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A warm welcome to the 16th door of the Blog Advent Calendar 2024! This year’s theme is “Create your magic” – in keeping with the new B 990 machine. What I particularly love about the Christmas season are the magical colors, which become warmer in the light of candles and fairy lights, change and change depending on the angle of view. You can also bring this shimmer and iridescence to your Christmas sewing project, because there is the perfect fabric for it: I’m talking about silk organza. This delicate, shimmering fabric changes color depending on the light, it is soft and moves with its wearer, it shimmers mystically in candlelight and shines under the Christmas tree. Sewing with organza is challenging, but a lot of fun and the result is simply magical! Today i’ll show you how to sew an organza blouse and flower hairband. Lets start!
Twinkling lights, shimmering colors, the scent of cardamom, cinnamon and cloves – the Christmas season has a special magic. And with this year’s Christmas motto #CreateYourMagic, YOU too can become magicians – whether you’re sewing a magical Christmas outfit for yourself or putting a smile on the face of your favorite person.
That’s why I’ve brought you two projects made from this dream fabric:
Last-minute gift: organza flower hairband
Or is it perhaps a bangle? Or a collar? This is decided by the wearer. This flexible accessory can be sewn in less than half an hour and is sure to make you shimmer and shine.
Your Christmas masterpiece: Organza blouse with ruffles
A self-sewn organza blouse is a sewing project for lovely, long Christmas evenings. This fabric needs time and love when sewing. So lets start and sew your organza blouse with swinging ruffles.
What you need for this:
Whether blouse or hairband. In addition to fabric and sewing thread, you will need a few special materials to work with organza:
- A new Microtex needle*
- Sharp tailor’s scissors**
- New, sharp pins, preferably very thin ones for silk fabrics
- A fabric marker that can be washed out or ironed out
- A sheet, tablecloth or bed sheet as a base for cutting. Then the fabric won’t slip away so much
*The needle must be as sharp as possible. Even a slightly blunt needle can pull ugly threads in the delicate fabric
** The same applies to the scissors. If the scissors are blunt or sharp, fine threads can get caught in them during cutting and be pulled out of the fabric, and the edges will also be unclean
If you want to do it quickly – how to sew the flower hairband
The silk organza flower hairband is super quick to sew and also very easy! This project is also ideal for using fabric remnants. I used the remnants of my blouse fabric for this.
Cutting flower parts
Cut 11 to 12 circles out of the silk organza. Don’t worry, the circles don’t have to be perfectly symmetrical. Cutting them out freehand is perfectly fine. The only important thing is that the circles are different sizes. I started with the largest and then gradually made them smaller and smaller.
It is also possible to work without precision here! If the parts are not perfectly the same size and symmetrical, this will have an even better effect later as a flower.
Burn the edges
A candle is used to burn the edges of the circles. You can also do this with a lighter, but with the candle you have both hands free and a better feel for the edges of the fabric. This pulls the fabric together a little and creates the “cracked” look that makes the flower look so natural.
Be careful with naked flames! If you use synthetic organza, work very carefully as it can quickly catch fire and catch fire completely!
Sew the flower together
Now insert all the pieces into each other and secure them from below with a few hand stitches. If you like, you can add a few beads in the middle, just like the flower in my picture above.
Cutting the hairband
The hairband consists of two long strips of silk organza that are then sewn together. The length of the band is determined by the circumference of your head + 20 cm for the ties. If the strap is also to be worn as a belt, the length of the strap is your waist circumference.
Sew hair band
To do this, simply sew the edges of the two parts together and I have sewn a lace at the end.
Leave a piece open in the middle of the long edge as a turning opening. After sewing together, cut the seam allowances down to 0.5 cm and trim them, especially around the tip, almost to the seam.
The tape is then turned over and ironed. Close the turning opening with a few hand stitches.
Attach flower
To ensure that the flower holds well and the ribbon also looks nice from below, I tie it together with a folded, ironed strip of fabric. To do this, the ribbon is first tied together with a thread. Then place the folded ribbon around it, tuck the attached edge under the ironed edge and sew it in place with a few stitches. You then attach the flower to this ribbon with some hand embroidery.
The ribbon with the flower can now be flexibly slid back and forth on the hairband so that the flower can be worn more in the middle or on one side as desired.
The ribbon can be worn not only as a hairband, but also as a bow around a ponytail or bun hairstyle, as a necklace or even as a belt.
Sewing the silk organza blouse
The pattern for my blouse comes from a Burdastyle from the nineties – so it’s now really vintage! However, you can sew an organza blouse from any blouse pattern – just choose your favorite pattern. Now you can find out how to construct the great ruffles and what else you need to consider when sewing with the silk organza.
Not without my sheet! Cutting organza to size
Organza is an endlessly crawly fabric. Small pieces may be easy to spread out on a table, but a large piece of fabric hanging down one side of the table will inevitably slip.
That’s why I always lay an old bed sheet over the table before cutting, and even pin the fabric to it if necessary.
Attention fabric eaters!
A fabric as fine and light as silk organza is often pulled into the machine when sewing. This is not only bad for the machine, it can also produce holes and running stitches in the fabric. It is therefore important never to start sewing directly at the edge of the fabric, but always a few centimeters behind it so that there is still enough fabric behind the needle for the machine to feed.
Working with the rolled hem foot
The rolled hem foot is a practical aid for hemming fine fabrics to perfection. The foot threads the fabric in a snail-shaped coil so that it is folded over twice when it arrives under the needle.
The rolled hem foot is used in combination with a medium straight stitch and I am using the Straight Stitch Hemmer #62 with a rolled hem width of 2mm. It is ideal for fine fabrics and therefore also for sewing with organza.
If you have never sewn with the rolled hem foot before, I recommend practicing on a few fabric remnants first. As you can see from my “practice pieces” here, it takes a few attempts before you get the hang of it.
Starch coating?!
Especially with a slippery fabric such as silk organza, you will find that the fabric tends to slip out of the snail when sewing. This can be avoided by stabilizing the fabric. This works best with a washable stabilizer that is simply ironed onto the edges.
But if you want to work quickly on the organza blouse in the evening and don’t have washable stabilizer to hand (like me 🙂 ), then I have a little hack for you: mix some cornstarch with water and brush the edges of the fabric with it. This has the same strengthening effect as spray starch for ironing, but you can apply it with a brush exactly where it is needed.
Warning! The cornstarch dusts a little when it has dried. After sewing, be sure to clean the presser foot and stitch plate with a vacuum cleaner or brush to prevent dust from getting into the machine.
No rolled hem foot? No problem, that’s how it works:
But you can also create great hems on silk organza fabric without the rolled hem foot. The easiest way to do this is with the zigzag stitch. To do this, press the hem over to the width of the seam allowance and then topstitch directly to the edge using a zigzag stitch. The excess seam allowances are then simply cut off. As already mentioned, the fabric slips easily into the machine when sewing with organza, so I didn’t start sewing the ruffle shown here at the very beginning and shortened the excess seam allowance later.
It looks particularly beautiful if you use a beautiful embroidery thread as the upper thread. I used metallic yarn for the ruffles on my blouse. This has given the ruffles some stiffness and a great glitter effect.
Here in my fabric example. You can see very nicely how the effect looks on the ruffle:
Hide seam allowances with French seam
Seam allowances are always a difficult issue with sheer fabrics: simply overlocking is not an option as this would push through the outer fabric. Sew a rolled hem on a seam allowance after sewing the edges? Practically impossible. That’s why I prefer to sew the so-called “French seam” with such fabrics, where the seam allowance is enclosed in the seam.
To do this, first sew the pieces “wrong side out”, i.e. left sides together. The wrong side of the fabric is the inside.
Then the whole thing is turned over and the seam is ironed. The seam allowance is cut back. Now lay the pieces right sides together, just as they belong together, and sew them together. This seals the seam allowance in the first seam and the edge looks clean from the inside and outside.
Important for French seams – Here I work with a seam allowance of 2 cm because 1 cm is needed for the first and second seam. So you might need to adjust the sewing allowance of your pattern to use this technique.
Enchanting ruffles
I’ll show you the best at the very end! The enchanting ruffles on the collar and sleeves of the blouse are super easy to construct and can be added to any desired cut.
Basically, the ruffle is a spiral. The tighter the curve, the puffier the ruffle will be later. The inner circumference corresponds to the circumference of your neckline or sleeve hem, i.e. the seam to which the ruffle is to be sewn. If you have a point where you don’t want the ruffle to puff out, transfer this from the pattern, like the neckline of my blouse here.
Then all you have to do is cut out the ruffles, neaten the outer edges as described above and pin them where they belong. The inner, round part is slightly stretched during sewing. This creates the puffy effect. Then simply finish the rest of the blouse according to the instructions.
You shimmer and sparkle! The joy of sewing with silk organza
Whether you sit down at the machine in the evening with a mulled wine and work on your blouse, or quickly sew a hair band between baking cookies – a piece of Christmas magic is created. It’s worth pausing for a moment, looking around you carefully and taking in the magical atmosphere of the Christmas season.
I wish you a Merry Christmas, a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year
Your Lasercat
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