Thread: Paillette Trim

Does anyone have any input on how to sew paillettes on to a costume? I'd like to trim the bottom of my dress in them and am not quite sure how to do it.

Thanks!

If you're just trimming the hem of a dress, I'd buy some pre-made paillette trim. Joann's carries it in variety of colors. If you have a sewing maching, sew it on by machine. If you don't, hand sew it on.

This is what I did.



First I made the basic sequin trim to the hem of the skirt. Shira describes this here:
Sewing Instructions: Bead-and-Sequin Embroidery

Except that I did this in pairs perpendicular to the hem (as an aside, that was how I did the stripes!), rather than in a single chain. But it would work with the single chain of sequins, done like in Shira's image.

Next, in the lower of each of the sequin pairs, I added the chain of beads, with the tusk sequin at the end. I pushed the needle up from the wrong side of the fabric, through the sequin, added 3 beads, then the tusk sequin. Then I pushed the needle back through the 3 beads and the sequin, and moved on to the next.

I hope that makes sense. If you're more of a visual person, I could probably draw something that explained it.

Alternatively, you could do it just as:
Cup sequin, 3 beads, big accent sequin, then take the thread back through the 3 beads & cup sequin.

I don't know if that's the way that professional costumers would do it, but I wanted my tusk sequins to have a lot of movement, and I figured the only way of doing that was to give them a little chain to dangle on!

can't tell for sure from the photo and description, but I think I've done this very similar to Beatrice. It basically went on like this thread through the fabric, then a sequin, then 3 seed beads, the paillette and 3 seed beads more, then through the back side of the fabric, making a small loop. Then I did it across the entire edge. It might have been a different amount of seed beads. Of course buying pre-made trim would probably be much easier.

Oh I like the idea of a loop, I'll try that next time!