Ikat Beauty!

2015 is off to a wonderful start here at Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley!

As many of you know, there are more and more exciting fabrics and patterns to entice us into the world of sewing garments! It is our mission to support all sewists make choices with more confidence and have a higher rate of success. Here in this blog, Laurel, my amazing seamstress, friend and blog partner, shares many tips for sewing each garment that transfer throughout all projects. If you are new to my blog, please take some time to scroll back in time to see the amazing garments we created in 2014!

To all of you who visit me in the store and say "hi" and for all the moments we get to share. Let's do more of that in 2015!!!

 As I mentioned in my last blog, there are many things that make me smile! All the new fabrics being imported from India rank high on my list of fabric loves!

Now onto the inspiring topic of IKATS!!!

Ikat is a weaving style common to many world cultures. Likely, it is one of the oldest forms of textile decoration. Ikat weaving styles vary widely. Many design motifs may have ethnic, ritual or symbolic meaning or have been developed for export trade. Traditionally, ikat are symbols of status, wealth, power and prestige. Because of the time and skill involved in weaving ikat, some cultures believe the cloth is imbued with magical powers.

To get really technical, Ikat is a dyeing technique used to pattern textiles that employs a resist dyeing process on the warp fibers, the weft fibers, or in the rare and costly 'double ikat' both warp and weft, prior to dyeing and weaving. In ikat, the resist is formed by binding bundles of threads with a tight wrapping applied in the desired pattern. The threads are then dyed. The bindings may then be altered and the thread bundles dyed again with another color to produce elaborate, multicolored patterns. When the dyeing is finished the bindings are removed and the threads are woven into cloth.

And to get really real, we love ikat fabric and I love keeping it in the store.  We took one of our simple dress patterns, New Look's 6013 to make our ikat print dress.  Remember, this is the same pattern that we used for our Japanese Print, and the same pattern that we made up in muslin for a perfect fit.

 

This little dress pattern is a snap to make and sewing on our ikat print is just as easy. 

Seams and dart press into shape with a hot iron.

 

Use a pressing ham on these curved sleeves for a polished look.

Ikat fabrics do ravel, so you will need to finish off seams with a serger 

or use some other seam finishing treatment.

(You can see all the different colored threads that make up this gorgeous fabric!)

Laurel finished off the faced neckline with a double row of topstitching.

And just like that, I'm right in step with our Funky Dress Revolution!

Yep, there's that cool copper zipper down the back. Magical!

I am SO Berkeley!

Creatively Yours,

Suzan