 Hi you guys, Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside to Him. All right you guys, you all loved whenever I did this before for the Halloween fabrics, so I'm back again to talk with you through some of the more important details on how to sew with holiday fabrics. So I ran over to Joanne, I grabbed a whole bunch of different types of fabrics that you might be sewing with to make your holiday dress, make some outfits for a party, or a family gathering, or anything like that. And I'm going to be showing you today best practices on how to work with each of those fabrics. Okay first up we have this really beautiful stretch polyester. They had this in a ton of different prints and I think it's really beautiful with this really great sheen and if you're making like a fit and flair dress situation this kind of fabric is perfect because it has a little bit of give to it. It would also make for really really great festive holiday pencil pants. Consider that although some people call them cigarette pants, I call them pencil pants because if you have a pencil skirt you should be able to have a pencil pants and I don't support smoking and nicotine. Anyways it's just really really beautiful. So first things first I am going to show you which needles you should be using for each of the fabrics. This one like I said is a stretch polyester so we are going to be going to our Microtex slash sharp needles and it's kind of a mid-weight fabric. It definitely has some kind of heft to it so I am going to be using size 80 for this one. Also it is um it does fray a little bit on the sides. You can see it's definitely pulling apart so you want to make sure that you surge your raw edges if you are um leaving your garment unlined. So it should be able to go through your serger with regular polyester thread and make sure that you have your Microtex size 80 needles in the serger as well. I have my Aliso iron here set up to the synthetic setting. It's one of the lighter heats that they have and because this is pretty much all polyester with some spandex in it as well I want to keep the heat really really low and then we also want to ping back the steam to the next to the lowest setting so not no steam just a little bit of bit of light steam and my iron light is green so that means that it is warmed up and ready to go. So we are just going to press this guy very very gently trying to move the iron picking it up putting it down like so and then grab your um Taylor's clapper. This is the one from Cottage Lane that I've been using that has the really cool um pin cushion in it but you just want to press that down go over it a couple times just to make sure that you're getting a little bit of heat and a little bit of steam and then put the Taylor's clapper over it again and press it down like so and then from the other side you will see you have a beautifully pressed um seam and you want to make sure that you don't use too high of a heat here uh because this will burn and when polyester burns it uh changes color kind of it almost becomes like super super shiny and I don't know like if plastic were to melt you know that looks like so that's what we would be dealing with with that but like I said this is a beautiful fabric and it's super easy to work with if you take the time to do these few little special touches. Okay next up we have this really super cool perforated pleather fabric so pleather is plastic it's pretty much like a stretchy water bottle um perforated leather is really cool because it has all these little holes all on the inside which is really really nice and I think that pleather and other synthetic leathers are really great in the winter time because it's very insulating and very hot and very sweaty so wearing this stuff when the temperatures are above like 70 degrees would just be so uncomfortable to me so that's why I like them for the holiday season again you can make a really cute like fit and flare dress you can make a pleated skirt you can make a pencil skirt all of those would be really wonderful the holes are super super small so you don't technically have to line it but if it would make you more comfortable by all means line it you can line it with a polyester because like I said this ain't breathing anyways so there's no sense in having a breathable lining just for no reason okay so sewing with this they actually make needles just for leathers and this one's pretty lightweight in terms of leather I mean it's all relative so I would recommend a 70 or 80 size leather needle and the leather needles are just going to be thicker and they're going to be super super sharp to make sure that they can penetrate the layers of the leather also the leather because it's plastic and not woven and or knit in any way is not going to fray so don't worry about running this through your serger or finishing the seams at all it's completely unnecessary and when it comes to pressing this you really want to try to not press it at all but if you have to press it here's how I do it you're going to need a couple of tools one is a pressing cloth and two is this really nifty thingamajig from clover I think it's called like a pressing wheel I'll have it linked in the description box for you but essentially what you can do with this is apply pressure to the seams that you don't want to apply any heat to at all and it will kind of hold it in place a little bit I mean this isn't heated this wheel it's just plastic but the pressure alone acts as like a finger press situation and will slightly put an indention into your fabric where you don't want to place heat so you can see that seam is kind of laying a little bit flat it's not super perfect but if you wanted to apply some heat again take your pressing cloth I have mine doubled up two layers and leave your iron on the synthetic setting and we want no steam no steam at all because it's plastic and the steam is just going to bubble up on top and not penetrate the fabric anyways so keep it super super light press down for a few seconds at a time and lift up press down lift up and do this a few times keep touching the fabric make sure it's not getting too too too hot okay and then when you peel it back you can see it's a little bit flatter and we can trap some of that heat in with the tailor's clapper and then you can go over it again with your roller okay and so there you have it again they're not ever going to lay super super flat if you want super super flat seams my recommendation would be to top stitch on either side of all of your seams with a matching thread and that will look really cool and be the best way to have super super flat seams but if you don't want to do that and have that detail on your fabric or on your garment um super super light heat and no steam and a lot of these extra tools and time and patient is going to be your best bet for something like stretch pleather okay so next is probably my favorite fabric while I was in the store I was like I don't really know if this goes with my red and green theme but I love this fabric so much that I am including it it is a metallic french terry how cool is that so it's 100 cotton with this metallic thread running through it and you guys it is seriously very stunning in the light I'm kind of losing my natural light here but um it is really really beautiful and animal print is still all the rage this monochromatic situation is really really beautiful you could do everything from like a dressed up sweatshirt to like a dressed up hoodie imagine like a zip top hoodie out of something like this that would sell for hundreds of dollars in the in the ready to wear stores it's really really beautiful and bonus because it's french terry you're probably a little bit familiar with working with it already it's 100 cotton we love 100 cotton the metallic threads are so small that you are probably not even going to notice them you do not have to surge this because it's a knit and it's not going to fray uh for your machine needles you are going to want to use either a large ballpoint jersey needle like the size 90 or the size 90 microtex sharp needle just depends on what you've got on hand really the sharp needle is going to be a little bit sharper which actually might be better for the metallic threads so I had to pick one I would say size 90 microtex needle and then just go to your machine and do your regular stretch stitch usually maybe a number four you know the one looks like a lightning bolt and you're good to go I mean you can surge this if you want to just to keep the insides nice and pretty but you definitely don't have to which is nice now for pressing let me show you how I'm going to press this okay so since this one is made from cotton and metallic thread we can really crank up the heat to the highest setting here as well as the steam crank up the heat crank up the steam it's pretty much impossible to burn cotton and the metallic threads really are just going to kind of conduct that heat a little bit um because it's not a polyester thread uh it won't melt it's just metallic so crank it up as high as it goes and then if you want to be on the safe side which we should always err on the side of caution put your um pressing cloth down just one layer of it make sure that's nice and flat underneath and then my iron is a green light so I'm ready to go okay and then I'm going to pull this back really quickly it's already nice and flat but I'm just going to seal that in a little bit more give it more of a permanent press with my tailor's clapper beautiful all right next up how beautiful is this it looks like tin foil I absolutely love this it's got a ton of stretch to it so you can easily make a fully fitted body con dress and it would be stunning you would look like liquid metal um but you could also use it because it's very drapey as well you could also use it um like a fit and flare a circle skirt would be beautiful anything like that I truly love this fabric so much so it is very very stretchy um but it's also got this you know sheen to the top of it the sheen is made from polyester and metal and you know a lot of synthetic type of things so we need to take that into account whenever we head to our sewing machine so I'm going to recommend a size 80 like a mid-weight um stretch needle for this stretch fabric the stretch needle is going to make sure that it's able to stretch at the seams which you obviously still really want and the size 80 because it's kind of like a mid-weight knit after you have all of this stuff applied to it you can see that you do not need to surge it nothing is fraying nothing is coming undone at all I mean unless you just want pretty insides you don't necessarily you don't have to surge it um and then when it comes to pressing let me show you how I would press this it's so pretty okay so something like this that is stretchy as well as metallic we want to treat with care well actually all of these fabrics were kind of treating with care they are all very specialized but you can tell that it kind of already wants to lay flat which is working to our advantage which is really really nice like we're already halfway there with this so we're going to use our pressing cloth again because these little speckly parts are all like metallic and plastic and um will easily melt definitely could stick to the plate of your iron for sure so we are going to do synthetic heat again no steam whatsoever and we are just going to apply a little bit of heat to this and lift it up make sure it's not getting too hot and when we peel it back you can tell we've got a beautiful flat seam it looks lovely all right now I have this kind of funky take on a crushed velvet so it is a crushed velvet that has been processed in a way where all of these wrinkles are going to stay locked in kind of like a gauze and I just think this would make the most beautiful like tiered dress or like a maxi skirt would be really stunning um anything along those lines it's not stretchy at all so I wouldn't recommend anything tight but something with some I don't know a lot of volume to it I think would be really really pretty and you also want to make sure you treat this like a stripe because all of these like wrinkles are creating what will look like a stripe um once you have it you know all around your body but it is so so cool I want a maxi skirt out of it so bad but um okay so some things to keep in mind this is essentially velvet so if you've ever worked with velvet before you probably know what I'm about to tell you velvet can be a little bit tricky it does not love to stay together um when you're taking it through your sewing machine it wants to be really slippery and to move around it has something called nap which means the fibers all run one way and if you have the fibers going the other way it can create a variation in the fabric mostly in terms of like color and depth but because the nap runs one way it can be very slippery going the with the nap and can create a lot of resistance going against the nap so it doesn't love to stay in place whenever you're putting it through your machine and you have the feed dogs on the bottom so when you get over to your machine I recommend that you use a walking foot a walking foot is going to create feed dogs on the top and feed dogs on the bottom so it's pushing the fabric through the top layer and the bottom layer at the same time which kind of helps keep it together needle wise because this is not a stretch fabric we are going to use a universal needle I would recommend size 80 because it is like a mid-weight velvet type of fabric you don't have to surge it you can see that the edges are not fraying but you obviously can if you want the insides to be really pretty but if you're just doing like a maxi skirt like me don't worry about pressing the inside or don't worry about surging the insides at all but all right so we're going to talk about pressing and how to press this fabric and ensure that you keep all of these little wrinkles in there and not burn the velvet because velvet's kind of easy to burn okay so for something like this that is super textured but also made of synthetic materials we really want to make sure that we don't disrupt the texture that's here don't flatten it out too much don't press out these beautiful like I don't know wrinkles really that are in the fabric already but you also don't want this to burn when velvet burns it becomes very very shiny very noticeable you can really tell a big difference in the burnt sections versus the knot so the trick with this is again we're going to use our pressing cloth and we only need one layer of it and I'm going to use on my iron settings again the synthetic setting but I'm going to crank up the steam because this fabric will take some steam I'd rather it get hot from the steam than hot from the metal plate does that make sense and we're going to do it in small bursts again keep checking the fabric making sure it's not too hot it should never be too hot for you to leave your hand on it not just put it down and lift it back up but to leave your hand down that's the kind of temperature that we're going for and just lift and press and get some of that steam in there and then we peel this back you can see we have a beautiful flat seam I am obsessed with this fabric and the seams are hidden so beautifully you can't even see them so that's the way I would press out this um velvet okay so I also picked up red suede how hot would this be as like a moto jacket velvet blazers are I'm sorry suede blazers are like all the rage right now that would be stunning you could make a suede a red suede blazer and wear it over a little black dress and be ready to go for the holidays in a cinch so some things to keep in mind with suede uh it does have a nap meaning all of the fibers run one way and then if you do it the other way it creates a variation in the color let me see if I can get that to show really well hold on okay I hope this shows up so can you see you probably can't see all this annoying sunlight right here is a line where all the nap is going one way above it and all the nap is going another way below it can you see it better from far away okay well I promise it's there so you need to keep that in mind whenever you're cutting out your pattern a lot of times they'll have the cutting charts will have with nap or without nap so make sure you're paying attention to that because if you have like your left side of your blazer with the nap going one way and your right side of your blazer with a nap going the other way as you wear it and things touch you it's going to look like one side is darker and the other side is lighter it's going to look like two different fabrics but if you have them all going the same way then no matter how you get touched it'll always look the same it doesn't matter if the nap goes up or down although with suede most people like for it to feel nice and smooth when you press down your body but if you mess up and do it the other way no one will know just as long as they're all the same okay so you obviously don't need to surge suede at all um and then when you get to your sewing machine the wrong side of your suede is smooth but it's got a lot of traction so when you put it on your plastic sewing machine table it is going to create a lot of resistance as it's being pulled through the sewing machine so the way that i like to get around doing that is by taking like parchment paper or something like that and wrapping it around the table of your sewing machine up to your sewing plate and that way it'll help it be nice and smooth and it'll help you know pull it through nice and easy you can also double ensure that it goes through evenly by using a walking foot so that the feed dogs are on top of your fabric and on the bottom and being fed through at the same rate um you do want to be careful because uh pins and even wonder clips anything that's going to cause an indention in the fabric might show so just be careful to keep your pins and your clips and all of that within the seam allowance and then when you get to your sewing or when you get to your um yeah sewing machine and you're looking for a needle um you could go to the leather side of things and do like a lighter weight leather needle like a size 90 or 80 or you could do your universal needle in a larger size like 80 or 90 just depends on what you have uh but obviously pressing suede can be a little bit tricky so let me show you how I do it so the suede is similar to the pleather but also sort of like the velvet so it's not plastic well I mean it is plastic but it's not plasticky like the pleather is it's a polyester similar to the velvet so we are trying to kind of marry the concepts between those other two fabrics so when I'm going to press this again I'm going to go with a super super light heat the synthetic heat here and I'm going to ping back my steam to just about nothing I am going to use the pressing cloth one layer and get that nice and flat and then I'm going to lay my iron on top of it for a few seconds and then go in with the tailor's clapper we didn't use the tailor's clapper on the velvet because we didn't want all of those beautiful wrinkles to get pressed out so again with a little bit of heat we're just going to alternate heat tailor's clapper heat tailor's clapper until we get it flat like we like it so you can see it's kind of getting there if you keep going a couple more times we will be able to get that nice and flat all right and there we go super flat super beautiful um suede seam you know how normally we save the best for last well I saved the worst for last and that is this really beautiful sequin paillette combo on mesh so it is really beautiful you can see how it shimmers in the light it would make a beautiful top I do recommend for fabrics like this a garment with as few seams as possible I mean I'm talking like a top with a straight bodice and maybe a set in sleeve maybe even a grown on sleeve uh the back is cut on the center fold I'm talking very very few seams because your very first step is to go through all of your seam allowances and rip away all of the sequins and the pietz it's very tedious it's very annoying it's very messy but that's the right way to do it you really don't want to sew through these pietz especially because they are so large um but your machine isn't going to like sewing through the little sequins either I mean it's basically penetrating uh plastic every single time and like you wouldn't sew through like a plastic bottle so you really shouldn't be sewing through these either the beauty of it is though that because there's a silver lining because it is on a netting you don't have to surge anything nothing is going to fray nothing is going to come away so once you are able to take away all of the sequins from the seam allowances you should be good to go and it'll be very simple and very straightforward after that um as far as cutting those I did want to point out grab your worst cheapest nastiest pair of scissors because you are going to be cutting through some of the sequins and again cutting through plastic your fancy uh cutting shears are not going to like that so go ahead and um just grab your cheap scissors be prepared maybe even to throw these away after you're done because you're going to be cutting through a lot of plastic and when you get to your machine you are going to want to use a very small fine needle essentially you're only sewing through the mesh if you've taken out all the sequins and pietz like I'm recommending then all you should be sewing through is the mesh so you want a really really small needle you could even use a universal that would be fine a universal size 70 if you have one smaller than that even better and then on top of all of that all of those little tips and tricks you don't even need to press this stuff so because it's on the netting because it's made of plastic or the pietz and the sequins are um it's really going to lay fairly flat the netting is very thin compared to the portion that has all of the sequins still on it so it's going to want to lay flat naturally and I did sew through a couple of the pietz just for illustration and you can see my sewing machine was able to sew through them but you don't want that against your skin that is what is going to create such an itchy situation on the inside and it's not going to be worth it now that I'm saying that this is mesh and it is see-through so I'm guessing you'll be lining this but still that's just not that's just not the way to do it you don't want that sticking out of your seams all over the place that it could even like poke through the lining I think I don't know they're like sharp little plastic things so to try and avoid that remove all of those sequins and pietz from your seam allowances but no pressing no serging and use your worst scissors those are my best tips for like sequins on netting but like I said it is really really beautiful and wouldn't that make like the most gorgeous top all right you guys that is going to do it those are my recommendations for these holiday type of specialty fabrics if you have questions or are curious about different types of fabrics that you might be using the holiday season like brocade for example be sure to check out the same exact format video that I did before on halloween fabrics I will have it linked up here it'll also be in the description box if you love any of the fabrics that I showed or demonstrated with today I will have those linked in the description box as well they all came from joanne and I'll also have my aliso iron linked as well so you can check the description box for the link but also for a coupon code so if you're looking to up your iron game and your pressing game now is a really great time to do it and you can use my code to save a little bit of money so yeah that's gonna do it for me thank you all so much for watching have a blast making all of your holiday outfits I can't wait to start seeing them all on social media but I will see you all very soon bye