Square Up Fabric 101
Fabric is Much Easier to Work With
Try This Yourself
Hold a piece of fabric right below the selvage edge.
First, stretch right below parallel to the edge:
Then, move one hand down a little and stretch again:
Fabric comes on a bolt folded once with the selvages together. If you unfold it, it will be about 44” - 45” wide.
The full width of fabric is about 44” – 45”.
Fabric doesn’t stretch at all on the lengthwise grain. It stretches a little on the crosswise grain, but the most on the bias.
The First Step in Any Successful Quilting Project is
to Accurately Square up Your Fabric.
To square it up, the goal is to cut just inside one raw edge of the fabric,
so that the newly cut edge is aligned with the crosswise grain line of the fabric.
Folding Fabric 101: Leave it folded once in 2 Layers or
fold it twice into 4 Layers: That is the Question.
Part 1
To trim off the raw edge, the fabric will need to be folded at least once, so it’s about 22” wide, and you can use two Guidelines Rulers connected as a 24” ruler.
Some quilters fold it twice to four layers, so it’s about 11” wide, and they can use just one 12” ruler.
Either Way, the goal is to fold it precisely so that the grain line on all the layers of fabric are perfectly aligned with each other.
Pick the fabric up holding it just by the selvedge edges. If the grain on both layers is aligned, the fabric will drape smoothly.
If the grain is out of alignment, the fabric will twist a little and not hang smoothly. You can adjust the top layer back and forth against the bottom layer until you eliminate any twists in the fabric.Once you get the fabric to hang smoothly, keep the selvedge edges aligned, lay it on your cutting mat and finger press the folded edge.
You can fold the fabric again by aligning the folded edge with the selvedge edges.
Some quilters do this but if you don’t get all four layers aligned accurately, your strips will come out with a slight “V” like the image on the left and will be unusable.
Conventional Method 1: Using Just One Ruler
Conventional Method 2: Using Two Rulers
The New Super Easy Way
Connect Guidelines Rulers or regular acrylic rulers as a corner square and it will be super
easy to line up to the fabric's edge, square up and start cutting strips from the same side.
Click here to see how, using Guidelines Rulers
Click here to see how, using regular acrylic rulers
Fabric comes on a bolt folded once with the selvedges together. If you unfold it, it will be about 44” - 45” wide.
The full width of fabric is about 44” – 45”.
Fabric doesn’t stretch at all on the lengthwise grain. It stretches a
little on the crosswise grain, but it stretches the most on the bias.
The first step in any successful quilting project
is to accurately square up your fabric.
To square it up, the goal is to cut just inside one raw edge of the fabric,
so that the newly cut edge is aligned with the crosswise grain line of the fabric.
Folding Fabric 101: Leave it folded once in 2 layers or
fold it twice into 4 layers: That is the question.
To trim off the raw edge, the fabric will need to be folded at least once, so it’s about 22” wide, and you can use two Guidelines Rulers connected as a 24” ruler.
Some quilters fold it twice to four layers, so it’s about 11” wide, and they can use just one 12” ruler.
Either Way, the goal is to fold it precisely so that the grain line on all the layers of fabric are perfectly aligned with each other.
Pick the fabric up holding it just by the selvedge edges. If the grain on both layers is aligned, the fabric will drape smoothly.
If the grain is out of alignment, the fabric will twist a little and not hang smoothly. You can adjust the top layer back and forth against the bottom layer until you eliminate any twists in the fabric.Once you get the fabric to hang smoothly, keep the selvedge edges aligned, lay it on your cutting mat and finger press the folded edge.
You can fold the fabric again by aligning the folded edge with the selvedge edges.
Some quilters do this but if you don’t get all four layers aligned accurately, your strips will come out with a slight “V” like the image on the left and will be unusable.
Conventional Method 1: Using just one ruler.
Conventional Method 2: Using two rulers.
Square Up Your Fabric the Super Easy Way:
Connect Guidelines Rulers or regular acrylic rulers as a corner square.
It will be super easy to line up to the fabric's edge,
square up and start cutting strips from the same side.
Click here to see how, using Guidelines Rulers
Click here to see how, using regular acrylic rulers
