Choosing the fabric has to be one of my most favourite parts of the sewing process. This is where you can really let your personality come into play and craft yourself a unique garment! Macaron is best suited for medium weight cotton, linen, light twill, and light corduroy. I would also add lightweight wool and jersey knits to the list. This is also a great pattern to mix fabrics with: a cotton dress and a voile yoke and sleeves or corduroy dress with a lace yoke.
In The Colette Sewing Handbook, Sarai wrote a wonderful chapter all about fabric, which is exceptionally useful. If you have the handbook, I suggest taking a few moments to review this chapter as it can really pinpoint what fabric you should use to achieve the look you want. Today we're going to review the types of cotton, linen, twill, and crepe that are ideal for Macaron.
Cotton
Cotton is one of my favourite textiles and is great to work with. It comes in a variety of weight, colours, and patterns. It yields a pretty garment that looks smart and keeps you cool in the warm weather. It washes up a treat and irons quickly. For this project, we are looking for medium weight cottons such as shirting and quilting. Macaron offers an opportunity to be bold with colour and pattern combinations. I especially like Adey's, of The Sew Convert, version. Adey used a variety of quilting cottons and created this bright and bold Macaron.
While some may not prefer to work with quilting cottons in apparel projects, I absolutely love them! Quilting cottons are meant to be hard-wearing, which is one quality I need in a fabric. They offer the same colours and prints as their apparel quality counterpart and are just as easy to work with. Harts Fabrics has some incredible cottons (both apparel and quilting) available on their website, including delectable Liberty of London prints
Linen
Linen is a lovely textile that lends itself to a variety of apparel projects. It softens with wear and is hard-wearing. Pure linen has a slight stiffness to it, whereas linen blends are often softer, have more drape, and often require less ironing! Amy, of Harts Fabric, recently finished her perfectly purple Macaron in a mix of linen and cotton:
She used 100% linen for the dress and a beautiful Art Gallery cotton print for the yoke. As an added bonus, Amy handmade the pleated bias tape. Macaron's design is a perfect opportunity to add unique trims to play up a design feature. Just look at Mary's buttoned yoke version. So pretty!
Twill
Twill comes in a variety of weights and blends. For Macaron, lightweight twill will give you the best results. Anything heavier may yield a too-stiff dress. If you are working with twill for this projects, I suggest using lightweight cotton twill or lightweight twill blends, such as cotton/rayon.
Jessica has effortlessly paired a lightweight twill with a printed cotton to make her Macaron. Lightweight twill does wrinkle and requires ironing; however, it is an ideal transition fabric, as it keeps you warm in the cooler months without being bulky.
Before starting any sewing project, be sure to pre-treat your fabrics according to their fibre content. Cotton and linens tend to shrink, so if you plan to wash and dry your finished Macaron, the same pre-treatment is suggested for your fabric prior to sewing. Click here to read a fabulous and informative post on pre-treating, authored by none other than Sarai of Colette Patterns.
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Don’t forget! Hart’s Fabric is offering 10% off Macaron supplies with the code sewcolette10!
Don’t forget! Hart’s Fabric is offering 10% off Macaron supplies with the code sewcolette10!
Stay tuned for tomorrow's post where we review jersey, corduroy, and wool.
4 comments:
Love all of these versions!
Thanks for mentioning my Macaron with such kind words!
The cotton twill turned out great - it even has a bit of stretch in it! But yes, it's very needy when it comes to ironing :)
Oooh! Most of these dresses are new to me and they are all so gorgeous!
These are all great options. I wish I could be so colour creative.
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