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Tips For Cutting Fabrics Properly

Cutting fabrics

Cutting fabrics -Whether your an experienced sewer with many successful projects under your belt or you’re just getting started with a needle and thread, there are always ways to improve your technique to ensure that the fabric you’re working on produces an end product that you will fall in love with.

Cutting fabrics into a pattern is something that many people struggle with, so the following tips are intended to offer you a little bit of help, ensuring you get the perfect pattern every time.

Pattern Paper

If you are working on a project that has pattern pieces that you need to cut around, it is a good idea to use pattern paper in order to mark the area properly.

While many do this, an important step that quite a few people forget is pressing the paper so that it is completely flat against the fabric. Failure to do so could lead to the paper developing creases and folds, which can work to distort the cut and leave you with a pattern piece that isn’t quite what you were expecting.

Fabric Grain

Your pattern guide may call for you to cut your fabric along the grain, so it is crucial that you understand what this is and cut accordingly so that the pattern turns out the way you expect.

When asked to do this, your pattern guide is telling you that you need to line up the pattern piece in the same direction as the warp thread that was initially used to weave the fabric. This can often be difficult to spot, particularly in high quality piece of fabric, so a good way to check is to gently tug the fabric on each side. in the majority of cases, the side that stretches the least is “on the grain”, so your cut should follow that direction.

Measuring The Cut

When cutting fabrics your pattern may call for you to cut in a variety of dimensions, which means you will need to be even more accurate that you would be with a standard cut. As such, it is a good idea to always measure twice, using both a ruler and a rotary cutter if you have one.

This will ensure you create clean and even lines that are both accurate and aligned with the grain of the fabric. This is a useful tip to follow even in cases where the pattern seems relatively simple, as taking the time to double-check at the beginning could save you a lot of time later in the project.

The Right Tools

Achieving a good pattern cut is only possible if you have the right tools for the job. A blunt pair of scissors, for example, is just going to lead to you hacking away at the fabric until you end up with a pattern piece that looks nothing like the outline you measured.

Be sure that your tools are up to the task and consider investing in a rotary cutter and new scissors in order to achieve a cleaner cut.

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