Fabric Manipulation books to have

Are you interested in learning different fabric manipulation techniques? I thought I’d introduce two of my favorite books on the subject:

The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff

and

Fabric Manipulation by Ruth Singer

Maybe you already have at least one of them. These are the most extensive books about fabric manipulation I have found so far. Many of the techniques introduced in these books are a great way to create interesting surface structures to your garments. But probably people are mostly using them for other kinds of sewing projects, such as cushions, tablecloths, curtains, or bedspreads.

Among the techniques, my personal favorites are pleats and smocking, obviously!

But let’s see the books then.

The Art of Manipulating Fabric

Between the two, this is probably the more famous book.

It was published in 1996 by Krause Publications. Before writing this book, the author Colette Wolff had contributed several cloth-related articles to major craft, sewing, and textile publications.

This book has a total of 320 pages, and as you can see here in the Table of Contents, it’s jam-packed with a variety of fabric manipulation techniques. Each chapter has its own more detailed table of contents to separate the sub-categories of each technique.

According to the author, her objective for this book was to

”catalog fabric manipulation techniques, emphasizing what they are, what they do to a piece of cloth, and how it’s done, detached from associations with product.”

She used the same medium-weight cotton muslin to create samples of each technique you see in the book.

Let’s take a closer look at the different chapters.

Gathering fabric

The first two chapters are all about gathering fabric in various ways. In fact, the chapters are titled Gathering and Shirring.

You can gather by hand or by machine. Use just the thread, an elastic, or create a casing. Gathering only one edge or both edges produces different effects, as does the volume and shape of fabric you gather. Ever heard of furrowing? That’s when you gather all over the piece of cloth with little tacks.

Shirring means gathering the fabric with multiple rows of stitching. These rows can be stitched all in one direction or in two different directions that cross each other. You can also do pattern shirring by stitching, for example, wavy- or angled lines. As you can imagine, each style produces different outcomes.

Ruffles etc.

The next three chapters are about Ruffles, Flounces, and Godets. These are all beautiful details you can add to your garments, so it’s definitely a useful group of techniques.

Again, there are so many variations on each. For example, all the different ruffles you can achieve simply by changing the quantity, shape, or placement of the gathering stitches. Not to mention pleated ruffles, that are a category of their own.

Flounce differs from the ruffle in that you don’t gather it.

Godets are triangular inserts you can use to create more fullness, for example, to a skirt.

Pleats and Smocking

Then there’s my favorite part of the book: Pleating, Smocking and Tucking.

All types of pleats are explained here. Knife-, box- , inverted-, and accordion pleats, plus, of course, their variations, such as doubled box pleats, pinch pleats, and pipe organ pleats.

The Smocking chapter is divided into English-, Direct-, North American-, and Italian Smocking. It explains the basics and the stitches. There are also some grids you can try.

Tucks are like tiny pleats that have been sewn at their base from end to end. The cool thing is that you can create different surfaces by changing the distance and size of the tucks. You can treat them like mini pleats and make little box pleats. Random- and cross-tucking looks pretty amazing, too. Check these out:

How about tucks with a scalloped edge? Also, with top-stitching, you can create a series of different looks.

Quilting

The three chapters that follow are all about filled reliefs and probably interesting to quilters: Cording, Quilting and Stuffing.

Inserting cords inside channels sewn into doubled fabric creates 3-dimensional surface patterns. You can use different diameters of cord for different end results. Try making an entire surface with cording or just one decorative motif.

The Quilting chapter offers basics of hand- and machine quilting. With the Stuffing technique, you can make low- and high-relief designs to your fabric surface. Basically it means adding fiberfill. This can be done either directly on the main fabric surface or by making separate stuffed appliqués.

Darts

The following chapter is about Using Darts to sculpt the fabric’s surface. With the help of either single- or double-pointed darts, it’s possible to create different 3-dimensional shapes, such as pyramids and cylinders.

The final chapter features inspirational images of fabric manipulation art. These designs mix different techniques into creative combinations. It kind of wraps the whole book up in a perfect way.

Link for more Info

If you want to learn more about the author Colette Wolff, her publications and creations, check out this legacy website Colette’s niece and namesake, Colette Corry, created in honor of her “Aunt Colette”.

Fabric Manipulation

How about Fabric Manipulation by Ruth Singer then? This is a more recent book. It was published in 2013 by David&Charles and consists of 175 pages.

The author Ruth Singer is a textile artist who has exhibited her art extensively and also won several awards. With this book, she wants to inspire readers to create their own fabric manipulation experiments based on the techniques she introduces.

Here’s the Table of Contents.

As you can see, Fabric Manipulation starts with a chapter on different materials and tools you’ll be using, as well as the stitching techniques. A nice beginner-friendly way to start.

Pleats and Tucks

The first technique introduced is pleating. So different kinds of pleats and their variations.

Lots of amazing ideas here. My favorite is knife pleats with a ribbon sewn vertically on top of the edge.

Then there’s decorative box pleating. It’s worked on ribbon which you can later use as an embellishment. There are many ways to fold the ribbon to create cool surface designs. If you line the fabric/ribbon, you’ll get even more variations.

Next are the Tucks. Here we get the basics and all the different variations, tuck and fold being my favorite.

Folding

There’s a separate chapter on the actual Ribbon Folding with some really nice pointy designs you’ll learn to fold.

From ribbon folding, the next step is folding single shapes of different kinds of fabric you then appliqué on top of the fabric to create interesting surfaces.

Similarities?

As you can see, part of the techniques are the same as in The Art of Manipulating Fabric. Like the chapters on Ruffles and Frills, Shirring, Gathering and Smocking that follow. But the variations are a bit different, and especially the chapter on Smocking has more easy-to-understand grids for you to use.

Stitch & Slash

There’s an interesting technique called Stitch and Slash, which basically means sandwiching various layers of fabric together with diagonal rows of stitches and slashing the upper layers open. This reveals the layers beneath. You can just leave it like that or go on and stitch on top of it, across the previous rows, folding the fabric as you go. You’ll create all kinds of surface patterns like this.

This book, too, has chapters on quilting, cording and stuffing, but with different designs.

Appliques

New entries are flat-, 3D- and reverse appliqué. The 3D appliqué is not stuffed shapes as in the other book. But rather done by using gathered or folded pieces of fabric, or even ribbon.

Reverse appliqué has several layers of fabric stitched together, and you reveal one or more layers of fabric underneath by cutting away the top layers. Just stitch a shape you want to create and cut away the fabric layers in the middle.

Last but not least, Fabric Manipulation shows you how to use holes and decorative edging to create interesting details and how to add in-seam decorative trimmings.

Conclusion

So now you might be asking which of these two Fabric Manipulation books you should get? Actually, I think both. They are complementary to each other, even though many of the techniques are shown in both books.

If you really must choose one, it depends on your personal taste. The Art of Manipulating Fabric is more thorough; after all, it also has more pages. There is a lot of text. It seems that most people end up choosing this book.

Fabric Manipulation, on the other hand, has more illustrations and colorful pictures that let you see the results made in different kinds of fabrics. It might even be faster to understand the different passages following the step-by-step illustrations. Surely there are fewer variations to the different techniques, but it’s definitely a good starting point.

More Inspiration

These two books have inspired some pattern experiments of mine and consequently these blog posts:

Smocking and a rose sleeve

How to draft patterns that create patterns

How to draft patterns that create patterns -part 2