We’ve come a long way baby! Gone are the bad old days of the scratchy polyester with the pills and pulls and that horrible texture. With technology has come a wide range of fabrics that are polyester and polyester blends. These fabrics range from fine satins that mimic expensive silks in their drape and hand, beautifully textured jacquards, no-pill fleece for jackets and robes and no-sew blankets, easy-care fabrics for suits, pants and skirts that take the place of wool, linens, and fine cottons, and of course specialty fabrics used to make swimwear, undergarments, costumes, t-shirts and sweat-shirts, decorator fabrics for curtains, drapes and upholstery; and beautiful laces, netting, ribbons and trims galore.

The key to deciding whether to choose a natural fabric or its synthetic mate depends on a number of factors.

One of the biggest is cost. Silk is a prime example of this. Making a blouse or dress of silk can be quite an investment, a really nice blouse could cost about $60-80 just for the fabric depending on the style. A similar weight in one of the new polyester blends that is quite similar to silk will cost less than $15 for the same amount of fabric.

Care is another consideration. Many natural fabrics – again silk comes to mind – require professional cleaning. Over the lifetime of a garment, that cost can add up if the garment is worn frequently – and a good classic silk blouse would be something you would want to wear often with a lot of different looks. A similar polyester blouse could be washed and dried in your normal laundry without much special care. And while this blouse may not have the long life of the silk one – the low initial cost and low maintenance costs would allow you to replace it should the need arise – or you could purchase two or three of them and rotate to add length of wearability and still save money.

Finally, another consideration is allergies. Some individuals are allergic to the lanolin that is in wool. Lanolin is a natural waxy oil that keeps the fibers soft and is made by the sheep. Lanolin is such a good softener that it is used in about 90% of all skin lotions and creams! But if you are allergic – you can’t use the lotions. Or wear wool. So substitutes are necessary.

There are philosophical reasons for choosing natural fibers – avoidance of anything made from petroleum is one – and yes, polyester, rayon, viscose, and nylon are all made from crude oil.

There are also philosophical reasons for choices involving natural fibers as well. Traditional cotton farming is very hard on the environment. It takes a lot of water, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides are routinely used. Organic cotton is starting to be more of a market-share but at a high cost premium.

There has been interest in bamboo – it makes a wonderful yarn and interesting thread with a lustrous sheen that dyes into soft colors. But bamboo plants are actually endangered during certain cycles of growth, and since severely endangered Panda bears depend on bamboo as their only food source, the booming interest in bamboo flooring, fabric, disposable chopsticks, and other items is putting a lot of pressure on this resource.

So…fabric choices come down very much to personal preference in the end. It comes out to your choice of cost, ease of care, philosophy, and your skin! There are a myriad of choices – and the number of different blends of fibers, the colors and textures and prints, the weights, the drape and hand, is what makes shopping for fabric so much fun – and so dangerous! It is how those of us who sew usually wind up with piles and piles of fabric – fabric that we bought because we just couldn’t resist and now, can’t remember why we bought it, what we thought we were going to make out of it – but it was just so yummy we had to have it. Enjoy!