The fabric was a complete mystery to me when I first started sewing. I didn’t understand what selvage, bias, or any other fabric term meant. In this post, I will explain what I wish I understood back then.
I will discuss precut fabric in another post but for this first lesson on fabric, yardage is what is most affordable for a beginner.
Yardage
When working with yardage you need to know that your fabric comes off the bolt by its length. The two selvage ends, run the length of this fabric. Depending on how much fabric you want to buy for example a half yard you will get 18” of selvage.
The width of this 18” length of fabric will be about 42” wide. The width of your fabric will only vary about 1-2” depending on the manufacturer. The length of your fabric depends on how much you want to buy.
The lengthwise fabric has almost no give to it. If you were to try and stretch your fabric parallel to the selvage there will be an audible snap to your fabric if you do it fast enough.
The width of the fabric has some give. Most of your cutting instructions will tell you to cut parallel to the width.
Bias is just the 45-degree intersection of the width and the length. This is where your fabric has the most stretch to it.
A quick way to find the length or width of the fabric is to just find the selvage. If you find the selvage you know the selvage is parallel to the length of the fabric.
Now most of the time. It isn’t critical that you know this. However, knowing how you are cutting or sewing your fabric together can help you understand why a particular occurrence might be happening.
For example, if you were to draw an X on the wrong side of a 10” fabric square. Put two fabrics’ right sides together and sew 1/4” away from the drawn line.
You will notice that a wrinkle or pucker effect will happen all along your sewn seams.
This is because while you were sewing some stretching or distortion was happening while you were sewing because you were sewing on the bias.
