How to make crinkled fabric at home

Many people think that to get a crinkled effect at home, you need to spend a long time sewing and fiddling with the fabric. You can, of course, buy pre-crinkled fabric, but it's not always easy to find the right shade or pattern in stores, especially when you only need a small piece for a cute craft or trinket. I want to share a very simple way to make crinkled fabric from any thin material using accessible sewing supplies (fusible web, water-soluble stabilizer).

On the wrong side of the main fabric, lay out two identical pieces of fusible web and one piece of non-fusible water-soluble stabilizer.

Stitch the "sandwich" on your sewing machine with straight lines spaced approximately 1 cm apart.

Set your iron to the maximum setting (you will need maximum steam). Pass the iron over the stitched fabric using hot steam, without touching the material—only the steam!

Under the influence of the steam, the stabilizer will begin to shrink and pull the fabric with it, creating the crinkled effect. You will only get even and neat bubbles if you sew your lines at a perfectly consistent distance from each other. Steam the fabric 3-4 times on both the front and back sides. As soon as you see that the material is no longer shrinking or pulling, you can set the iron aside.

After this treatment, leave your "crinkled fabric" to rest for an hour or an hour and a half. During this time, the adhesive layer will cool and harden. After that, the resulting crinkled fabric should be rinsed well in room-temperature water and dried.

Next, place a fabric-based stabilizer on the wrong side of the crinkled fabric and steam it again. You can also use other more durable adhesive materials. After this treatment, the crinkled fabric can be machine washed at temperatures no higher than 30°C.

And if you add a layer of thin batting to the "sandwich" and sew additional lines to create squares, you'll get these puffy results!