bathroom brawler

So, although my anna silk bout is scheduled for today, it has been delayed (again) by the surprise DIY bathroom renovation, progress shown above. The case of Bordeaux has been an intrinsic part of the process. But as far as the MSN Match goes, this featherweight contender (HAAAA get it?) has been way too involved in life and le toilette to give her opponent, Shocking Chiffon, the proper amount of respect. Behold:

Those pleats would have been, as Rob would say, ruinaballoona.

I'm taking the weekend to do things properly, and will reveal on Tuesday. It hurts my A+ nature like the dickens to miss a deadline, but this stuff is too pretty to slam through. And slamalicious I have been: I was even caught hand stitching in the waiting room of an audition yesterday. It was not pretty. My brilliant idea of pre-waxing the thread and rolling it up in my purse left me with a dreadlock of cotton fiber. When they called my name, I was a mere three stitches in, and as I grabbed my bag, I accidentally pulled on the thread and snarled the whole shebang all over again. (First time EVER, by the way, that this particular casting office didn't make me wait 30 minutes. I was counting on that 30 minutes of bathroom-DIY-dust-free space, yo!!!)

Now that I'm calmly forging ahead, I thought I'd share a few tips for working with extremely thin super sheer silk chiffon. (My friends who do not speak sew, skip ahead to the last tidbit. What the hell is a tidbit, anyway?)  

sharp fine glass head pins, of course. I know most peeps use steel pins with those teeeeeeeeny heads, but Rob likes to find my pins with his feet. Glass head are easier to see amidst the rubble, and my iron won't hurt them.  

my glass nail file is ever handy in order to keep my talons from snagging the precious. Seriously, this thing is genius.

mercerized cotton thread  is your mate: if a seam should break due to poor tension (HIGHLY possible with this stuff, at least at my level of coughexpertisecough) the thread will go before the silk will. Speaking of tension...

for your machine, a light pressure and low tension seems to be best. Still! Adjusting my stitch length even the slightest bit changed the game. Exactly 2.5 is a happy marriage for my machine and silk. Guess who had to unpick a few seams after finding that out. A microtex needle (also known as sharp) is the bomb. If your machine has one, use a straight stitch plate.

when sewing, don't backstitch! Start each seam a bit further in (starting at the raw edge will give your needle plate some delicious silk to chew on, and you will definitely need a cocktail to get that mess outta there. I recommend a french gimlet). When starting and ending a seam, you can either begin with a very tiny stitch length for the first five stitches or so, or hand knot the beginning and end of each seam.

last tidbit: cutting sheer silk sucks. Especially when, due to aforementioned surprise DIY, your only choice of cutting surface is the bedroom rug. But wait! What about that piece of 5x5 drywall you just happen to have lying around? Couldn't you duct tape some straight edges on the sides, throw that on top of the bed, and make a swiveling cutting surface?

Yes. Yes you could.

(But if you go that route, don't use a rotary cutter.  Drywall dust gets EVERYWHERE, man.)

eta: this post has been updated with some affiliate links, so let your fingers do the googling if you're not into that! any pennies earned go back into sewing and blogging (and the occassional prize for my own personal handyman.)