Originally Posted by PURPLEROSE
morning
here is first question.
cutting with the grain. Dose that mean you would put the grain to wards the bottom of the cutting board( to wards yourself)?
No, grain refers to the weave. Look for the selvage edge, pull on fabric parallel to the selvage edges, no stretch to speak of this is the straight of grain. now pull on the cut edge that is at a 90 degree angle to the selvage, some stretch this is the cross grain. Now imagine a diagonal line up from the intersection of cut edge and selvage, give it a tug, lots of stretch, bias grain. So knowing the properties of grain you can use them to your advantage. So bias tape is narrow strips of fabric cut on the diagonal and is very stretchy going easily around curves. Cross grain give you a bit of fudge when sewing blocks so most quilt patterns are designed to work there. Now pull out any clothing pattern piece and look at the long arrows, they want you to align the pattern along the grain the arrow is pointing out. Mostly they point along the straight of grain. This is so because you don't need much stretch up and down your body and having too much there could distort the fit. By aligning a blouse with the straight of grain up down it gives you a bit of stretch with the cross grain around your body where you might need it.
Now when quilting you don't want to pair up too many bias grain cuts because they do stretch and and get out of shape and give you rippled seams. However if you are binding a curvy edge, or appliquéing curvy stems you want that stretch. Straight of grain can also apply to making sure that your piece of fabric is aligned according to the weave. Now most off the bolt fabric is not straight, it is distorted by the printing process. So the only way you can be utterly sure it is straight is by tearing an edge. Get a yard of fabric, use cheap muslin, make a snip in it about an inch up from the cut edge at the selvage and rip it. You will see that it is even on the torn side but not on the cut side, do the other end and the piece looks all wonky, this because the fabric is distorted. Two corners are "high" and two are "low" like a parallelogram. take the two low corners, opposite of each other and give a good strong pull on the diagonal, look now the fabric is straight. Having done this mostly it doesn't matter much when making quilts and usually most scrap quilts are cut casually off grain. This is not obvious unless you have a woven plaid or check. However as with every thing quilty make this work for you. I happen to like casually off grain plaids in a scrap quilt, I think it adds interest, catches the eye so to speak.