The Gradual Rejection of Woven Fabrics

“But I Want My Clothes to Look Like RTW!”

I’ve been a peripheral observer of the online sewing community since the beginning of the internet. I watched individual sewing blogs become forums and groups, and saw each new social media form applied to all aspects of handmakery. But one thing that has remained consistent over the past ~30 years (damn, that long?) is the desire shared by nearly every woman who makes clothes for herself:

To have her finished garments look like they’re Ready-To-Wear (RTW).

I hadn’t thought about it much until recently, but that really is a bizarre goal to have. The whole reason we make our own clothes is because we CANNOT FIND the things we want or need in RTW. So why are we using RTW fashion as the benchmark for success?

Because we don’t want to look like a Becky Home-ec-y, or a Suzie-Homemaker, or a Holly Hobby.

Translation: we don’t want our clothes to look amateurish, or like they were made by someone who lacks the knowledge and skills to successfully make clothes.

Think about the kinds of clothes the average person has access to – they see and own RTW, and they probably have seen some very obviously self-made stuff that looked awful. So of course we’re going to shoot for RTW as the standard; it’s the only standard most of us have. The average person hasn’t seen much, if any, couture, or custom-tailored, or custom-made (bespoke for the Brits) clothing.

And since the past several decades have seen the domestic arts become the dying arts (thanks, 1970s feminism), a lot of women have had to teach themselves how to sew using online or print resources. A few of us were lucky to have sewing in our blood, and mothers and grandmothers who passed down their needleworking skills. But when you teach yourself, you only have the examples that are already in front of you. In this case, it’s the RTW clothing in your closet.

So really, the goal isn’t to have our finished clothes look like RTW – it’s to have them NOT look like first-attempt amateur garbage.

That sounds much more logical, doesn’t it?

Ready-To-Wear as the Standard

Here’s what I’ve been leading up to with all of this: using RTW fashion as the benchmark or standard for the opposite of amateur garbage has led a LOT of us, myself included, to prioritize sewing with knits and stretch fabrics. Why? Because that’s the fabric that is most prevalent in RTW. And why is that?

Because RTW is always an approximate or average fit. The more flexibility that is built into a single size, the more people it can fit.

Think about how much easier it is to find a t-shirt that fits versus a woven collared shirt that fits. It’s not just because t-shirts can be worn in a variety of different ways (from ‘small tent’ to ‘painted on’). It’s because a woven shirt is made to a specific set of measurements – just like the t-shirt is – BUT it only has one correct fit silhouette: not too tight, not too lose. That narrows (haha, fit pun!) the pool of people who can wear that specific shirt to a fraction of the number of people who could wear the t-shirt.

And what’s in the best interests of the garment manufacturers and retailers? Have as large a potential customer pool as possible.

Thus, knit and stretch fabrics are much more appealing to RTW makers and sellers, because they drastically increase the number of people they can sell their products to.

Granted, those same advantages in regards to approximate fit do carry over to home sewing. However, as I said before, the whole point of sewing things for yourself is because you want to make things that fit YOU, not a range of people.

The Ostracism of Cotton Prints

Since my mom taught me to sew in the late 80s, we didn’t have the internet to source fabric. We got to go to Walmart (yes, they sold fabric by the yard), JoAnn (RIP, girlfriend), and Hobby Lobby to buy from whatever they had in stock. And that meant calico prints, or what is normally called “quilting fabric” now.

I had a bunch of clothes that I wore as a kid that were made from calico prints, in addition to my other clothes that were off-the-rack. I loved the stuff my mom and I made, because it was exactly what I wanted; I picked out the pattern from the big pattern catalog, then picked out the fabric, and my mom helped me make the outfit (or made it while I was at school, because she got impatient =P).

But as I and the internet grew, I noticed that the vast majority of people who were sewing things for everyday wear avoided “quilting cottons” like the plague. It’s like they weren’t even considered fabric anymore. Not only that, but there was a push for more local chain stores to stock knits in their apparel fabric section – because people wanted to make stuff that looked like RTW, and RTW is mostly made from knits.

Where Does that Leave Us?

First, we need to stop seeing RTW as our quality goal. Most of what we have is the result of fast fashion manufacturing, which uses the cheapest fabrics, the quickest finishes, and the simplest designs. Why the hell do we want our carefully, lovingly handmade stuff to look like the soulless quickie junk that falls apart after a few runs through the washer?

Second, each of us needs to develop a solid understanding of our own personal style. We need to know what we like, what looks best on us, and what we can reasonably produce. You do NOT need to care about what’s available or trendy right now if you don’t want to, because you can make things that are not currently “on the runways” – again, that’s part of the point of making your own clothes. And that means you’ll have decades of woven-specific styles to enjoy making and wearing.

Third, it’s a good idea to develop your sewing skills on both knit and woven fabrics. They behave differently and require different techniques for both assembly and finishing. Wovens can be beautifully sewn and finished on a regular sewing machine with a single straight stitch. Knits require (at the very least) special needles and different stitch types, or even multiple different machines. As such, woven garments are the more easily accessible gateway dru- I mean entry point into the world of sewing clothing.

Damn, that’s a lot of words. I still have more to say, but I will save it for another post.