Over the next year, I’ll be contributing a monthly column to the BurdaStyle blog that goes into geek-level detail on fabrics. The column runs on the last Tuesday of each month.

The first piece in the series, a basic primer on fabric construction terminology, published this morning.

In upcoming months, I’ll be covering topics such as the different types of natural and man-made fibers, uncommon fabric types, how to shop for interesting apparel-sewing fabrics, and how a designer puts together a fabric collection.

Enjoy!

We love Spoonflower. If you’re not familiar with this innovative company, they can digitally print your designs onto a variety of fabrics like quilting cotton, sateen, and even a new linen/cotton canvas quality. Heather Ross made her skirt for our library appearance last week by printing onto Spoonflower’s sateen, and it looked fantastic! The fabric has a nice hand, the printing quality is very high, and the price is shockingly affordable for custom printing of such a high caliber.

Every week Spoonflower has a fabric contest, and this week’s contest required entrants to “create a sewing pattern and design for an article of children’s clothing that includes — in one yard — all the pieces, cut lines, seam allowances and short instructions printed directly on the fabric.” No easy task right? Well, they received seventeen entries!

I’m so impressed with this design by Sylvia Ion. The dress design itself, the print (love the lace!), and the accompanying illustration are all adorable, professional, and very clever. So you know who I’m voting for. What about you?

One Jump Rope Dress has been fully prepped and is ready for demonstration on Saturday at Spool in Philadelphia. Can’t wait to meet some new friends and talk sewing all day!

The fabric I’m using for my dress is from Denyse Schmidt’s upcoming fabric line, Hope Valley. Gorgeous, isn’t it? I can’t wait for the fabrics to be available in stores. And vintage purple mother-of-pearl buttons just seemed appropriate, if I can bring myself to remove them from their card.

Update: Here’s a recap of the day (complete with photos) from the nice folks at Spool.

As you’re planning your fall sewing, here are a few additional ideas for you.

Many of you have been asking about wool fabrics for the School Days Jacket and Coat. If you don’t have a great neighborhood fabric store (and you should feel very fortunate if you do!), shopping on-line for wool coating fabrics can be difficult. The people at Fabric.com have kindly put together a special page for us, showing some of their offerings. I think the double face wool melton would be an especially nice fabric to use, and it comes in lots of great colors!

If your options locally are more limited in color, you might be concerned about using the darker, traditional colors that tend to be most widely available because they may seem too boring. Never fear!

Here are a few samples we made while developing this pattern so you can see that traditional colors don’t have to be dull.

This coat was made with a medium-weight brown- and rust-colored wool herringbone. The fabric weight is probably closer to what you might use if you were making a tweed jacket, and we made the insulated lining with sleeves so the coat can be worn in cold weather. The lining fabrics are all from the Wonderland by Momo collection for Moda. But we added a pop of color with the turquoise binding for a little surprise inside the jacket. You can also see the button tab option (View B in the pattern) used here.

This next coat was one of the first samples I made using a really luxurious wool/cashmere blend in a camel color. (I wish there had been enough fabric to use for a coat for myself!) The lining fabrics are all from Joelle Hoverson’s Cake Rock Beach collection for Moda (which is still available at Purl–I especially love the coral seaweed print.) This coat is one of my favorites. I think it’s simultaneously fun and sophisticated.

And this chocolate brown wool twill is also lined with fabrics from Joelle’s Cake Rock Beach. We used microfleece on the back of the quilted insulated lining instead of making a more traditional quilt sandwich with cotton batting. And I wanted to show you the red elastic loops for buttoning the insulated lining into the coat. It’s another fun little pop of color that picks up the red in the print of the insulated lining.

So don’t feel limited by your options. You can do all sorts of fun things with even darker wool colors!

Here are a couple other fabrics you might want to consider in your shopping.

Denver Fabrics has a beautiful dark red wool/cashmere blend as well as a nice selection of other wool coating fabrics.

Our friends at Waechter’s have several coating fabrics. I especially like the sky blue wool.

Can anyone else suggest some on-line options? Leave your ideas in comments, please.

Update: I’ve just been alerted to some terrific laminates at Superbuzzy as well, in case you needed a little more inspiration…

I’m so excited about this post. I know many of you have been eagerly awaiting the release of the new fall patterns, and you’ve been wondering about your options for making a raincoat from laminated fabrics. I’m here to offer a little help with your shopping and planning. I’ll start with teasers about some laminated fabrics that will be coming out this season, and then I’ll move on to things that are available right now. Ready?

A number of the major quilting fabric manufacturers are about to release new laminated cottons. There are some exciting things coming out in the next several months that I’m pleased to be able to preview for you. Here are some details that the manufacturers have supplied to me.

Free Spirit has been doing some lovely qualities lately, and this is going to continue this fall. I really like the finish on their laminates because it is soft, pliable, and easy to work with. You’ve already seen our two versions of the raincoat made from Anna Maria Horner’s previous designs produced as laminates. But get ready, because two new Anna Maria designs will be released soon, and they’re really beautiful. Here’s a preview.

Westminster, the parent company of Free Spirit, will also be releasing new laminates by Kaffe Fassett. Here are previews of three of the prints from that collection (the image quality isn’t great, but you’ll get the idea).

Westminster will also be releasing a few prints from Amy Butler’s new Love collection as laminates. I don’t have details yet, but be on the lookout for these as they’re sure to be good.

Moving on to what’s available on the market now, Michael Miller has been producing laminates for quite a while now. Our original raincoat sample is the Dumb Dot pattern in the “Chocolate” colorway (a brown field with mint-colored dots). That print is also available with pink dots (called “Cocoa”) as well.

This turquoise field with red dots is a newer Michael Miller laminate that will be available soon.

The coating on the Michael Miller fabrics is a bit heavier than some of the others I’m highlighting in this post, so it might be a little trickier to sew. But those dots may just be worth a little extra work, no?

Japanese fabric manufacturer Kokka has a number of laminate designs by Etsuko Furuya, as well. You can find these at Purlsoho.com.

I also have a few additional treats for you that I’ve found while shopping here in New York. Ready? Give your wallet to someone you can trust before you continue reading.

These are my current favorites. The hand on these coated linens is very light, and the texture of the linen shows through the coating beautifully. B&J; Fabrics, $32.95/yard, 58″ wide, color/order number: Clay/V3368, French Rose/V3391, Green Apple/V3370, Periwinkle/V3372.

And here’s where the pushing and shoving starts. Settle down, everyone! Custom laminated Liberty of London lawn. (Yes, it’s true!): B&J; Fabrics, $42.95/yard, 54″ wide, V3368.

One last word about laminates: most manufacturers recommend that you don’t wash these fabrics. Instead, use a damp sponge to clean them. Check with the manufacturer or the retailer for exact care instructions.

It’s a fascinating fabric, and it really is made of two layers of gauze. They’re woven together on the loom, which is what that white dot on the fabric is–the inside layer of gauze is white, and when the threads trade places on the loom, a little “stitch” of white shows on the purple side while a “stitch” of purple shows on the white side. You could use either side of the fabric as the right side, since the two sides are identical but opposite.

She looks ready for summer, doesn’t she?

Double gauze can be quite drapey, so it’s better suited to some styles than others. I was pleasantly surprised to see it used very effectively in this adorable Birthday Party dress on the Oliver + S Flickr group. This particular version uses a Heather Ross print. Printing gives the double gauze a stiffer hand, which certainly helps to keep this dress looking crisp and summery.

If you haven’t tried this fabric yet, I strongly recommend it. It’s perfect for those really warm days of summer, which I hear are on their way.

Wow. What a week it’s been. We’re glad to be back in the studio now, catching up after this season’s Quilt Market in Pittsburgh.

A big thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth. We really enjoyed speaking with staffers from so many of the shops that carry our patterns and meeting many new friends as well. But some usual attendees were missed. Anna Maria’s baby just arrived (congratulations, Anna Maria and family!), so she didn’t travel this season. And Brooke, who has given Oliver + S its unique look (including our minimalist trade show booth), wasn’t able to attend either.

We’re sorry that many regulars didn’t get to attend Market this season because we think they really would have liked the Pittsburgh convention center. It is a great venue.

The natural light and high ceilings made everyone’s offerings look especially appealing (our booth was well-lit even before we turned on the lights!). I hope we can return again soon.

In addition to our usual booth, this time we did a special little event with fabric designer Heather Ross, who showed up with two Oliver + s samples made in her new collection from Kokka. The double gauze works beautifully with the Swingset and the Bubble Dress. Aren’t they sweet?

As usual, there were a few real stand-outs from the show.

On the fabric front, new Windham designer Bari J debuted a unique collection with a fresh look. So nice to see a new perspective in printed fabrics.

Valori Wells also showed a lovely new collection for Free Spirit, called Del Hi. I’m especially enamored with the High Desert colorways–the rich, neutral-based colors are refreshing and sophisticated. My personal favorite in the group is the Paisley print in Earth color, shown above. It’s a oversized print that would look great with a bright solid as an accent. Maybe orange, yellow, or turquoise?

Amy Butler introduced her new collection of projects in conjunction with The Electric Quilt Company, which looks like lots of fun. She’s got a number of other great products coming out, too, including a nice-looking line of bags for crafters. (Love all those zippers on the Hampton!)

Windham Fabrics is releasing a collection of quilt kits based on the quilts from Gee’s Bend. The lines have been straightened out a bit, so you aren’t getting the same curved, organic feel that make the original quilts so appealing. But the colors and composition are still very appealing and attractive.

I’m sure there was more great material debuted at Market, but I spent most of the time in our booth talking with our customers about Oliver + S. One of the topics we spent a lot of time discussing was appropriate fabric selection to highlight the design features of our garments. Stay tuned for more information on that topic.

If you’re in New York, be sure to stop by Purl Patchwork on Sullivan Street to see their Oliver + S window display.

Purl is well-known for its outstanding selection of fabrics. The staff stocks beautiful Japanese prints, a wide selection of Liberty tana lawn, and a number of other exquisite offerings inside this jewel box of a shop.

For these samples Purl selected a sweet floral Liberty print for the Birthday Party Dress and paired it with a coordinating Kona cotton solid for the tab. Because Liberty prints are very light-weight and ever-so-slightly sheer, we used a white cotton lawn for the facings to be sure they didn’t show through. (The Liberty print sold out within two days of setting up the window display, so I’m sorry I can’t give you a link to it.)

The Sailboat Top and Pants are made from a fresh architecture-inspired Anna Griffin print and a Kona cotton.

We raided the fantastic button selection at Purl’s yarn shop just down the street for the finishing touch. Those buttons on the pants are wool felt!

And here are some views of the window from inside the store. How about those giant paper dolls?

I’m a tearsheet fanatic. I’ve always loved pulling and archiving tearsheets. But it wasn’t until I got to design school that I learned I wasn’t the only one saving random pages I tore from magazines and, in fact, that those pages could become part of the design process.

Unfortunately, S caught onto this habit really quickly and now looks over my shoulder when I read a magazine to holler out when she sees something she wants to save. Sometimes I have to explain that we’re not removing pages from a particular magazine. (Marie Claire Idees and Martha Stewart Living are the only survivers on my save-the-entire-magazine list. The others have, sadly, gone out of print: Blueprint, Domino.) Most of the time she gets to keep all photos of dogs and girls wearing pink.

I’ve appropriated a portion of one wall in the studio to act as my inspiration board, and on it are taped a variety of tearsheets and other objects that I like to see on a regular basis. Some of the images and objects have been inspiring me for years. Others get swapped out when I grow tired of them or find something else that interests me more.

This one has been on the wall for quite a while. It’s a Prada dress that I adore and wouldn’t mind wearing, myself.

I came back to this tearsheet one day recently when I was preparing to sew S’s Easter dress. I had selected navy silk dupioni (from Brewer) for the dress, and then I found a wonderful vintage yellow grosgrain ribbon with a moire effect (from Tinsel Trading). I wanted to incorporate some yellow eyelet fabric that I’ve been saving for a while, but I was having trouble pulling it all together until I remembered that tearsheet I walk past every day.

Off came the photo from the wall, and I carried it around for the next few days so I could think about it more. Here is what ultimately came of it: my interpretation of the feel of that Prada dress, done for a little girl.

In the end, I decided on two important embellishments to the Birthday Party Dress inspired by the photo. I added yellow topstitching in a deliberately meandering manner so that it would look uneven and a little “messed up.” And I sewed a strip of the eyelet fabric to the top edge of the hem facing so that it looks like a contemporary version of a petticoat peeking out from under the dress. It was important to me that the eyelet be separated from the hem to the extent that it had some dimension rather than simply looking like lace applied to the hem. By sewing the eyelet to the top of the hem facing it looks like a separate layer worn under the dress. Then I carefully (but not too carefully, since I wanted it to look a little rough) trimmed the eyelet into scallops that peek out beneath the dress.

And here is the dress, being modeled. I have to tell you that if my job consisted of regularly cajoling S to pose for photos I think I’d quit. It’s such a relief to work with an illustrator who does his work without whining or refusing to stand still/remove his cardigan for just two photos/stop making goofy faces/etc. (Dan, do you do any of those things when I can’t see you?)

I’m happy with the finished dress, and S loves it. Which is what counts. But she still won’t pose properly for me.

We think you’ll really enjoy these two new styles, and we’re looking forward to seeing your creativity with them show up in our Flickr group. Over the next couple days, we’ll be doing more detailed posts that highlight some ideas for what you can do with these new styles.

If you’re interested in the fabrics we used for these samples, here are the details:

• Polka dots: Pepper, from Wonderland, by Momo in color Chai
• Stripe: Candy Stripe from Sweet, by Urban Chiks in color Icing
• Birds: Peeps from Sweet, by Urban Chiks in color Icing