squaring up fabric advice
 

this is the way I have been squaring up my fabric http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcpzwJMVTbc now with all this snow shoveling my shoulders are shot ugh! I am having a really tough time holding my fabric up like that before my shoulders start screaming, is there another way of squaring fabric?....thanks

I have often torn my fabric an inch or two (after looking to see how wonky it is) from the WOF cut line to get the actual straight of grain. I tear a few inches at a time to avoid stretching the fabric. Then I cut a new clean cut to get started.

Oh oh and I start the tear lines with scissors.

I learned this 50 years ago in 4-H.

I also never hold my fabric up to square it. I start from the factory fold and cut perpendicular to that. If I need to fold again, I fold that factory fold and simply make sure that the measurement between the folds is the same all across the fabric.

What is important in terms of getting straight cuts on strips is that the ruler be exactly perpendicular (90 degrees) to the fold. You can test this with a piece of paper, pretending it is fabric. Fold any way you want. When you cut exactly 90 degrees from that fold, the strip will be straight when unfolded. The more you deviate from 90 degrees, the more of a "bend" there will be in the strip where the fold was.

Actually that is how I make sure my fabric is on grain before I do any cutting. You'd be surprised how many times the fold line from the bolt isn't on the straight of grain.

Straight of grain is very important for clothing because it affects how the garment drapes on the body. It's not as important for quilting, especially for someone like me who does not prewash fabric (or for someone who prewashes and then starches to restore body and stability to the fabric).

I do not care if my cuts are slightly off-grain; it doesn't make any difference to my piecing. The cut is not enough off-grain to become stretchy the way a completely bias cut would be.

Many directional prints are not printed exactly on the straight-grain, or the straight-grain is distorted at the factory when the fabric is wound onto the bolts. When directionality is involved, it can be more important to cut on the straight line of the print (for example, stripes) than to cut exactly on-grain.

Another reason why straight-grain is more important in garment making than in quilting is the size of the pieces. Garment sewing is typically done by sewing large pieces of fabric together. If the grain of one large piece does not match another large piece, the long seam is going to reflect that when the pieces are draped on a body. Quilting is typically done by sewing smaller pieces of fabric together. Even if all of the small pieces are a little off-grain, these pieces are going to offset each other. If the quilt requires such precise piecing that every thread needs to be on-grain, it is better to do paper piecing (where the grain also doesn't matter).

The only instance I can think of where I might want to pay a lot of attention to straight-of-grain might be on a whole-cloth quilt.

I don't see how this will help fabric that has been pressed out of kilter. What I do is to place my hands on a diagonal and stretch, then move one director or the other until it hangs right.

Many years ago, Mom taught us to cut with scissors into the selvedge side of the fabric, find a loose thread and pull it, thereby finding the true straight of the grain and then cutting where the thread had been. Wow, was that tedious! Today, I like my plaids, stripes and directional prints to look smartly on the straight. Once I bought yards and yards of a toile only to learn it was printed crooked on the bolt. Still trying to use it up in scrappy quilts.

In my tailoring classes I took in High School, we had to do the "pull one thread" across to match up the straight of grain. I've been doing it like in the video for years, but it doesn't take me 3 minutes to do. The creased fold on the bolt is rarely on the straight of grain. If it's a hard crease, I will usually press the fabric to get rid of that crease before cutting. All you've got to do is hold the two selvages together and slide left or right until you see that it's hanging straight. I then pin my selvages together before placing it on my cutting matt.

That is why I prewash my fabric. After washing and drying I hold the fabric up by the selvage edges and keep adjusting those edges to the right or left until the fabric is straight on the bottom. Then I press it.