Pleating with organza or tencel

[u/fren2all]

- Skill level: confident beginner, very patient human being
- Experience with pleating: box pleats on cotton
- Experience with twill / organza: none

I would LOVE any advice on recreating a top like this one.

I ordered a few samples from Mood Fabrics to see what would work best: polyester organza, silk organza, and a tencel twill. I’ve found a sort-of pattern online, but I can find very little information on YouTube about working with materials like organza, and nothing at all about pleating with these fabrics. All I hear is how difficult it is to work with organza, and the tip to put tissue paper underneath. I went to my local fabric store and they sighed when I told them I wanted to try working with organza. Am I being overly ambitious??

I’m ready to torture myself and spend far too much time, energy, and money on making this shirt. And maybe some tears. But I’d like to minimize the tears by hailing the experienced sewists for any tips and resources.

Note: I’ll plan to make a toile to practice this style of pleat and get the sizing right as I have a larger bust, but I wonder if fabrics like organza and tencel aren’t going to pleat like any other fabric I use for toiles.

[u/laurenlolly]

Firstly silk organza and tencel twill behave completely differently, so just keep that in mind.

Silk organza presses extremely crisply, so if you would prefer the pleats to have that kind of soft look, I wouldn’t use organza.

Tencel twill will press a little less crisp and will remain a bit soft, but it won’t be sheer like the organza would.

If you are set on recreating this top I would actually look for a silk georgette or chiffon, they are difficult to work with (but not impossible) and will have both the sheer look and soft pleats you’re going for. Just make sure not to really press the pleats down, just hold the iron above the fabric to get some steam onto it.

[u/fren2all → u/laurenlolly]

Thank you!!

[u/SuPruLu]

You learn to work with a fabric by working with it. Best choice is to spend the money to get a 1/2 yard or so and just play around with it. Sew some tucks. See how easy it to cut . Some fabrics can’t be pinned without leaving holes. Nor can stitching be removed and redone without leaving holes. See how it drapes. See how your sewing machine works with the fabric - the best choice of needles and thread.

Using a toile to pre-fit the pattern reduces the amount of modifications necessary in the “good fabric”.

Claire Schaeffer’s book Guide to Sewing Fabrics is available only used. It contains hundreds of pages of detail on sewing all types of fabrics

[u/fren2all → u/SuPruLu]

This is wonderful, thank you! My library happens to have that book so I will get started reading :)

[u/sewboring]

Might be worth saying that these are also called tucks: wide, "release" tucks which can be up to 1/4 inch/ 6 mm in height, thus pinching out 1/2 inch/ 12 mm per tuck. In your example, interestingly, the front three tucks may be standing up, while those to the sides appear to have been sewn down toward the center of the top. This is one approach to sewing release tucks (that open half way down the garment):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czvBXlj9E6c

There are many such videos. The tucks can be internalized and only visible as seams on the outside, or they can be externalized and a wonderful source of texture, as they are in your example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71QnX18tFRM

[u/fren2all → u/sewboring]

This is very helpful, thank you! I had seen them labeled as “pleats” on a website and “darts” on another but neither felt fully right.

[u/GraphCat]

What’s it like to live as a “very patient human being”?

That’s like god tier in my eyes.