Different from common fabrics, lace is not easy to be sewed. You need to prepare and spend much time sewing a lace dress or other lace overlays. However, it is worthwhile sewing lace carefully the moment you see your luxurious, romantic, delicate, and demine lace clothes.
Fortunately, this article provides a complete tutorial on sewing lace together to make a lace dress and other clothes. You can read and follow to prepare and sew lace trim or fabric with ease. Now, let’s start the trial.
Preparations before Sewing with Lace
Well, before sewing lace fabric, here are something you need to prepare. Later, you can save time on sewing with lace and get a better lace product.
Lace Fabrics and Materials You Can Prepare
- Lace type or fabric:
You can indeed turn all kinds of lace fabrics into things. And it is also severe to choose the proper lining fabric. For instance, if you want to sew lace sleeves on a dress or make other lace couture, you had better select the lining that can match the color of your lace fabric.
Well, be aware that prints are not good enough for lace materials because those prints may clash with your lace. In most cases, lace can line with satin for wedding dresses or other formal dresses. You can sew lace on some casual materials like cotton, jersey, jeans, and more.
- Threads, needles and stitches for sewing lace
Choose a thread to match the color of your lace fabric. If you sew lace seams with a strange color, it will break the seamless look.
As for needles, you can choose the one you like considering the thinness and fragility. Well, you can get a popular needle size like 60/8, 65/9, 70/10, and more. It depends on whether you sew with thick or sheer lace.
To fix your lace fabric, you should also prepare some stitches. Well, you can try with a narrow zig-zag, a short triple straight stitch, a triple zig-zag stitch, or any overcasting stitch. Just choose the one or some stitches you like to sew with lace.
Things You Need to Figure Out Before Sewing Lace to Fabric
Before you sew lace, you need to check and make your lace fabric into a good condition. And if you want to cut lace fabric from other old clothes, you should not forget the following preparations.
- Pre-wash your lace fabric
If there are some dirties or wrinkles on your lace, you had better pre-wash the lace fabric carefully. As for your new-bought lace, you should also pre-wash it because those lace fabrics are always heavily glued by factories to look good. Prepare some lukewarm water and sock lace in a clean sink or bucket. Later, wash it gently with your hand. After that, lay the lace flat to dry it before you start to sew lace trim or fabric.
Note: Squeeze lace gently to remove the excess water. Be aware that you should not wring out the lace and do not use any washing machine.
- Identify the right and wrong side of your lace
Yes, lace also has front and back sides. You need to distinguish the right side carefully, which is also the front of your lace fabric. If you think it is hard to identify the right and wrong sides, you can determine which lace part you want to show or hide. As a result, you can ensure that the unsatisfying side can hide by your garment.
- Iron your lace to remove wrinkles (optional)
If there are no wrinkles on your lace fabric, then you can skip this step. Otherwise, you had better pre-iron the lace fabric to remove wrinkles. Well, put your iron on the lowest setting, then iron your lace gently from one side to another. In addition, you can put something on your lace fabric to fix it when you are ironing.
Note: Check whether your lace fabric is proper to be ironed or not. And be careful to adjust the heat. For instance, you can use a glass bottle full of hot water to pre-iron the silk organza and other similar fabrics as well.
Section 1: Cut Your Lace Fabric Smartly
You can use a rotary cutter or scissors to cut the lace fabric. Well, you should not cut the lace straight across directly. You can cut it around the edge of the main design elements. (Do not cut through the design element of your lace fabric.) As a result, those lace edges can extend beyond your pattern edges and make them more natural.
There is a small trick you can follow to cut with lace. You can prepare some junk paper with the same shape as your cut lace. Later, stitch the paper and lace with the basting threads. Make sure you are using threads that match the color of your lace. Use some zig-zag stitches to sew lace over the edges like an applique stitch.
If you have a small amount of lace that needs to sew, you can sew lace applique by hand manually. Just use a needle and some threads, then you can hand-sew your lace without too much effort. However, if you want to sew a lace skirt or dress, you may use a sewing machine to solve the problem.
Section 2: Use a Sewing Machine to Sew Lace Dress
Now, here comes the next part. You can follow the steps below to sew lace to the fabric like a pro. And make sure that there is enough space for sewing lace with a sewing machine. Just prepare the wide surface you can. Otherwise, it will result in distorted edges easily. If you fail to find a large table or other furniture, you had better choose the floor instead.
Step 1: Install a new sewing needle
Install a new universal needle on your sewing machine. It is an important part that you should not miss as a new sewing needle can prevent your lace fabric from snagging or other troubles. As for sewing threads, you can give the polyester thread a chance. This kind of thread provides a high-quality performance due to the built-in light stretch, while other common cotton threads cannot offer.
Step 2: Use the proper zigzag settings
Prepare a medium-width and length zigzag stitch. It is a way to sew lace onto a lining or as an applique. Later, adjust its stitch length to the mid-range settings on your sewing machine. Then you can start to sew the zigzag stitch over your lace edges.
Step 3: Add a baste stitch to gather lace
So how do you combine two pieces of lace? If you want to sew a lace dress with lining, you can add a basting stitch around the edges of your lace fabric. Therefore, it will be much easier than before to pin and sew with lace fabrics. To be more specific, you can hold onto the edge of the basting thread and then push the lace fabric in the opposite direction to gather lace together.
After that, you can sew lace with the type of seams you like. Well, in some cases, a straight stitch is also proper for sewing with lace. You will get a visible seam. It does not matter if lines are inserted in your lace material already. Of course, you can try other types of seams as well.
Section 3: Some Popular Starting and Stopping Seams You Can Make
This section will take Telio Mara lace black as an example. So you can get some preferred seams to sew with lace fabric quickly and easily.
Plain seam:
It is the most common method to sew with lace. You can set a straight stitch to 2.5mm in length and leave a 3/8” seam allowance.
Double stitch seam:
Just as its name has shown, you can add one more seam based on your plain fabric seam. Well, add the second stitch close to the first seam to maintain the seam allowance.
Lapped seam:
It is on the original plain steam. Just use your scissors to cut the seam allowance fabric down carefully. Later, you can get a flat seam allowance with ease.
Overlock Seam:
You can also prepare a serger to create a 4-thread overlock seam. It is easy to achieve. And you can get the most lace fabric seams.
Self-hem border:
If you want to sew lace patterns together, you need to cut the border of the lace fabric. When you remove all noticeable thresholds, you can pin those lace together to cover the hemline. Use a zig-zag stitch to stitch the lace border edge. Then you can trim the excess lace fabric and create a continual sheer effect.
Extended Knowledge: How to Sew Lace Trim in Different Cases
For common lace sewing cases, you can attach lace trim to an edge with a narrow hem. Later, sew the lace edge with a narrow zig-zag. As for wide lace trim, you can stitch lace along both sides. And do not forget to test if the color of lace trim matches your fabric or not. In addition, there is a new way you can follow to sew lace inserts to your blouse or other outfits. So this is the tutorial for how to create lace inserts with lace trim. During this time, using the straight lace trim will be more proper. And you can choose lace with small scallops on both edges.
Step 1: Stitch lace along with the fabric
Place your fabric right side up on a large enough surface. Later, put the lace on the top and pin it in place. Well, make sure the lace trim color can match the fabric. Later, stitch along down both sides. And leave about 1/8 inch (3mm) from the edge with a straight stitch.
Step 2: Sew lace trim to your garment
Flip your fabric and then cut the underneath fabric inside the stitch. You can leave for about 1/8 inch on both sides of stitches as well. After that, fold back the excess lace fabric until the seam allowance. And you can press it down to keep the lace revealed. Later, you can use the zig-zag stitch to sew the lace edge on the right side.
As a result, you can apply this way to sew lace trim on any other fabric quickly. Well, it is also supported to sew lace trim to hem.
6 Tips of Sewing Lace You Should Not Miss
Tip 1: When you are sewing lace fabric, you need to hold on both sides of it gently. Do not let the lace fabric go on its own.
Tip 2: Keep the thread tails on your hand during the lace sewing process.
Tip 3: If your lace fabric is thin or delicate, you can sandwich an organza thing strip between the layers. Moreover, you can even sew over pattern paper or tissue paper to avoid damaging the lace.
Tip 4: Do not sew seams on the very edge of your lace. Leave the big enough seam allowance. Thus, you can make your lace better by trimming off the exceeding part.
Tip 5: Actually, you can leave raw lace edges unhemmed. If you cut the lace fabric around its distinct shape, it is good to leave the lace edges.
Tip 6: When you need to join the lace pieces, you can cut the excess fabric from the back. Make sure you are using sharp embroidery scissors. Thus, you can get a seamless effect on your lace product.
All in all, you can follow similar operations to sew lace dresses and other clothes easily. And it’s OK if you use a sewing machine or not. For people who want to attach lace to fabric without sewing, fusible products are a good choice. However, you cannot leave lace wet because the fabric glue is not waterproof. Well, leave your messages in the comments below if you have any other good way to sew with lace. And please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any difficulty of sewing lace.
