Silk Fabric - 10 Tips On Buying and Caring For Silk

Silk fabric is both beautiful and practical.  A natural fibre, it is used to make clothes, underwear, silk sheets and bedding, scarves and other luxury goods.  Silk fabric is material royalty should be treated as such.  Best10Tips has some advice on buying and looking after it.

1. Silk is a fibre, not a weave.  Silk fabric comes in many different weaves and forms such as : satin, crepe, dupion, duchess, thai, taffeta, raw, jersey,georgette, chiffon , organza and more.
2. Silk fabric should not get wet.  Apart from a few exceptions, it should always be dry cleaned.
3. Unless you are an expert, don’t buy silk fabric (sold by the yard)  if you have not seen and touched and know it’s quality.
4. When working with silk, try not to mark it (even with tailor’s chalk) as, unlike many other fabrics, the marks can stain and bleed.  Any marks you need are best made with small scissor snips (at the edges) or dressmaking pins (in the middle of the fabric).
5. Silk is NOT hot to wear.  Silk can keep you warm but, being a natural fibre, it is more breathable than a lot of man made fibres.
6. When cutting and sewing silk fabric, make sure that your scissors and needles are sharp and clean.  Silk is like paper in that is blunts blades and points very quickly. 
7. Silk is actually very hard to crease.  When Princess Diana got married, there was a lot of comment about how creased her silk dress was when she got out of the car.  Some (rarely shown) footage shows her wedding dress designer doing nothing more than running her hands over the dress to smooth it.  When the princess walks into Westminster Abbey, her dress is perfect again.
8. Silk should never be  stored folded up.  The fold lines will eventually break.  Silk should be stored flat and , if possible, wrapped in colour and acid free tissue paper.  It can be hung up using clips rather than folded over a hanger bar.
9. If you are buying silk fabric to be made into a garment, ask your dressmaker which weave will be suitable for your chosen design.  Some silk weaves are too soft or lightweight to be used with many dress patterns.
10. If you can afford to, always use a silk lining for a silk fabric garment.  The two fabrics sit together better and you get the luxury of silk next to the skin too.

If you have any extra tips on buying or caring for silk fabric or garments, add them to the comments section below. 

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Fashion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.