Thread: question on straight-of-grain

Originally Posted by carol45

It seems to me that tearing either WOF or LOF should always be straight, but sometimes, because the fabric has stretched, it seems not to be. I think that's what happened in this case, and my additional stretching made it OK.

It's because of the grain of fabric. WOF is stretchier than LOF. this is because of the way the fabric is woven on the loom. The LOF grain is woven more tightly, therefore having less give and stretch.

Good article-thanks, Dunster. I was taught to simply wash, iron, then put selvedge to selvedge, and slightly move them left or right until there are no wrinkles to the fold line. Then, cut off an end and begin rotary cutting what I need. I find doing this starts off ok, but I still have to do that a couple times if I am cutting several strips. Would you still have to periodically even the grain doing it the stretching method?

What I hate is when I get sucked into buying a fabric panel because it's so cute. Then you try to trim it or add borders and find it's printed crooked. I've blocked and steamed but sometimes there is no way to get it re-squared. The last one I had trouble with I finally cut off the printed border back to the white background colour and added more borders after it was squared. I try to restrain myself from looking at the panels at my LQS because the're so darn tempting.