Dimple / Minky Fleece

I love dimple fleece or also known as minky fleece.  It is just so soft and beautiful and comes in some many lovely colours.  I use it in my products and I also sell it here too. 

I often get questions on how to sew it and my standard response is lots of pins as it likes to go walkabout.  But I have put together a guide after making a large blanket today with it.

So firstly, make sure you have a clean area (as in I steam cleaned my floor before I did this).  It helps if it is a smooth area and not a carpet.  A carpet has too much friction and it is easy to distort the minky.  Also, make sure it is a big enough area for your whole piece of fabric to lay out on without hanging over an edge, again to make sure it is not distorted.

Place the dimple fleece wrong side down and smooth out without pulling or distorting it.

Place on top of this, carefully, your cotton fabric which should be cut to the right size, making sure it is smooth and nicely lined up but not stretching the fleece.  Now pin. Pin like you have never pinned before.  Start at the top and then work down the sides and then across the bottom.  Then go back and add more pins.  With Dimple fleece there really isn’t a question of too many pins, the stuff will walk.

You will see that I have pinned mine across the fabric, it makes it easier to sew over them that way and hold them in for as long as I can!  Once you have pinned, look and make sure that it is still smooth.  You are going to need to trust these pins.

Lift and fold your fabric carefully, mostly because it is stuffed full of pins but also so you don’t over stretch it.

To the machine.  Now for this stuff I would highly recommend a walking foot.  If you haven’t got one and are likely to sew dimple fleece or quilt or, to be honest, I use mine all the time for my general sewing, it is a good investment.  It doesn’t have to be an expensive one, Amazon have some good generic walking feet listed for under £5, you will wonder why you haven’t used one before.

However, if you haven’t got one, you just need to be very careful with sewing and trust your pins and ease the fabric.

To start sewing, put all the fabric up next to the machine, supported by your table.  Do not let it hang down, you do not want any pressure on it, let it sit comfortably.  Start sewing at the top and gently work your way across.  you can sew directly across your pins, being careful and slowing down.  Trust your pins are in the right place, you took your time to place them.  If you find the dimple fleece is starting to bulge a bit, ease the fabric by putting pressure on the top fabric and letting the feed dogs do their job.  Never pull hard but without a walking foot on this fabric I find it can feed unevenly and you need to help it a bit.

Once across the top, I end my seam line and restart again to sew down the sides one at a time.  Then across the bottom, leaving a gap to turn.  You should now have a rather lovely item of sewn dimple fleece and cover fabric.  Everything after that bit is easy.

Trim it to the right size, trim the corners, turn it right side out and don’t iron.  Dimple fleece goes really flat when pressed, I am assuming it comes back in the wash but haven’t tried it (note to self, try that out).  Simpley start pinning for the top stitching but you don’t need to go crazy this time as you are working with a far more stable seam.

As you can see, I am still using my walking foot, use a longer stitch for top stitching and start and sew all around in one making sure you catch the opening and stitch it closed.

Then viola, you have a lovely, squared off blanket, not stretched and distorted.  Easy really.