Texturizing Fabric

If you recall my inspiration garment, which you can see here, the green underskirt is textured. I have seen this kind of textured sheer at Joanns and it just reads cheap to me. Maybe in a different fabrication I would feel differently. I didn't want anything like this sheer but I did like the idea of some texture in the green underskirt.  My goal here was not a lot of depth to the texture but simply random lines in the taffeta. This is how I achieved that.
Here you can see the washed poly taff. Poly is good for this technique because the heat of the dryer will permanently texture poly. Natural fibers would lose any texture the minute they got wet.

The first step is to wet the fabric thoroughly.

 

Take the wet fabric and twist and wring, wring and twist until the coil actually turns back on itself.

Take your wet twisted coil and secure it tightly with elastics, string or whatever works. I don't like to use rubber elastics as I think the heat might losen them, not sure. Take this tied up coil and throw it in the dryer with 2-3  loads of laundry. Yes, it will sound like sneakers bouncing around. My small skirt piece was done after two loads. Pull your coil out and gently untie.

 

Carefully spread it just a bit. It should still feel a tad damp deep inside. Let it lay like this until completely dry.

When it is totally dry spread it out and it should look like this. Let dry more if necessary. Once completely dry, take the fabric and bring it to the ironing board.  This where it will be steam pressed into a "lined" flat textile. Depending on your project, you could use the fabric as you see it above or you could choose to press it flatter like I did. This is my end result, just what I wanted. I just hope it works in the finished dress. Fingers crossed....Bunny

Now I will gather it at the top and apply it to the lining. More tomorrow. This is going pretty quickly. The lining is complete. All that remains is stitching up the red skirt and the cream velvet bodice. Mañana......Bunny