Prism99

That's fine for garment making. How many garments are going to have seams that lie along the ripped edge?

In quilting, it is quite common to cut a 2.5" strip that will be used in a quilt. If that strip is cut from a ripped edge that has been trimmed 1/4" and is then used in strip-piecing, the entire seam on one side of that strip will be sewn on damaged fabric.

We can't see germs without a microscope. It's the same sort of thing with fabric ripped on the cross-grain. You don't see the damage until you look at the fabric under a microscope.

Most of us don't pass handmade garments on to the next generation. I don't think of myself as an heirloom quilter, but I do want to pass my quilts on to the next generation, and the generation after that if they hold up. I really don't mind if the binding wears out first; it's relatively easy to replace. What I do mind is having a few pieces here and there in my quilts that do not hold up to use the way the rest of the fabric holds up. The pieces that don't hold up as well will be the pieces that contain fabric within 2" of the crosswise rip.

Lengthwise rips are not as hard on fabric as crosswise rips, as others have noted. Weft and warp do matter, as Dayle pointed out. This is why I will on occasion rip borders. When I do this, I do remove an inch along the ripped edge for safety.

I do not have a problem with crosswise rips on wide backing fabric because, as someone mentioned, the 2" near the rip will be cut from the quilt before binding.

As for losing less fabric with ripping, the only way this can happen is if you ignore the existing fabric fold, re-fold so that selvedge edges match, *and* ignore the damage done to the ripped edges. If you remove the damage, you have just lost 2" of fabric from each side even though you have straight-on-grain edges. In my case, I prefer to cut from the fold that is already in the fabric. This means that not only do I need to cut 4" of fabric off each end to get rid of the damage, I also have to square up my fabric from the fold. Since the ripped edges on these fabrics are 2" to 3" apart at the selvedges, this means I lose another several inches of good quality fabric squaring up.

Losing the fabric squaring up is particularly galling because, as someone earlier pointed out, quilting strips do not need to be cut exactly on the straight-of-grain. In fact, they fray less if they are cut slightly off-grain. That is why I prefer to cut from the fold that comes with the fabric. The strips are not enough off-grain to create stretch, but just enough off-grain to dramatically reduce fraying. I notice occasionally that people will post here about cleaning up all the frays in their quilt tops before sandwiching. I always wonder if these are the people who take the trouble to ensure that they are cutting their strips exactly on-grain.

My biggest issue is actually with myself, for not noticing the ripped edges before I cut strips for my current quilt. I didn't want to throw away the good fabric with the bad, but at that point I had no way of telling which strips were the first ones I had cut from the ripped edge. This was not a good choice to have to make.