?
Run your hand over the fabric, if it feels smooth this direction is ‘with nap’. If you run your hand over the fabric in the opposite direction it will feel a bit more bumpy or rough, this is ‘against the nap’. Generally garments are made ‘with nap’, so if for example you were wearing a dress you would smooth it down rather than up.
How do I make sure that all my pattern pieces are in the same direction?
For this dress, I pinned all of my pattern pieces to the fabric in the same direction before cutting any out. You could also try drawing an arrow on the reverse of your fabric to make sure you cut pieces with the nap in the same direction. This is especially useful if the pattern piece is something like a rectangle, where it can be easy to mistake the top for the bottom. Alternatively, you could just wing it like I did and tell everyone your mistakes are deliberate :) Despite checking multiple times, I inserted the bottom ruffle upside down. It is a really good illustration of how different velvet can look against the nap as opposed to with nap, but luckily as it is one solid piece of the dress I can get away with calling it a design feature!
Sewing

I used a microtex needle, and made sure that I sewed in the direction of the nap. I tested on scraps first, and found that stitch length 3 worked best on my machine. It is recommended that you use a walking foot when sewing with velvet, my Pfaff Quilt Ambition 630 sewing machine has Integrated Dual Feeder Technology (IDT) which essentially replaces the need for a walking foot, and on the whole I found that the velvet stayed together going through the machine. My overlocker (serger) however was a different story - it and the velvet were not friends, and after a few seams, I realised that the poly velvet did not fray and so luckily I didn't need to finish my seams.
For hems, I tried a blind hem for the first time following the excellent YouTube tutorial from Rach Stitched Up. It worked brilliantly!
Pressing
The thing I found most frustrating when sewing with velvet is that you can't press in the normal way. Having tested on some offcuts I found that pressing directly onto the nap side marked the fabric. Mostly I pressed on the reverse, or used a pressing cloth (an offcut of cotton) on the nap side, but even then pressing for too long could still mark the fabric, so in short...be careful! Hover the steam over the seam or hem you want to press, and press in short bursts. This fabric was particularly hard to press of course as it was a polyester, so ultimately I had to live without really crisp seams - that's the price you pay to have a wrinkle free dress!
Pattern
The Fabric Godmother Peony is an absolutely beautiful pattern and homage to the iconic (and much missed) The Vampire's Wife Falconetti. It has some really classy touches like an optional shoulder puff (omitted in this case as the velvet had enough body) and mutiple darts. Does it work in velvet? Yes! In hindsight, for a really special version a viscose or silk velvet would perhaps have been a better choice as this poly velvet is a little heavy, but nevertheless as a cheaper option it works well and allowed me to toile this pattern and I am delighted with it...already planning my next Peony!
(Trigger warning: grief/mental health)
A PS about sewing and grief
I made this dress in the first few weeks of awful, debilitating grief after my gorgeous mum passed away in late December. For a week I couldn't get out of bed at all, and the thing that finally tempted me out was sewing. Sometimes it was hard to concentrate, I made many mistakes, and I cried a lot, but at the end of it I had what is actually a beautiful dress, and I know my mum would have loved it. For me this project represents a journey from total and utter despondency to glimmers of happier times ahead doing the thing I love. It showed me that sewing is more than a hobby of lovely fabric and accessories, it is a lifeline when things feel bad to a community of caring, supportive sewists, so thank you to everyone who has liked or commented on my Instagram post. Sewing (and sewists) are amazing.
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