Choosing The Right Fabric
Out of ages of necessity, comes the present creative hobby of sewing. The advances in the modern sewing machine have made sewing a practical expressive hobby with endless potential.
Modern sewing is blessed with amazing computerized creative machines with loads of convenience and productivity features. The possibilities have become almost endless. Whatever you can imagine, you can create. Clothing construction, home decorating, heirloom projects, crafts, quilting, embellishing, and embroidery have become so easy that millions are engaged in this expanding hobby.
A vast array of modern threads, notions, fabrics, colors, and textures give the sewing hobbyist huge creative possibilities.
One of the challenges creative sewing hobbyists faced, is choosing the right combination of fabrics, colors, and textures. The options are so great, that sorting through the choices is often very difficult. As a result, the following list of tips is provided.
Tip One: Get advice when you need it. Read the suggestions in sewing books and on the back of patterns you are using.
Tip Two: Consider Quality. If you think about your project, and how much time and effort you put into it; ask yourself what quality materials do you need? Rest assured there are differences in quality. Three bolts of fabric may look just alike, one may be junk, another may be good quality, and the third may be top quality. Durability, finished appearance, and ease of sewing can vary greatly based on the quality of the fabric.
Tip Three: Understand grades of fabric. Fabrics are produced by first producing greygoods or the base fabric. If this greygood piece is woven, you may have one fabric made of 20 count, another of 60 count, and another of 200 count. By count we refer to the number of threads per inch. Obviously, the more threads in the greygoods, the better the fabric will be. The same print, coloring, or finish can be applied to each of these varying qualities of fabric. If you sew a project with low end goods, it will not wear as well or retain its quality as long as better quality materials.
Tip Four: Learn how to identify quality in fabrics. Read books on fabrics. Take classes. Ask sewing educator about identifying quality. Price is not the only indicator. Generally, poorer quality goods will cost less, but prices do still vary. The key is identifying the real value of the fabric.
Tip Five: Use these six tests: touch, light, fray, grain, stretch, scrunch. The touch test examines how the fabric feels when you touch it. The light test is done by holding the fabric up to the light and looking for its density and thread count. The fray check examines the cut edges of the fabric for stray or loose threads. The grain test inspects the grain, cross grain, and bias. The stretch test explores the ability of the fabric to retain its shape. The scrunch test is used to identify the tendency of the fabric to wrinkle or not. Tip Six: To examine the quality of fabric use your senses. Touch it, look at it up to the light, examine the weave, stretch it to see if it retains its shape, and scrunch up the fabric to see if it tends to wrinkle or not.
Tip Seven: Labels on the end of the bolt will often identify the composition of the fabric as well as recommendations for its care.
Tip Eight: The most common and in many ways one of the most versatile fabrics are cotton fabrics. Many of the modern cotton fabrics are finished with low wrinkle qualities that make cotton the all purpose fabric. It is an easy to sew woven fabric popular for clothing, quilting, home dcor, and many other applications. Cotton does have a potential shrinkage factor that you need to consider. If you are making a project that you never expect to launder, it is not too important. If, however, you plan to use the fabric in a project that will require periodic laundering; it is best to set the fabric before sewing it. To do so, wash the fabric in lukewarm water, and dry in cool dryer or air dry. The fabric will shrink up to 80 or 90 % of its total shrinkage. Better quality cottons will have already been processed to eliminate shrinkage and similar problems.
Tip Nine: Many other fibers have been blended with cotton yielding an even more versatile fabric. Polyester is often blended with cotton provide a wrinkle free fabric. Check the fabric label and remember blended fabrics will retain the features of both original fabrics.