Following the design process, the most crucial aspect of clothing creation is fabric selection. All of your design and production efforts will be wasted if the apparel is made of the wrong material.
When selecting a garment fabric, colour and pattern are the first things that come to mind. However, when it comes to making the right choice, it is only one of several factors to consider. Choosing the perfect fabric takes careful consideration and research. You need to get familiar with the materials, types, and properties of the fabrics for clothing available. This is especially important if you are a beginner to avoid wasting textiles.
The great news is, that there are a wide variety of fabrics for clothing suitable for novices, ranging from casual cotton to formal silks. Here is a list of the best ones for you to start practising sewing.
Cotton
Cotton Lawn and Poplin
These are a type of tightly woven, lightweight fabric with a smooth feel and sharp hand. They are comparable to quilting cottons, however, they are a little lighter. Cotton lawn and poplin is a good fabric option for making lightweight casual tops and summer dresses.
These two fabrics are considered some of the easiest to sew due to their stable characteristic, which means they don’t fray and are neither slippery nor stretchy. They are also easy to iron, available in a large array of prints and reasonably priced.
As a novice, you may want to choose printed lawn and poplin as the print helps conceal sewing flaws. However, be cautious when selecting your print; start with a small-scale print, such as small floral prints and polka dots. Avoid plaid or striped fabrics because they are difficult to match along seam lines, and you don’t want to choose a large-scale print where you have to think about placement on the garment.
Cotton Voile
Available in a variety of solids and prints, cotton voile is a semi-sheer, lightweight fabric that features some drape. It is a popular option for making summer tops and coverups.
What makes cotton voile great for beginners is that it’s stable and easy to press. These characteristics make it easy to cut and sew with. It’s an excellent choice when you want something lightweight and sheer that can be transformed into a flowing garment. It is one of the few fabrics for beginners you’ll find with some drape; drapey fabrics are often slippery and more challenging to cut and sew precisely, making them unsuitable for beginners.
Cotton Twill
Characterised by its diagonal lines, cotton twill is a medium- to heavy-weight fabric commonly used to make pants/trousers and jackets. It’s not only easy to cut and sew, but its diagonal texture also helps conceal sewing flaws.
Flannel
Featuring a napped finish, flannel is a soft and medium-weight fabric often used in the creation of shirts, pyjamas, and baby clothing.
Flannel is a sturdy yet soft fabric that is easy to cut and sew. It’s also available in beautiful designs or plaids that are wonderful for hiding stitching flaws. When selecting a print, adhere to small-scale prints and avoid large-scale prints and plaids, as these prints demand pattern matching, which increases the project’s difficulty.
Chambray
Usually light blue in colour, chambray is a lightweight woven fabric commonly used to create shirts and dresses. It’s a strong, densely woven fabric that cuts and sews well. It’s an excellent (lighter-weight) starting alternative to denim, which is more difficult to work with due to its denser weight.
Wool Coating
Wool coating is a term used to describe heavy-weight wool textures suitable for use in jackets. Wool coating fabrics include brushed wool, boiled wool and double-faced wool.
Wool-coated fabric is very easy to cut and sew, and it holds up well to pressing and steaming. The only challenge is that you must ensure that you cut and grade seam allowances to reduce bulk in your jacket.
Silk Dupioni and Shantung
Both silk dupioni and shantung are plain-weave silk textiles with a crisp feel and a subtle shine. Dupioni features small lumps on the fabric’s surface, whereas shantung is smoother and draper.
Both of these fabrics are pretty straightforward to cut and sew, but they both unravel rapidly, so try not to move the cloth around too much after the pieces are cut. Dupioni is particularly beneficial for beginners as its rough texture helps hide sewing flaws.
Brocade
Brocade is a rich, glossy fabric with designs woven directly into it. At first sight, it may seem challenging to work with such an opponent fabric, but brocade is actually pretty stable and simple to work with. The only drawbacks are that it unravels readily, therefore limiting fabric handling, and can be difficult to press if the cloth is very thick. When first beginning out, stick to medium-weight brocades.
Stretch Fabrics
Stretch fabrics, in general, are not suitable for novices. That is because the stretch makes the fabric difficult to manage. However, there are two knit materials that aren’t much stretchy – double knit and neoprene. When sewing with these fabrics, you’ll need to use a stretch stitch and change the setting of your sewing machine.
Double Knit
Also called Ponte or Ponte di Roma fabric, a double knit is a form of knit fabric that is produced by using two sets of needles to create a double thickness of fabric that is connected together by interlocking stitches. It is thicker and more sturdy than other knit textiles.
Due to its sturdy characteristic with just around 20% stretch, double knit/ponte knit is ideal for novices. Most online fabric retailers will show the percentage stretch of the cloth in the product description. In a physical fabric store, you can ascertain the amount of stretch by measuring the length of the fabric at rest, and then again with the fabric stretched out. To calculate the percentage stretch, divide the second measurement by the first, then subtract by 100.)
Unlike most knits, double-knit fabric does not curl at the ends and does not fray like woven materials. This means that the edges of double-knit fabric can be left unfinished to save time when stitching.
Neoprene
Neoprene is a synthetic rubber placed between two pieces of fabric. Traditionally used for making wet suits, printed neoprene has been used lately to make amazing dresses.
Because it’s a solid material that doesn’t curl, it’s relatively straightforward to cut and sew. Just make sure you stick to thinner, garment-weight neoprene. Super-thick neoprene used for wetsuits is difficult to stitch with a conventional sewing machine, and controlling bulk at the seams can be challenging.
