Please help (with tips) a terrified newbie sew drapes out of velvet.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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First, I’m a newbie to sewing, not the SDMB.

Why am I a newbie when I’m almost 50? My mother and grandmother were expert sewers. My grandmother especially, she made all of my clothes until I was 16. I think they thought I was too stupid to learn, and neither one would let me come near their machines. I didn’t even learn how to sew buttons on from them! I took a semester of sewing in high school (the other semester was cooking) but we never got past making pillows.

In essence, beyond the random messy seam repair, and buttons resewn with way too much thread (a gorilla could pull on them, and the fabric would tear before the button comes back off, dammit!) I’m pretty helpless.

I thought I was going to inherit my mother’s fancy and expensive sewing machine (which was a piece of furniture in and of itself) but when she died my dad sold it before telling me. A few years ago I bought a new basic sewing machine, but it’s never been touched. A friend who was going to teach me to use it moved away before that happened.

So, now, I have to make a BUNCH of drapes, using Triple Velvet. It (or Double Velvet) is what magicians use to make things like the Statue of Liberty disappear because it doesn’t reflect any light at all. These are for my living room (no, not for a magic act. We have a ceiling-mounted projector and big screen home theater setup, and the curtains are a must.).

I searched all over for Double or Triple Velvet and found the best price for Triple Velvet at Denver Fabrics ($5.98 a yard as opposed to Evanton’s Vogue Fabric’s $9.99 a yard) and I just sent away for swatches. I’m sure I’ll order the fabric (30 yards!) soon after I get the swatches. The curtains have to be done and in place by November 1.

We have a square bay window setup (3 windows, 5 windows, 3 windows). There are already very nice dark maroon swags there from the previous tenant (we just moved in) and we’ll leave them there. What I have to do seems very simple. Cut to length. Top pocket for the curtain rod. Hem. That’s it. Still, I’m worried because I’ve never used the sewing machine, they all have to be uniform length, and this fabric, even at that price, is pretty pricey for being messed with by a newbie. Also, I want them to look like nice curtains, and not pieces of fabric stapled up (believe me, stapling has been a boon to me in the past. Buy curtains? Sew curtains? Staple fabric? Staple!!) and nicer than the thick black plastic we had stapled up at our last apartment.

You must understand that I was born without the decorating gene. Most girly stuff (makup, hairstyles, fashion, decorating, etc.) is not part of my knowledge base and I never even try because I would make it look tacky. I don’t want these curtains to look tacky. The fact that they’ll be black will help cut down the tacky factor (leaving aside that some people would think black velvet curtains in the living room is tacky in and of itself).

Any tips? I can see myself the day the bolt arrives via UPS. I’ll be looking at it, and the scissors, and the sewing machine, and the cleared off dining room table…I’ll start to cry and go sleep for 36 hours. Then get out the staple gun…

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Equipoise, I’ve done quite a bit of sewing. Even sewn velvet! If you are up to some lessons I could teach you the basics. I don’t live far from you.

Lesson #1: Buy a yard of the velvet to practice on. Ripped out stitching leaves tracks on velvet. And it can be slippery. You’ll want a feel for the fabric before tackling the drapes. You also want to practice blind hemming. I’ll assume you don’t want to do that by hand.

(And don’t diss the stapler. I’ve made curtains using one.)

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Oooh, oooh, yes YES! Email me at xenussister@yahoo.com if you don’t have my phone number. (I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to get together before our move.)

Whatever “blind hemming” is, I’m positive I don’t want to do it by hand. :wink: I assume that’s hemming in such a way that doesn’t show thread.

Can you suggest a good pair of sissors and what kind of thread (and how much) to get? I might as well order everything I need from Denver Fabrics. They seem to have great prices.

Eq

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I’m not close enough to help, but let me toss out one word: nap. Velvet has a nap. You don’t want the nap to be different on different curtains - it’ll make you crazy!

Other advice: check and double check all measurements before you make the first cut. Pin all seams and hems - nothing worse than slipping fabric as you sew. Take your time - rushing ruins!!

My grandmother couldn’t sew but my mom does, and she taught me when I was a pre-teen. By the time I got into Home Ec sewing class (It was required) I was so far beyond the rest of the girls, in the time they sewed their drawstring bag and jumper, I made both of those, plus a skirt and vest and some small accessories. Sewing isn’t hard - it just requires patience and attention to detail. Good luck to ya!

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You may want to get some pleater tape, which is designed to make curtain-making as brainless as possible. You sew it across the top of the fabric, and then fold it according to the directions on the tape and insert hooks to make pleated curtains. They sell it at Denver Fabrics, so you could get it at the same time as your velvet.

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Take some classes or lessons from a helpful friend. Use about a million pins (pinned perpendicular to the sewing line, not parallel to it) because when you sew velvet right-side-to-right-side (that means the two fuzzy sides touch) it sticks like crazy and if it isn’t sitting just right, will make your seams align wrong.

I never sewed a stitch before college, when I took a costume design class. For my final project I made a dress out of gold colored velvet – it has Princess seams and everything. I don’t fit into it anymore but I like taking it out of the closet and admiring the work!

Another suggestion is to buy an equal length of cheap unbleached muslin (usually just .50-.99 cents or so a yard) and do a “practice run” of the exact pattern you plan to use. This gives you a chance to practice and make you mistakes on the cheap stuff. When you start on your “good” fabric, you’ll have a clearer idea of what the problem areas are.

Measure twice, cut once!

Wash washable fabrics before you cut them (fabric has sticky material called “sizing” that holds it in shape on the bolt – if you don’t wash it first you might get a nasty surprise the first time you wash your finished project.)

Don’t laugh but I have the “Sewing for Dummies” book around for when I get confused.

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You can do it!!!

My input would be to get out that iron on sticky tape and just cut the drapes to the size you want and hem every thing with the tape and use some backing material to sew a rod pocket in the top. VOILA!

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Hello Again already gave you my best piece of advice – practice making them first with something simple and cheap, like sheeting material. it’s really a must if you’re making up the pattern yourself. you don’t want to discover, “oh, I can’t turn the corner here, it needs to be moved back at least 3/4 of an inch” when you’re working on the good stuff. :eek: it will also give you a chance to get to know your sewing machine beforehand. sewing slowly is ALWAYS better for maintaining control (unless you’re already at the level where you can do this in your sleep). i’ve been known to manually turn the wheel on my (very old model) Singer, just to have the control of making the needle stop EXACTLY where i want it when i go to turn a corner.

and yes, unfortunately, velvet does indeed have nap directions, and will probably have a tendency to “show” old stitching lines if you wind up ripping out anything because it didn’t go right the first time.

washing the material is good, not only for getting out sizing, but also for checking how “true” the weave is. ages ago, back in the days of my Home Ec classes, our teacher warned us to always check that material we bought hadn’t been pulled off-weave when it was wound onto the bolt. on simple weaves, you did this by pulling out 1 thread hortizontally (across the cloth). it not only let you get a true straight edge to the fabric (sometimes the cut runs at an angle when they cut it from the bolt), but when you lay it out flat, fully spread out, you can see if the weave itself still runs at a proper 90 degree angle. if it doesn’t, washing can sometimes relax the fabric back into true, or else or steaming the fabric, then pulling it back into shape will help.

i know this all sounds like a lot of work before you’ve even done a stitch or snip, but it does make sure the “drape” of the fabric doesn’t get all weird on you.

this one probably won’t apply, since you’re working with velvet and making drapes (as opposed to something more tailored, like clothing). but the other little gem i gleaned from those classes was “Press the material after each seam or step.” amazing how much neater the seams will lay, and how much more professional the entire product will appear when you’re done. but you wouldn’t iron velvet – you’d steam it using the iron maybe, but actually applying the iron onto the fabric might crush the nap.
oh, one last thought. this Double or Triple Velvet sounds like it might be pretty heavy material. all that fabric could wind up weighing quite a bit. that might possibly start putting a strain on the curtain-rod-pocket stitching after a while. perhaps you might want to consider some sort of interface-type material, added to the inside (wrong side) of the velvet, to help strengthen that area.

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sewing with velvet…use a roller foot, it helps to reduce the slipping. if you must iron velvet they make such a thing called a pinboard that you use to press the velvet without crushing the nap.

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Didya know, also that you can take a pretty stamp (like the kind you use with an ink pad) and place it on the wrong side of velvet and then iron over it with a cool iron and it will crush that design into the velvet? I saw a really pretty Christmas tree skirt made like that once.

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My advice is: in the end don’t stress about it too much. Just remind yourself that when people can see them, they’ll be open and look primarily like beautiful, drapey, velvet folds. When they’re closed (and most likely to show any mistakes) the room will be pitch black and everyone will be facing the screen and watching a movie.