Okay, its not all just called “lace,” now how much do I need?

I am in the throws of sewing three heirloom garments for Easter. I started this process about a month ago and have documented it in my Instagram and facebook stories. I have completed one of three garments. During this process I have gotten quite a few questions about buying lace. How in the world do you know how much lace to buy for each garment? What if you over buy? What if you under buy? Lace is quite expensive when you start to realize exactly how much of it you’re going to need, so you don’t want to get it wrong.

If you’re not sure what type of lace you need, check out this post for some basic definitions. If you’re familiar with what lace you’d like but need help making a plan and purchasing the correct amounts of materials, this post is for you.

When I am dreaming up an heirloom garment, I often make a basic sketch of what I’m after. And when I say basic, I mean really basic. I am not an artist. I did not go to fashion school, my drawing skills are limited. See below.

So, at this point I’ve got a pretty good handle on the lengths of the bodice, skirt, sleeves, and collar of a dress in Maria’s size, but when I first started that was not the case. In order to figure out how much lace I needed for my first heirloom dress, I pulled out my pattern pieces.

After you choose the pattern you’ll make into an heirloom garment, you need to lay out your pattern pieces. Make a rectangle around each pattern piece. You can do this physically with a piece of paper or just note the measurements of the rectangle if you don’t need the visual reference. See images below to see how I do it.

At this point, I like to get out a piece of inexpensive ribbon(s) and “make” my rectangle. Most lace is 1/2″-1″ wide, so make sure your ribbon is 1/2″-1″ wide as well. Cut out your ribbon as though it is the lace you will be using. See image below. Then measure the correct amount of lace. This will give you a ballpark number for lace purchasing. I like to add 10-15% of that total to accommodate any math mistakes that I’ve made. I also like to give myself options, as you can see below.

So in the image on the left or right, if I am calculating for the green (or my 1 inch wide) ribbon, my equation would be this: 6.5″x5x1.1=35.75″. I would order 1 yard.

Now; if you are planning to put lace on the bottom of a skirt, there is a good rule of thumb. It is to assume that you’ll need two yards of lace for each trip around a skirt. One yard for the front and one yard for the back. If you are planning to gather that lace, you will need 2 yards x 1.5 or 2 depending upon how gathered you’d like it to be. If you multiple by 1.5, it’ll be less gathered than if you multiple by 2.

Similar math can be done for the gathers on an arm band or neck band. If your neckline is 12″, you’ll want to order 12″ x 1.5 or 2. Roughly 18-24 inches. If your armband is 7″, you’ll want to order 10.5-14 inches. I often lean more toward multiplying any of my gathered lace by 1.5 as that is usually the look I prefer.

Once you have come up with measurements for lace of each component of the garment, you’ll add it all up, and voila! That’s how much lace you’ll order.

Some other items to consider when ordering your lace:

– in order to join lace to fabric you will want entredeux as well. To calculate this, you’ll need your pattern pieces again. You can use the ribbon method described above to find this out as well.

-how will you close your garment? button/button holes, beauty pins? You can put button holes in lace, I just chose to use beauty pins on this garment. I found these on Etsy.

-Will you be weaving ribbon in your beading as seen below? if so, make sure to order as much ribbon as you do beading.

-Often ribbon looks better in “odds.” Usually you will prefer the look of an odd number of the same type of ribbon. You can see what I’m talking about in my ribbon example pictures.

This process usually takes me several days, so don’t worry if it’s not something you whip up in an afternoon. I recommend starting a cart on a website and not purchasing until you’ve reviewed it several times.

Hope this helps all of y’all out there looking to start an heirloom project! If you’re interested in the lace in the images above, I will link it here. Beading, Insertion 1, entredeux, the flower insertion is sold out, sorry!