Precious lace
Choosing lace for sewing a garment adds a very refined and elegant touch to your creation. Whether you want a bohemian, romantic, or sophisticated look, the style will take on a whole new tone if you choose to add a touch of lace to the outfit: a pretty embroidered blouse is unparalleled in making an outfit stand out, as beautiful when paired with chic trousers as it is with jeans.
You can imagine that I couldn't resist the idea of introducing this beautiful fabric into our range!
The Cuba Libre dress in Alhambra lace
Lace by Maison Fauve
We integrated lace into our fabric range when we launched the Fauvae Botanica collection. The Cicadella blouse pattern was also created specifically with the aim of offering you the perfect easy-to-sew lace blouse. All our laces are woven in Turkey in the same workshops that also weave lace for a lovely brand that has many addicts ;)
Botanica Lace
The Tempête blouse in Botanica Cumin Lace
Our first lace design is Botanica lace: a very beautiful non-stretch lace made of cotton and polyamide, which you can wear alone or with a lining. This lace has magnificent re-embroidered rosette patterns and is also easy to wear every day as it is not too openwork.
Coquillage Lace
The Déferlante blouse in Coquillage Rouge Passion Lace
For summer and the Fauve Romance collection, I fell in love with this new lace. The Coquillage pattern is so delicate, a true marvel! And it really stands out from more traditional laces; it's interesting to view this weaving work as a pattern in its own right. This lace is made of cotton and polyamide, non-stretch, and has very limited openwork.
Daphné Lace
A flower among flowers.... The delicate floral embroideries of our new Daphné lace combine beautifully with both simple cut patterns and more elaborate garments: the Violette blouse, the Palma top, and the Rosalie dress are sublime in this lace. The color palette is varied: Lemonade yellow, Plum, white, Moss Green or Scarab Green, depending on whether you want to create a timeless or more sophisticated garment.
The Violette blouse in Daphné Scarab Green lace
Timeless or colorful
We offer our laces in a full range of shades.
Timeless black and ecru can be found in our Alhambra, Botanica and Daphné designs.
The Cuba Libre dress hack into a blouse in Daphné lace
Coquillage Ecru Lace - Botanica Black Lace
For colorful lace garments, our Botanica and Coquillage laces use the Fauvae Botanica and Fauve Romance palettes: Cherry Red, Cinnamon, Rose Romance, Smoky Blue, Sulfur Yellow, Chocolate – our beautiful signature colors are thus available in our laces.
How to sew lace
Since our laces do not contain elastane, they will not stretch when you transfer your pattern to your fabric. However, you will need to be careful when transferring marks and notches, as the openwork nature of lace can make this step a bit more complex. On most of our laces, we can mark with a Pilot Friction pen or tailor's chalk, but don't hesitate to use the basting thread technique if your lace doesn't allow for tracing: transfer marks and outlines with hand stitching, using a contrasting color thread and sewing a loose stitch through the pattern paper.
For pinning and sewing, use needles for delicate textiles, such as our Microtex needles, to avoid snagging threads. This works well for all our laces. You can also stabilize your pieces for sewing with small clips if your lace is particularly "openwork" due to its patterns.
How to achieve beautiful sewing finishes with lace
For beautiful finishes, we offer, particularly with the Cicadella blouse or Daïquiri dress/blouse patterns, a French seam assembly. This is a two-step seam that encloses the raw edge of the fabric. This technique is particularly neat and very simple to achieve. We detail it in the free video step-by-step guides for these two patterns.
It is, of course, possible to serge or overlock lace; choosing a matching thread will make your work clean and invisible.
To finish your neckline, and if your lace is particularly open, I recommend attaching a folded bias binding rather than sewing a facing that would show through the lace. We also explain this method in our videos, and several of our patterns include a specifically designed bias piece for impeccable and easy-to-achieve finishes.
The bottom hem of the garment can, depending on the lace fabric, be replaced by the selvage edge: indeed, some laces, as is sometimes the case for eyelet lace, are embellished and allow the garment to be "finished" with a pretty embroidered motif. But be careful, in this case, you will have to cut your pieces against the grain, so at 90° to the straight grain. Take this into account during placement, which will not be as indicated on the cutting plan.
Which pattern for a lace garment
Blouse, small top, shirt, but also dress, skirt, the choice is vast and will depend on the style you want to give your outfit. I have sewn the Cicadella blouse, the Soliflore blouse, the beautiful Daïquiri, but also the Blush slip dress or the Spritz camisole in our laces. And I even sewed the skirt version of the Pénélope pattern, which is too gorgeous!
The Rosalie dress in Daphné Lemonade yellow lace and matching cotton voile
Easy patterns are also a good choice for getting used to lace: the Marisa top is a perfect choice with its bias neckline and pretty pleat in the back. The Zénith sewing pattern will also be superb, with its beautiful dart work that will be very well rendered on the lace.
Zénith Dress - Botanica Orange Cinnamon Lace Fabric
How to line your lace garment
This will really depend on your sewing pattern. The Cicadella blouse is a pattern specially designed for sewing lace; its construction and assembly instructions detail all the steps for lining your blouse. The steps for lining your Cicadella blouse are described in this video tutorial.
I also wrote a special article to guide you through the sewing steps for the Primrose dress in Acanthus lace (available here).
Feel free to consult these resources; they will surely help you better understand how to sew a lined lace garment.
Other patterns have a design that will make the task of lining your garment more difficult. For example, I didn't line my Daïquiri dress, as its shoulder cutouts don't lend themselves to it.
But we have a pattern specifically created to slip under all your lace dresses, blouses, and skirts: the Blush camisole and slip dress pattern.
And to line all our laces, we offer a complete range of cotton voiles. They are perfect: soft and lightweight, easy to sew, and available in the full color range of Maison Fauve laces.
The underlining technique for sewing a lace collar or cuff
When sewing a collar or cuff, I recommend the underlining technique. This method allows you to enclose the interfacing between two layers of lining, which you then assemble with your lace piece. Don't worry, I explain everything in the Cicadella blouse sewing tutorial, also available. This is indeed the method I use for its pretty pointed cuff.
Caring for your lace garment
All our laces are machine washable. I recommend putting your garments in a laundry net and washing them on a delicate cycle. Ironing our laces is entirely possible, provided you set the iron to a low temperature to avoid burning the fabric.
Now you know everything about our beautiful laces and how to sew them. I hope this article might inspire you to take the plunge; believe me, a lace garment is a little jewel and you will be very proud to wear your creation in this wonderful fabric (and your non-sewing friends will surely be impressed by your talent)!
