Originally Posted by bearisgray
I would hope that the shop would cull out the badly off-grain fabrics before putting them on the shelves.
Well... it's not quite that simple. Supposing there's one fabric that's wrapped crookedly, and it's the "feature fabric" of a collection. If we send it back, that compromises our ability to sell the rest of the fabrics of the collection (plus we have to answer all those questions "why don't you have that OTHER fabric in the line?").
And there are also the times where for 35" across the width of the fabric the design is perfectly straight with respect to the grain, but at the very edge on one side, it goes off. What do we do about that one?
I agree that tearing is a good way to find the straight of grain, but it renders 1/4" on each side of the tear unusable (at minimum!) and thereby I lose still more of the fabric. Plus not everyone likes tearing. Personally, if I was buying a fabric in a shop that tore, instead of cut, I would not be comfortable unless they gave me an extra inch on EACH end! (Just my own feelings, not necessarily representative of anyone else...)