Can I have your comments on what a friend has said to me today? I was telling her how pleased I was with the advice I received here about tearing fabric, as it solved my problem so easily - and she said she was told not to tear because it warps the fabric and because (I think) the pattern is often not directly lined up with the grain of the fabric, so it won't tear exactly along the line of the pattern (but surely that would affect cutting too, as it would mean the pattern wasn't straight on the fabric? I don't really see what she means there).