Hi, Today I bought some woven wool fabric and suitable Bemsilk lining to make myself a hip length jacket. What I want to know is do I have to completely cover the wool in fusable webbing to support it, or will the Bemsilk be sufficient?
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tailoring with wool
Congrats, Virjim, you are about to discover the wonders of sewing with wool! First of all, compare the drape of your fabric to the drape required for your pattern and if it's too soft, fuse a sample to light interfacing and test that. Need interfacing? VERY IMPORTANT! Fusing will shrink both your wool and your interfacing, so they must be preshrunk separately. Here I will defer to my betters--go look up the subject in the magazine index or the archives (if you can, with the accursed new format). I dip my interfacing in steaming hot water for a couple of minutes, then hang to dry. I gently fold my wool together with a quite damp sheet and leave to dry overnight (London shrinking), or you can send it to the cleaners to be steamed. This may sound like a lot of work--until you skip it, start to fuse, and find everything shrinking this way and that! Wool will repay all the care you put into it, with interest. Let us see a picture of your finished project!
Good Information
This is such good information. I hope everyone venturing into sewing with wool reads this --- or better yet copies and prints it to keep with their personal sewing reference material/notebook, as I plan to do. I've done a fair amount of sewing with wool, but I was not familiar with this particular method of preshrinking. Thank you for posting.
Tailoring with wool
The information you provided is good. However, I too do not like the new format. In that regard it has been a long time, until a few minutes ago, that I've been on this site and I've been registered for 4-1/2 years! I liked the old format wherein you could look on the left of the screen and get a cursory overview of the topics. Ugh.
Thank you for the information about tailoring with wool. I hadn't thought of preschrinking but it makes brilliant sense. I might chicken out an dsee what the dry cleaner can do for me and failing that I will try the London method.....how interesting that it is called that!
I look forward to getting started and then eventually finishing so I can post a picture!
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