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Transcript:

Helen: We are recording today on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw peoples, including Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, Musqueam, and K’ómoks first nations.

Caroline: Hello, and welcome to Love to Sew. I’m Caroline, the owner of Blackbird Fabrics.

Helen: And I’m Helen, the designer behind Helen’s Closet Patterns.

Caroline: We’re two sewing buds who love to sew our own clothes and want to encourage you on your sewing journey, too.

Helen: Join us for today’s topic: cutting patterns and fabric.

Caroline: Hi, Helen.

Helen: Hi, Caroline.

Caroline: How you doing today?

Helen: I’m doing well. Thanks. How are you?

Caroline: I’m good.

Helen: It’s our recording week. And in between recording, I like to do some sewing in my studio, so I can just relax and take a little break. So right now I’m working on a Reynolds/ Winslow mashup jumpsuit situation.

Caroline: Ooh, I like that.

Helen: Right? I think it’s going to be cute.

Caroline: Are you doing pleats in the Winslow’s or…?

Helen: No, I’m thinking I’m just going to use them as the legs for the jumpsuit. We’ll see how it goes.

Caroline: So cute.

Helen: I’m going to do a muslin first.

Caroline: I’m excited to see this. It sounds amazing.

Helen: Me too. How are you doing?

Caroline: I’m good. Yeah. In between recording, I like to sit outside in my yard, read a book, and last night, I made, like, a very elaborate dinner.

Helen: Ooh.

Caroline: So, yeah. Lots of self care in between.

Helen: Wait, that’s it? Deets?

Caroline: Oh, I guess I’ll tell you, I made steak tacos, kind of, inspired by the meal that, uh, you and Sam made for us when we were visiting recently, and I made homemade tortillas, too.

Helen: You did?

Caroline: Yes, I did.

Helen: I’m proud of you.

Caroline: And they were really, really good.

Helen: They’re so tasty, right?

Caroline: Yeah, it did take me like three hours to make dinner. Sam makes it look so easy.

Helen: No joke. I mean, I think it took us three hours when you guys were here, too.

Caroline: But we were drinking and, um, yeah, no, definitely like at 9:00 PM, we sat down to eat, and I was like, okay, that took me, like, three hours. Wow. Cool, cool, cool.

Helen: Three hours well spent.

Caroline: Yeah, cooking is definitely relaxing for me, so it was good.

Helen: And then you eat three tacos, and it’s, like, an hour per taco.

Caroline: We do have a lot of leftovers that I’m hoping will last for a few days so…

Helen: Nice. Okay. Should we get into our show, Cutting Patterns and Fabric?

Caroline: Yes. But before we get started, we have a couple of things to talk about.

Helen: It’s true.

Caroline: We actually have a reminder for everyone today. Um, as we mentioned in an earlier episode this season, we’re doing an episode all about fitting with fitting expert, Alexandra Morgan. And if you’d like to be featured on that episode and get expert fitting advice, we need you to send in your pictures.

So Alexandra is going to be evaluating photos of listeners’ fitting issues and giving advice on how to get the perfect fit. So if you want to be featured, send photos of one garment to our email, hello@lovetosewpodcast.com. And we have some tips for taking pictures. Helen, do you want to go through those?

Helen: Yeah. So first, make sure you press your garment. Alexandra needs to be able to see what’s going on. Secondly, stand with your feet hip width apart and your hands at your sides, and you can sit, if you’re not able to stand. Um, have someone else take the pictures or use a tripod and a self-timer. And if you’re taking a picture of a top or dress, have the camera at the level of your chest. If you’re taking pictures of pants or a skirt, have the camera at the level of your hips. So send in photographs, and we need the front, back, and side views so we can fully evaluate the fitting issues.

Caroline: Yes, and the photos you send will be posted in the show notes on our website so that listeners can follow along for that episode. So, yeah, this is a fabulous opportunity to get some amazing fitting advice and help other sewists to learn how to fit garments as well. So we hope you’ll consider sending in some of your photos. Again, our email is hello@lovetosewpodcast.com. Thanks in advance.

Helen: Yeah, and you can totally be anonymous. You can put a little, like, black circle over your face…

Caroline: Or, like, cut out.

Helen: Cut off your head. Cut off your head.

Caroline: Cut off your head.

Helen: I mean, in the picture, in the picture.

Alright, we also have some feedback today. And this is from listener Shem. Shem writes, “Hello, Helen and Caroline. I wanted to drop you a note about sewing for and with kids.

I’m a gay man with a two and a half year old daughter. In the early days I did sew, but once I was living on my own, it was something that got dropped due to just trying to keep on top of life. When I look back now, I see that some of the reasons I dropped sewing was that I wasn’t very happy with certain aspects of it.”

Caroline: “Jump forward nearly 20 years later and now I’m married, I have a daughter, I moved from the hub-bub of California to the slow pace of the Midwest. I am fortunate that I am a full-time, stay-at-home dad. I’ve always been creative, but it wasn’t until my daughter’s first birthday that all my interests collided together. Of course, being a proud dad of an adorable daughter, I wanted to pull out all the stops for her birthday. I talked to my mom who loves to sew and loves to sew for her granddaughter about doing a birthday dress. I sketched up what I wanted and chose the fabric and then she pattern hacked til she got something close. This kicked off a tradition. Every year for her birthday, my mom and I collab on an outfit for my daughter based on the theme of the party.”

Helen: “It was while my folks were out here for her second birthday that I asked my mom to give me a refresher crash course on sewing. I purchased a pattern and fabric and off we went. That visit we cranked out three dresses for my daughter.

Tip number one: find a good pattern and make multiples. Each one sews up quicker than the last. Tip number two: pattern hacking is key when sewing with kids. Once you have something that fits well for your kids, the possibilities are endless by swapping out a collar, a sleeve, or changing the length from the dress to be a shirt or vice versa.”

Caroline: “Now here’s where it gets crazy… My ultimate hack for sewing for my daughter? Draping and drafting most of my own patterns, I do have a toddler dress form, but it does not capture the unique body shape of toddlers. They typically have a belly, the crotch and butt are dependent on a diaper silhouette, and their posture is more curved than straight.

Tip number three: Laying a small piece of muslin on their torso or back and making dots with a Sharpie for reference points is actually not hard. Kids are curious and want to interact. So if you catch them at their best time of the day, they might find it fun for you to be drawing on them, well the muslin. I then clean up the lines, trim it down slightly, and hold it on her again to see how well it’s fitting. Essentially, I’m making a Sloper.”

Helen: “I do still buy the occasional pattern, but it’s usually for a detail that I’m not familiar with. I would say when sewing for kids, it’s all about the muslin mock-up. Once I know it fits, I can go to town sewing while she’s playing.

Tip number four: sewing doesn’t have to be isolated from little ones. They might enjoy seeing what you’re doing. Ironically, my daughter is the pin finder. She can spot a pin I dropped and comes to me, ‘Daddy. I found a pin.’ Now that she’s almost three, she loves sticking them in my pin cushion. It looks like a hedgehog, so she loves it.”

Caroline: “Tip number five: I have a bin with my current sewing project in it, and I always have it with me in the living room where she plays. I’ll do all my hand sewing and basting my pieces together in the room with her. Then, after she goes down for a nap or has gone to bed for the night, I run those basted seams through the machine. It only takes a few minutes.

Tip number six: kids need independence. They need a space to feel safe and the ability to explore. I have the baby monitor set up in the living room, so I can be at the machine sewing and watching her play. She feels free to do what she wants without me hovering, but I get the peace of mind that she’s not scaling bookcases.”

Helen: “I now sew relentlessly. I love it. She loves everything I make for her.

Oh, and tip number seven: Quiet time is key. Every day I get up two hours before she does. I get to have my coffee, balance my checkbook, read my email, and plot out what needs to happen in my sewing projects for that day. If there’s something I need to do that takes focus, I can knock it out in the time as well. Since August, 2019, I’ve made 14 garments and one of those was an elaborate and highly tailored coat for my mom with pad stitching and everything. This calendar year, I have 42 pieces planned. We’ll see how far I get. Oh yeah. One of my biggest hurdles I identified from when I sew: unfinished seams. I hate how they look. What got me back into sewing: felled seams.

Love the show. Susan Khalje is my favorite guest you’ve had. I’ve been working my way through all your old episodes. Keep loving to sew, I know I will.”

Helen: Oh, thank you so much for your email, Shem. There was so much great advice in there, especially with the perspective of somebody with kids which Caroline and I don’t have. So we really appreciate your tips, and we’re so glad that you’ve made sewing such a happy part of your family life. We’re really inspired.

Caroline: Yeah. Thank you so much. We love hearing from you all. So please do keep sending in your feedback cause we’re going to be reading more of it on the show on the regular.

Helen: Yeah. Okay today, we’re talking all about cutting.

Caroline: Cutting!

Helen: Cutting patterns, cutting fabric. Hopefully, not cutting yourself at the same time.

Caroline: Anyone who sews knows that sewing is more than stitching fabric together. Cutting can take up to a third of the time it takes to make a garment.

Helen: Yes. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about cutting out patterns and fabric. We’ll share our favorite tools, go over some strategies for making the most of small spaces, and give some tips for cutting success. Okay, Caroline, you and I have spent a lot of time with our scissors and rotary cutters over the years. I want to know what lessons have you learned from cutting?

Caroline: Yeah. We’ve also spent a lot of time together cutting projects, I feel like, and putting together PDF patterns.

Helen: True. It’s a good activity for, uh, hanging out with friends.

Caroline: It really is. Yeah. I think my biggest piece of advice is to take your time. I used to rush through cutting and try to get through it as quickly as I can so I can get right to the sewing, but it would definitely lead to, like, mistakes and frustration. So I think, like, go through all the steps to set yourself up for success.

So definitely it’s important to prewash your fabric. Often, this requires pressing afterwards which yes, I know it’s, like, super annoying, but I never regret pressing my fabric before I cut out a project. Carefully laying out your fabric and then making sure that your pattern pieces are on the grain, marking things out, or, like, pinning and weighing your pieces down carefully, using a sharp blade or, like, a sharp pair of scissors, possibly pattern matching, like, all of these things take time, patience, concentration to get right. So don’t rush it. That’s my biggest piece of advice. And it’s a piece of advice I need to take often.

And then my other piece of advice would be just investing in the right setup. That was really key for me. Um, and I don’t necessarily mean investing money, but more like investing time to figure out what’s right for you and what’s right for your body. A lot of things can be DIY-ed, like, on the cheap, but, like, I learned really quickly, cutting on the floor is not for me. It gives me a really sore back and even sore legs from, like, kind of, being hunched down and with my legs, kind of, like, folded under me. So yeah, if at all possible, try to set yourself up ergonomically so that you’re, kind of, taking care of your body. And I think you’re going to thank yourself later.

Helen: Definitely. Great advice.

Caroline: But what have you learned Helen? Tell me.

Helen: Um, I think my biggest piece of advice is just to let the cutting be the important part of the process that it is. I like to separate out this step from the rest of my sewing so that I can focus on it and take my time, like you said. So I cut out projects one day and then I’ll sew on a different day, or at least a different time of day, so I’m separating that process out.

When I started sewing, I would often underestimate the time and the energy that it takes to cut something out. I would rush through it so I could get to the good part, the sewing. You come up with an idea in your head, like, I want to make this thing. And you think, oh, cutting it out will just take, like, 30 minutes. You know, two and a half hours later, you finally got everything ready, and you’re exhausted. So I would frequently feel, like, annoyed and tired and, kind of, over it by the time I got to the sewing part.

So cutting can be a lot sometimes, and that’s okay. It’s just, like, making sure that you let it be the event that it is. There’s the pattern prep, the fabric, cutting, the marking, cutting the interfacing. So I like to treat it as its own important step, and that really helped me to get better at it and enjoy that process.

I often watch TV when I’m cutting out or sometimes, you know, we’ll have Zoom calls with friends, Caroline, and, like, I think cutting out is a great thing to do on a Zoom call cause you can have your laptop right there and you can just be on the call and cutting, just enjoying it, having fun with it and the feeling of sitting down fresh to sew a project that’s already cut out and ready to go is so nice, too. So I know I’m setting myself up for sewing success later or the next day when I actually come back to the project to sew it.

Caroline: Yeah, that’s such a good piece of advice. This idea of, like, kind of, taking a breather in between the cutting step and the sewing step, I think is so helpful because you can get so, sort of, exhausted cutting out a project and then you get into sewing, and you’re, like, starting not on the best foot, you know? So setting yourself up for success, giving yourself some time in between, and treating it as its own thing, I think is great advice.

Helen: Aw, yeah. Thank you. I think that your advice was great, too. Basically we have the same thing. Just take your time, people.

Caroline: Exactly. And we’re going to talk all about all of the things you can do to set yourself up for success today and lots of tips and things. So, the first time you’ll take out your scissors in the cutting process is probably to cut out your pattern. So we’re going to talk a little bit about cutting out sewing patterns first.

Now some of you are Team Trace. You use tracing paper to trace off only the size you need, and you leave the original pattern intact. If you are Team Trace, then you can use these tips for your traced version on paper, or just, you can laugh at us knowing that you don’t mess around with this stuff and wait until the section on cutting fabric.

Helen: Get the upper hand. Alright, so to cut patterns, you’ll want a few specific tools. First, quality scissors that work for you. Preferably, these should be different than your fabric scissors, and paper can dull scissors quite quickly to make it more difficult to cut through the fabric, so that’s why we want to have two different pairs. If scissors aren’t your thing, a dedicated rotary cutter for paper can be really great, too. I have one of those, and I like using it for those long straight cuts.

Caroline: You could also invest in a paper cutter, lots of PDF patterns need to be trimmed before you can assemble them, and this makes that much quicker. You can get them in plastic or old school wood and metal, like, literally old school. They, these things are a must for teachers. Um, so yeah, this is a great, kind of, tool to have around if you have the space in your sewing room.

Helen: Yes. For a long time, I was cutting out my paper patterns with, like, a dinky little pair of, like, craft scissors that I had kicking around my apartment. And when I finally spent the $12 to get the nice pair of paper scissors, game changer. So much less hand cramping. The blades are super sharp. I mean, if you are in that boat and you have a dinky little pair of scissors, invest in something nicer. You won’t regret it.

Caroline: And then obviously to assemble patterns, you’re going to need tape and tape dispenser potentially, and, or a glue stick. A lot of people use glue sticks to put patterns together.

Helen: Yes. Okay. So here are some tips for cutting out patterns. First is to print only the size or sizes that you need. So if your PDF pattern is tiled, that means that you can turn the different layers on and off and just choose the sizes that you need. Not every pattern company provides this, but most do nowadays, so check it out in, like, Adobe Acrobat and see if you can turn on and off the layers.

Choose your size or sizes you’re grading between and then only print those ones, so this will save you ink and make the pattern look less confusing later on. Some patterns also have different page ranges for different sizes. So make sure to look through the pattern’s printing instructions, so you don’t end up printing out a bunch of sizes that you won’t use.

Caroline: Mhm, this is especially true for, uh, bra patterns.

Helen: Yes!

Caroline: It’s often just a few pages that you have to print. Another good idea is to highlight your cut line before cutting. Raise your hand if you’ve ever cut along the wrong size line.

Helen: Both my hands are raised. That’s how many times it’s happened to me.

Caroline: But things can get confusing with all the different sizes overlapping and all the different types of lines. Some of them look similar. So highlighting your size, lets you double-check before you cut which is always a good call.

Helen: Yes. I know that this can get so confusing. And as a pattern designer, I try so hard to make sure that you can see in those areas where it starts to get really close, but sometimes you just can’t. There’s, like, no way to position the pieces, so there isn’t an area where it’s just all black lines and, like, you can’t see anything. Oh yeah. It could be really, really confusing. So printing off just one or two sizes is great and then highlighting. And then make some adjustments before you cut out the pattern. This can make truing up the pattern lines easier.

So, for example, if you want to lengthen a tapered trouser, you’ll need to slash and spread the pattern and then true up the seam lines. And truing up is just smoothing out that seam line, so there’s no weird lumps or bumps or angles. Um, if you’ve already cut out the pattern, you might need to add extra paper to the pattern to get that trued up line to be nice and smooth. But if you slash and spread the pattern before you cut it out, you’ll already have paper there, so there’s plenty of paper to work with.

This is something that I’ve only started doing in the last year, and I really do prefer to make my adjustments before I cut out the pieces.

Caroline: Mhm. Yeah, that’s a really good tip. And then don’t be afraid to add extra markings to your pattern. So, for example, let’s say you have a dress with a short length view and a long length view. If you cut out the short length, you’ll be cutting off the longer length. Keep that piece you cut off and label it so you can make a longer dress later on. You can just tack that onto the bottom and use it for a future project.

Another great thing is to label the date you cut out that project and what your measurements were at that time. Then, if you want to make the pattern again, it’s going to be easier to decide on any changes you want to make because your measurements will be right on the pattern piece.

Helen: Oh, love that. And if you’re taping your pattern pieces together, try to only put tape on the right side so that you can press the pattern pieces from the wrong side. You can flip them over, use your iron on a low heat with no steam, and then you can just press that paper flat. The creases that we make in patterns when we fold them up to store them can cause us to cut wonky shapes out of the fabric later, so you’ll be much more precise with a nice flat pattern piece.

Caroline: Yes, and although we mostly use PDF patterns on printer paper, we know that there are so many great patterns out there that are printed on tissue, kind of, the traditional old school type of sewing pattern. So we have a couple of tips for cutting out tissue paper patterns. Our first one is to be delicate. Tissue paper rips easily, and vintage tissue paper patterns will rip even more easily. So keep some tape around to quickly fix any tears.

Helen: And if you know you’re going to want to keep using a tissue paper pattern, you can interface it to add strength to it. So to do this, you iron your tissue pattern piece flat on your iron’s lowest setting with no steam. And then you place a piece of interfacing larger than the pattern piece on your ironing surface with the glue side part facing up, then you place your pattern piece on top, and then put a scrap cotton piece of fabric as a press cloth over top of that, and then you just give it a nice big press. You’ll probably get some of the adhesive on the fabric scrap. So it won’t be a reusable piece, but you can save it for stuffing pillows or soft toys or something like that. And then after you’ve fused your interfacing, cut around the pattern piece. And this will give you a really nice stable piece of what was tissue but is now tissue plus interfacing, um, to work with moving forward.

Of course, an alternative to this is to trace that tissue onto some craft paper or computer paper or something you’ve got on hand.

Caroline: Mhm. Yah, that’s a really good tip because the more you, kind of, fold and unfold tissue paper patterns, they just, like, get so crumply and ripped and messy. And anytime I use tissue, I’m like, oh, I want to trace this onto paper even though I’m not even Team Trace.

Helen: I think that I found that so exciting when I got back into sewing and found indie sewing patterns was that I could print them off on stable paper cause I always fumble the tissue paper and rip it to shreds. I don’t know what it is. I guess I’ve got, like, two left thumbs or something.

Caroline: Alright, so now we’re at the heart of the episode, Helen, cutting fabric. And I know I’m pretty excited to talk about fabric.

Helen: But you love fabric. You shouldn’t want it to get cut up.

Caroline: No, then it becomes something beautiful that you can wear. Of course, I want you to cut.

Helen: This is true.

Caroline: Okay. So first you need something to cut on. Although some sewists have a dedicated sewing room and maybe a big cutting surface to cut on, most sewists are dealing with limited space.

Helen: Yes. And many sewists do cut on the bare floor and a million kudos to you if that is you. It’s certainly not for the weak of heart or back. YouTube sewist Rachel Maksy calls herself a floor troll when she’s cutting up her projects, which I love. She’s so funny. But one thing that you can do is get a folding cutting board. They’re very useful, even for floor cutters, cause it will protect your floor as well.

Dritz makes a super board that’s made out of sturdy cardboard, and it folds out to be about 40 inches by 70 inches. So quite large. And then it folds away to be 40 inches by 12 inches. So it’s essentially a big cardboard accordion. You can fold it part way out to make a mid-sized cutting surface. It has a grid marked in inches plus a bias line. You can definitely use this on the floor, but you could also put it onto a table or even a bed. It will protect your duvet or your tabletop or your carpet. Plus, you can pin into it because it’s cardboard, and it’s like 20 bucks and it’s so useful.

Caroline: Um, Helen, it’s 39 by 71 inches…

Helen: I rounded.

Caroline: Just in case someone is out there like, oh, I have the perfect size table for that cutting mat.

Helen: You’re right. I should have been more specific. I used to have one of these, and I kept it folded up next to my fridge in my apartment, and I would get it out and put it out on my bed, and it does make a great surface, especially for bed cutting. It’s not like the most stable thing. And if you use a rotary on it, you will eventually just shred it. So it’s more useful for pinning and cutting with scissors, but any kind of surface like this that you can get your hands on is going to improve the experience.

Caroline: Mhm. Didn’t you used to have plywood or something that you put on your table back when I met you?

Helen: Oh yeah. I’ve used many different methods over the years. Converting spaces into sewing rooms.

Caroline: Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean that totally worked. Whatever works, right? If you have the space to keep a piece of wood or cardboard around, then it’s definitely worth it to have that, that extra cutting space, if you can hack it up.

Okay. So if you’re bending over the table to cut your fabric and that hurts your back, you can get table risers to bring the height of your table up. Um, so the actual feet of your table will rest on these risers, and if you combine risers with a foldable table, then you have an ergonomic and space saving setup.

Helen: Yes. I recommended these to my mother-in-law, Laurie, and she got a set for her table, just a regular kitchen table. And then you pop these little plastic cones underneath and they have a little divot in the top. So the leg goes in the divot so everything’s nice and stable, and it just raises it up, like, six to eight inches. Game-changer. Really, really nice to have that extra height.

Caroline: Yeah, they work really well. We have a bunch of them on hand at Blackbird if we ever need to make any like makeshift cutting tables at a moment’s notice.

Helen: And our former guest, Brooks Ann Camper, actually made a portable table extender. So the base of this is a sturdy, adjustable height ironing board. And then the top is just a piece of plywood attached to a layer of homasote which is a type of fiber board that you can actually pin into. The top is attached to the metal ironing board base with a screwed in wooden block. And finally, Brooks Ann covered it in brown craft paper, so she can take it out, put it at the side of her table to extend it into a larger cutting surface and then fold it flat to put it away. So genius. We’ll link her blog post about that in the show notes.

Caroline: Awesome. Cutting mats are also an essential for rotary cutter lovers like us. The bigger, the better really. It makes it so much easier if you don’t have to reposition a pattern piece to finish cutting it. And you can get cutting mats in standard sizes and custom sizes. You could get one made to the size of your table for maximum cutting space. That’s what we do at Blackbird, and I love our giant cutting mats, uh, at the office. They’re so great to cut on.

Helen: Yeah, it’s pretty magical to have just a full table, but prior to getting one for myself, I had the, I think just Fiskars brand two foot by three foot mats, and I had three of them, and I would butt them up next to each other and cut things out that way. But, of course, there’s always that little spot in between the cutting mats that doesn’t get cut, and it hangs on the fabric. And so when you’re moving things around, things can definitely get a little bit messy, but there are two general types of cutting mat: there’s self-healing and hard surface.

So self-healing mats have a few layers to them, including a soft vinyl or plastic top layer that appears to close back up after cutting onto it. Olfa is a popular brand of self-healing mat. Um, the downside to self-healing mats is that thin fabrics can get pushed into the soft surface and the grooves that are made by our rotary blades which I actually have experienced with interfacing on my soft mat. I don’t know if you have experienced that, too, Caroline, but there’s so many little tiny bits of interfacing, like, jammed into the grooves of my mat now. I don’t even know how to get them out. Maybe I’ll figure that out later.

Caroline: There are cleaners that you can get to, like, sort of, rub the surface to rub it out, but it never quite goes back to the original stage. I think you just have to replace them every once in a while, especially if they’re getting, like, super heavy use.

Helen: I mean, I’m just calling BS on this whole self healing thing. I can see the lines. My fabric’s getting jammed in there.

Caroline: Especially, like, if you’re cutting sort of in the same spot all the time, you know, it’s definitely, you’ll see a lot of wear and tear in that spot. Maybe you can rotate your mat around.

Helen: That’s true. I need to move around my table a little bit more, but there are also hard surface mats. Our former guest, uh, the late David Page Coffin, referred to the BIG MAT which is a thin, hard surface mat. Uh, we’ll link it in the show notes. And he said it didn’t have the same problems with the thin fabrics as the self-healing mats.

Although a hard surface mat shows cutting grooves very visually, it doesn’t affect the function of the mat as much as the softer mats can. And this is what I do when I cut interfacing now is I get out my old two by three Fiskars mat that is a hard surface mat, and I cut my interfacing on that instead because it doesn’t get stuck in the groove. So I guess having both is really the way to go.

Caroline: Yeah. I mean, if you, if you can do that, then you can get the best of both worlds. Amy of Cloth Habit has a great post called “Adventures in Cutting Mats,” where she sought the advice of Mike Barnette, the owner of the now-defunct, oh cry, cutting-mats.net. He had some great advice for prolonging the life of your cutting mat. I’m crying because cutting-mats.net is where we got our custom cut cutting mats, and we’ve recommended them a bunch. Um, but it seems like now they’re closed sadly. But the most important thing is to change your blades often, Amy says, and you can also rotate the mat regularly, clean it regularly with warm, soapy water, and try not to use more pressure than necessary to cut the fabric.

I’m definitely guilty of putting a lot of pressure on my mat, especially if I’m working with a blade that potentially needs changing or has, like, a little kink in it. Sometimes you put a brand new blade on a rotary cutter and it will immediately have like a little diver or divot in it. And that will really affect your cutting, so sometimes I’ll just, you know, really push hard and, sort of, go over the same spot over again. It will, definitely will put more pressure than is probably necessary on my cutting mat.

Helen: I’m guilty of that instead of, like, one smooth pass, I’m going, like, eh oh, eh oh, eh oh, all the way down, back and forth.

Caroline: You’re like, I just don’t want to lift my fabric and realize that a pattern piece is hanging on by, like, two threads, you know?

Helen: Yeah, exactly.

Caroline: It’s the worst.

Helen: Well, it sounds like I should have read this article before I complained about my self-healing mat. But if any of our listeners know of a good place to buy custom cutting mats that are sized to your tables, let us know because we’d love to recommend them, and we need a new source.

Caroline: Yeah, we need a new source. Okay. So next up, you’re going to need tools to cut with, obviously. So let’s start with scissors. A pair of good fabric sheers can last you a lifetime or longer. Eight inch dressmaker’s sheers will work for pretty much all your cutting needs. And if you have pain or difficulty with clenching your hands to make the cutting motion, look for spring loaded sheers. They spring open after you squeeze them closed, so your hand is only doing half the movement of cutting with a regular pair of sheers.

Helen: Yes. And even though all you really need are dressmaker’s sheers. There’s a few other types of scissors that can make your sewing life a little bit easier. First of all, one of my favorite tools, duck bill sheers, or applique scissors, are good for grading seam allowances or trimming seams. The handles are angled, so you can cut with them parallel to the fabric instead of perpendicular, like with regular sheers. One side of the scissors has a large paddle or duck bill that holds down the fabric you don’t want to cut so you can see what you’re doing and that’s why it makes it so good for grading seams. I also love using my duck bill sheers for cutting notches because they’re so sharp, and I find them very precise. So they’re my go to for cutting notches.

Caroline: Oh, yeah. I love my duck bill sheers. I will say there’s like a pretty big range of quality with duck bill sheers. So go for something a little bit higher end if you can afford it. Cause I’ve noticed a big difference in different price points with those. The more quality ones tend to work a lot better.

Helen: True, I love my Gingher Duck Bill Sheers.

Caroline: Snips can also be handy for cutting threads away when you’re at the machine. They’re usually lightweight and springy with, like, short, sharp blades. And they’re also good for notching if you keep them sharp.

Helen: True. Embroidery scissors can be used the same way as snips as a lightweight option for snipping threads. They’re so tiny and cute. Embroidery scissors aren’t springy like snips. However, their super pointy tips are great for spearing into and cutting buttonholes, and they can cut notches well, too.

Caroline: Spearing into button holes. Oh my gosh. I’m going to have a heart attack.

Helen: Our assistant Lisa’s very brave apparently.

Caroline: Pinking sheers are a good way to finish seams on tightly woven fabrics. They cut, like, a zigzag edge. So those are really useful to have around.

Helen: Yes. And brand-wise for scissors, I mean, we both love Kai, that’s my dressmaking sheer go-to, Gingher, as we already mentioned, and LDH also makes really nice scissors. They all hold a sharp edge, and they’re made to last, as long as you get them sharpened on a regular basis,when you feel like you need to.

Caroline: Mhm. And, of course, we both use rotary cutters for the bulk of our cutting. A 45 millimeter rotary cutter is a good all-purpose choice. Just go slowly around curves, and you’ll be totally fine.

Helen: A 28 millimeter rotary cutter is great for curvy, smaller pieces. Get this one if you’re going to get into bra making or smaller projects.

Caroline: And you can go bigger with a 60 millimeter rotary cutter, but it’s mostly useful if you’re going to cut many layers all at once. There are also tiny 18 millimeter rotary cutters. I imagine this would be good for doing complicated applique or something.

Helen: True. And rotary cutters can be even easier on hands than spring loaded scissors because you don’t have to open and close them. But, of course, it depends on your personal preference. You can get a rotary cutter with a safety guard that slides up, then it will only cut when you want it to and avoid any disasters.

Caroline: Mhm. Rotary cutter blades need replacing. There’s no official rule on how often to do it, but if you notice your blade blunting as you’re using it to cut, that’s a good time for you to replace it.

Helen: Yes. If you are struggling, it needs to be replaced.

Caroline: If you’re putting a ton of pressure, you need to replace it.

Helen: And another tip I have with rotary blades, and this is something I tell anyone who comes into my studio to sew with me, it’s like have fun using the tools, but, like, please close the rotary cutter blade when you’re not using it. Do not leave it open on the table because one bump and that’s going flying onto the floor and who knows where it will land. So it’s always a good idea to close and lock the blade when you’re not using it.

Caroline: Mhm. And if you’re using a rotary cutter or marking your pattern onto the fabric, you’ll need some pattern weights. There’s some really cute pattern, weight options on the market. We found some adorable polymer clay weights shaped like donuts on Etsy. There are some Liberty print cloth ones too filled with rice and shaped like pyramids.

You can DIY pattern weights, too. Professor Pincushion has a video and free pattern on how to make the pyramid rice-filled pattern weights. We’ve also seen people do cool stuff like paint metal washers with nail polish, or you can just do what we do: use regular household stuff. I use hockey pucks for my cutting. And Helen, you use plain metal washers, right?

Helen: Yeah, I have a couple of different sizes for different projects. Um, and I think I have about 20 total, and I’ve had them for years, and I’ve never needed anything else. One of my favorite tips though from a past podcast episode was the person that wrote in and said they use cutlery, like, just go in your cutlery drawer and grab all your knives, not the sharp ones obviously, like the butter knives, and then just use those. And I think that’s genius because they’re the perfect weight and size to hold down your pieces.

Caroline: Oh, yeah. Listeners might know that I have been getting really into ceramics and pottery lately with my partner, Shea, and I really want to make a set of, like, hand-built pattern weights out of clay.

Helen: Ooh.

Caroline: Um, yeah. And do some fun glazes and make them really extra heavy. I feel like it would be a really fun, easy project. And then I’ll get to look at them all day when I’m sewing.

Helen: Great idea. Okay. So if you’re using scissors, you will need pins to keep your fabric and paper pattern together. We both like the Clover brand for pins. I like the flower head kind, literally has a little flower on the top, and Caroline likes the glass head kind. We recommend pinning perpendicular to the edge of your pattern piece, so your pin is pointing outward. If you pin parallel along the edge, it can be easy to add tiny pinches of fabric here and there to make your cutting less precise. But of course, as always, you got to do what works for you.

Caroline: Okay. Cutting out your pattern pieces accurately is a big deal. If you’re a quarter of an inch off on every pattern piece that can add up to change the fit of your clothing. So we do have some quick cutting tips for you.

Helen: Yes. One of my favorites, and this is hard in small spaces, is try not to let your fabric dangle off the edge of your cutting surface. This can shift the layers of your fabric or even stretch it out, especially with knits so that you’re no longer cutting on grain or the piece is actually stretched out so it’s going to shrink up to be smaller than it was when it was on the table. Roll up the edge of your fabric or fold it up and just place it at the edge of your cutting table instead as best you can to make sure that it’s not dangling off the edge.

Caroline: Mhm. And like I mentioned earlier, pressed fabric is always easier to cut. Pinning a pattern piece to a wrinkled edge is kind of a nightmare. Plus, the wrinkles could add length or width to your project that you don’t want.

Helen: Oh, the number of times I’ve skipped this step and cut something out and then afterwards it’s got that, like, jagged edge. I’m like, oh yeah, the wrinkles really didn’t help. Yeah. Okay. Make sure you’re on grain, also, when you’re cutting. The grain of fabric runs parallel to the selvedge along the length of your fabric so your pattern pieces should have grain lines marked on them.

If you’re using a pattern for woven fabric, make sure that long arrow for the grainline is going down the grain of your fabric. And you do that by putting your pattern piece down on the fabric and then measuring from that grainline to the selvedge edge or to the folded edge to make sure that it’s nice and straight. It is worth the effort to do this. I know it’s one of those things for new sewists where they’re like, really does it matter? I could just squeeze the pattern pieces in closer if I just angle it slightly. No.

Caroline: It does matter. We are here to tell you it does matter.

Helen: It matters. Yeah.

Caroline: So what if you have a mystery piece of fabric and you don’t know where the selvedge or the grain is. Maybe you got it from a fabric swap or a thrift store and the selvedge edge is cut off, or it’s, like, a half cut piece of fabric that you just can’t really identify the grainline. You can try to do that yourself. So to do that, you can gently stretch it in different directions. Lay the fabric down on a flat surface and gently tug the fabric away from a center point.

If you’re on the grainline, it should barely move at all. If you’re on the bias of the fabric, it should have quite a bit of stretch to it. And if you’re on the crossgrain, which is perpendicular to the grain, it should stretch a little bit. Some crossgrain fabrics don’t stretch at all. And obviously, we’re talking about wovens here without spandex in them. So if you’re working with a knit or, um, fabric that has spandex in it, those rules don’t really apply cause you’ll have stretch in a lot of different directions. So this is really for, like, a plain woven fabric.

Helen: Yes. And one of my favorite things to do is just hold it up to the light and see if I can see the grain…

Caroline: Or the weave.

Helen: Yeah. The weave. Exactly. You might be able to find it. Once you have an idea of which direction the grain is going, there are a couple things you can do to make the grainline even clearer. You can fray the edge of your fabric and pull the yarns out in one direction until it forms a straight edge. This will be parallel with your grains. You’re actually grabbing one of those pieces of thread that makes up the fabric and trying to pull it out. You’re going to be able to do this on some fabrics, and on others, it’s going to be quite tricky, so it really depends on the weave. And Evelyn Wood has a YouTube video where she demonstrates these methods. So we’ll have it in our show notes for you. Past guest Evelyn Wood. That was such a fun interview.

Caroline: Yes, definitely. Okay. And then some patterns for knit fabrics use direction of greatest stretch instead of grain, so look out for that. Some patterns we’ll have the dogs labeled instead of the grainline, so this is pretty easy to find. Stretch your fabric parallel to the selvedge, then perpendicular to the selvedge. Whichever one stretches more is your dogs or direction of greatest stretch.

Helen: One of my favorite sewing terms. Okay. If you’re cutting your fabric with scissors, try not to lift your fabric to cut it. You want to keep it as flat on the table as possible as you cut. You can even lay the palm of your non-dominant hand down on the fabric to hold it down as you cut along the edge. Lifting up curves the fabric, and when you lay it back down, you can see how inaccurate your cutting lines were. So just try to make sure you keep your scissors as flat as possible. This is the tricky part with scissors I find and why I prefer rotary cutters.

Caroline: Mhm. Yeah, especially if you’re working with, like, really big, fancy scissors. They will, they’ll lift the fabric more, and it does make a difference.

Okay. Our next tip is to get your scissors and rotary cutter blades sharpened. Sharp cutting tools are necessary to a good cutting experience. You don’t need to buy new tools every time. A lot of fabric stores actually have independent blade sharpeners come in regularly. So you can ask your local store for their info. You can also mail your scissors to some manufacturers for sharpening. Gingher will do this for any of their scissors. You can also check with hardware stores.

Quilting Digest recommends the Colonial Needle rotary blade sharpener. It’s a little tool where you insert the blade and twist it and it will sharpen the edge. I’ll also mention that a lot of knife sharpeners will also sharpen scissors, and some of them even have, like, cute little trucks, and they’ll, like, come to your house and do it right outside.

Helen: What?! That’s cute.

Caroline: So it’s not as annoying or hard to get your stuff sharpened then you might think.

Helen: Okay, we’ve got our tools. We’ve got our place to cut. We’re ready. And we have some tips. There’s a few different methods you can use when you’re actually cutting out your projects. You don’t have to choose one. You can switch around depending on the fabric and the pattern and the project and all those things.

So the first is, cutting on the fold or two layers at once. And this is a pretty common way to cut out garments. A lot of cutting layouts will instruct you to cut on the fold. So one question that I get a lot is should the right side or the wrong side face out when you fold the fabric. It’s a great question. And I think that a lot of the time it doesn’t really matter, but it depends on the fabric and the markings that you need to make.

So if you’re marking out a dart, for example, it might make sense to have the wrong side facing out because you want those dart markings to be on the wrong side of the fabric when you go to sew that dart. Conversely, if you’re marking a patch pocket placement, you probably want the right sides facing out because that’s where you want the markings to be.

So obviously, a lot of garments will have both inside markings and outside markings, so it might not be super clear, but you can take your pick on which side you think is going to be better for facing out. I also think that some fabrics, it makes sense to have certain sides facing out. Take, like, a French terry, for example. It has a looped back, and if you try to fold that with wrong sides facing, the loops against each other, they can get, kind of, clingy and stuck. So I like to fold my French terry with the right sides together because it’s smoother. Can you think of any other examples, Caroline?

Caroline: Any fabric that has, like, a double side like that? I think you can decide which side is best. I have to make a confession though. I honestly never think about this. I just, like, fold my fabric in half and cut. I do not think about which side is in or out.

Helen: What?!

Caroline: Ever!

Helen: What if it’s a print though? Cause sometimes you want the print to face out so that you can see the placement of what you’re doing. Like, if it’s a one-sided print where the, the reverse side is just white or, or…

Caroline: Yeah. Then, I do think subconsciously…

Helen: Subconsciously you’re figuring it out.

Caroline: I think subconsciously I’m like, yeah, I want the print to be out, but I’m not, it’s, like, not a thing I’m, like, actively thinking about.

Helen: I find with some stripes if I fold them with the print face out, I start to get dizzy looking at it. Like, it’s overwhelming to look at that much stripe. So I’ll fold that with the, with the print facing in so I don’t have to look at it.

Caroline: That’s so funny.

Helen: It’s a case by case basis.

Caroline: Yes and cutting on the fold is definitely faster than other cutting methods because you’re doing the, twice the amount of cutting in the same amount of time. Uh, but it can be less precise. You can’t see the bottom half of the fabric, so you can’t be sure how it’s placed. It’s not a good idea to cut on the fold if you’re trying to pattern match. Definitely you want to be cutting flat if you’re really trying to pattern match.

Helen: Yeah. Or if it’s a print that has, like, a really clear vertical and horizontal line, like a plaid or a stripe, I like to cut flat, so it can be the most accurate. Um, and here’s a tip for cutting on the fold. Your fold doesn’t have to be in the middle of the fabric. You don’t have to fold the selvedge edges together and have the fold, uh, in the middle. You can try folding both selvedge edges in towards the middle, so you can cut a t-shirt front and back on the fold at the same time next to each other or save fabric by folding creatively.

Just make sure that your fold is along the grain. Sometimes you can get away with cutting on the crossgrain, but just make sure it’s stable before you do it. So if you’re looking at those cutting layouts in the pattern and you’re like, do I have to do it this way? No, as long as you’re on grain, get creative with your cutting because that is going to save you fabric, and you might discover a really cool way to fit it all in there and have some leftover to make something else.

Caroline: Mhm. Oh, I have a really good example of this. Like, let’s say you’re cutting out something with a lot of different pieces. And often what I do is I save a lot of small pieces for the end, um, if I’m not able to fit them in sort of in between in empty spots, I’ll save all my little pieces at the end. A lot of them are on fold, so instead of, like, folding my fabric selvedge to selvedge and then cutting along the fold, and then when you unfold the fabric you end up with, like, cut pieces, sort of, in the center of the fabric and a lot of dead space along the edges. Just, like, lay your fabric flat and just fold that edge just a little bit up, just enough to cut your pieces. And then you end up with so much more usable fabric, often enough to make, like, a whole other garment, so…

Helen: Yes, love this tip. It makes so much sense. I hate when I have a big hole in the middle of the fabric.

Caroline: I’m always like, damn, why did I do that?

Okay. The second cutting method is cutting flat, of course and that would be only one layer of fabric. So cutting flat is more precise than cutting on the fold. It’s great for prints because you can be fiddly about placement and matching. We’ve all had the, like, flower on the crotch situation or, like, weird intersecting lines that, like, decapitate an animal or whatever. So it’s always a good idea to cut flat when you’re cutting prints or stripes or things like that. It can also save fabric because you can cut from the edge of the fabric instead of the middle.

Helen: Yes. However, it is a bit more time consuming than cutting on the fold, and it can be easier to make mistakes because many pattern pieces are designed to be cut on the fold. So there’s only half of a bodice or half of a dress. So you have to remember to flip the pattern piece over to cut the other half and make sure that you don’t accidentally cut it right down the middle. Been there. Definitely done that.

You also have to make sure that the fabric’s not shifting while you pin or trace out the second half. So you’re moving things around, there’s more opportunity for things to shift. Marking the center line before you cut the first half can make it more precise. And if a pattern piece is intended to be cut in two layers, make sure you cut out the right number of pieces. It’s easy to forget a piece or two when you’re cutting flat or even cut two left sleeves because you forgot to flip the pattern piece over to make sure that you get the reverse. So I do find that it’s a bit more mental energy to cut flat, but if you’re trying to save fabric, definitely the way to go.

Caroline: The worst is, like, you cut only one pant leg or, like, the same, like, two pant fronts but both, like, the right front and not the left front.

Helen: Exactly. It can be hard to remember to flip things over, even when I’m making those cutting layouts for the patterns I get confused. I’m like, okay, which ones need to be flipped and reversed and which ones can lay…? Yeah, it’s, it’s a lot.

Caroline: Yeah. Okay. The final method is to chalk out the whole pattern before cutting. And you can do this either by weighing your pattern down and marking around it or using a projector. For more information on projector sewing, check out the Projectors for Sewing Facebook group. I had a look at this group. It has, like, over 40,000 members.

Helen: I know! It’s popular!

Caroline: It’s such a popular community, little sub-community in the sewing world. With projector tracing or laying down your pattern and tracing, there’s less room for error here because there’s no paper getting in the way. You can lift up the fabric to cut it if you’re cutting in one laye. And you need a pretty smooth marking tool to do this, as well, and not tug on your fabric too much. However, your outside markings will probably get trimmed away, so you can pretty much use whatever marketing tool you like.

Helen: Ooh, are you saying, like, a Sharpie or something?

Caroline: I mean, potentially if you’re only marking on the outside of the cutline.

Helen: More, more info needed. I’ll give it a try.

Okay. Now it’s time for a little bit of a smackdown.

Caroline: Rotary cutter versus scissor cutter.

Okay. So I feel like I have to have the mean voice for this whole thing.

We’re Team Rotary Cutter. They go fast!

Anyway, back to being us. Um, Helen and I are definitely Team Rotary Cutter. They do go really fast, and you don’t have to worry about pins snagging your fabric. Weights forever!

Helen: Yes, they’re, I find they’re easier on the hands. Um, and it’s, it’s harder to be accurate with scissors, and I know that a lot of scissor fans out there might disagree, and that’s totally fair. I think I’m just out of practice with my scissors. Um, but with the fabric flat against the mat, you can just zip the rotary cutter around the edges, and it’s really nice and clean. You’re not lifting up that fabric at all. Scissors take a little bit more time to use, and the pinning alone just pinning things down, takes time.

Caroline: Helen, this is a smackdown. You’re not out of practice with your scissors. Rotary cutters are better.

Helen: I just know that there’s so many people out there who use scissors and, like, especially for space saving, too, scissors can be the way to go. I guess I’m not treating the smackdown very seriously.

Caroline: Okay. Well, our assistant Lisa is one of those scissor people. She is Team Scissors, and here are her pro-scissors sentiments: buy one good pair, and you’re set for life. No need to buy replacement plates; just get your scissors sharpened occasionally. If you have a rotary cutter, you’ll still need scissors for snipping threads and trimming seams. Good point, Lisa. If you have scissors though, you don’t need a rotary cutter and rotary cutters need a lot of space. You have to buy a pricey big mat to go with them.

Bing bing bing bing bing bing. Who won that round?

Helen: I guess, like, everyone? We’re all happy with our tools. You can weigh these pros and cons and make your own decision. If you have the opportunity to try both these methods, please do because you never know what you might find out, and you’ll discover which one it’s best for you.

Caroline: Yes, of course. Um, this was all in good fun, and we support anyone who wants to do… Whatever way you want to cut, it’s all good. We love you. I don’t like smackdowns.

Okay. And then when you’re cutting out your project, you’re going to need to make some markings as you go along. So this is just a little friendly reminder that we have a whole episode about marking tools and you can check it out for more info on all the different types

Helen: Yes. Okay. Most sewing patterns include cutting layouts and fabric requirements. We’ve touched on that a few times this episode, and surprise, surprise, these are often incorrect, I mean, maybe you’re not surprised, maybe you’ve noticed this when you’re using sewing patterns. They aren’t super accurate, and there’s a few reasons for this. Not trying to be defensive, but here are the reasons.

Fabric widths vary. They aren’t all 45 inches or 60 inches wide, but those are the ones we typically cover in sewing patterns. There’s usually a range between 42 to 47 that the narrower fabrics come in and then, like, 55 to 62 the wider fabrics come in. Sometimes even up to 70 inches wide. Literally, everything in between.

So pattern writers often leave room for error. Squeezing everything into, like, the last centimeter would leave a lot of sewists feeling short or potentially not having room for that pattern piece because their pattern’s just, like, an inch or two narrower. So pattern writers will take that into account and try to make sure that the cutting layouts are going to work for as many people as possible.

Um, we also often group sizes when we’re writing cutting layouts. If there were a layout for every single size, the booklet would be so, so long, I’ve done this in the past. I think for our Blackwood Cardigan, we had about eight pages of cutting layouts, and yes, it was more accurate, but I also feel like, and maybe we should do a poll on Instagram or something this week, do people even use these cutting layouts?

Caroline: I was just thinking that!

Helen: Or am I just wasting my time?

Caroline: I was like, we need to do a poll because I literally never look at them, or I’ll look at them and be like, pff. I don’t need that. And I make my own cutting layout.

Helen: I think a lot of people feel that way because it is fun to play pattern piece Tetris, and every situation is a little bit different. It can be hard to follow a cutting layout for four meters of fabric when your table’s only a meter long, too. So you’re not even going to be able to lay everything out before you get started. And you only have so many pattern weights or so many pins. And so, realistically, I don’t think that people are staying as true to these cutting layouts as maybe we like to think they are. Try to make them as accurate as possible, but lately, we’ve been trying to just fit the pattern pieces into these groups of sizes so that we have a few less pages dedicated to this in the booklet.

Caroline: Yeah. I’m Team Less Pages, Less Cutting Layouts, More Freestyle.

Helen: Yes. And on that note, too, with the fabric requirements, also not always a hundred percent accurate, and it’s for the same reasons. It’s the difference in the fabric width. It’s the difference in the fabric shrinkage, too. We like to leave a little bit just in case the fabric shrinks. Thinking about how we can lay pieces out so that we’re getting most of them one way up, so if you’re using a directional print, you’re not going to have issues, like, having to flip them around things like that.

So if you want to be the most accurate with your cutting, what I recommend doing is cutting out your pattern, laying it out on the floor in the width that you think of your fabric is going to be, and actually measuring what that amount that you need is, and then you can buy exactly the amount of fabric you need, so you’ll have less leftover.

Caroline: So you’re basically creating your own cutting layout and fabric requirements based on exactly what you know you’re going to be using.

Helen: Exactly. That’s the most accurate way to go about it, but I know that’s a whole extra step in the sewing process, so I get it.

Caroline: Mhm. Yeah, and you can also add or remove seam lines to create a cutting layout you like better. So, for example, you could add a center back seam to your facing so that you can fit it into a better spot on your fabric.

Helen: Yes, and you can leave certain pattern pieces out of the layout. Make the most of the precious fabric you have by cutting things like facing bias tape, pocket bags, undercollars, things that aren’t necessarily going to be visible from the outside, the inside of a yoke on a shirt, you can cut those pieces out of a different complimentary fabric, maybe something of the same weight or something of the same fiber content, so that it’s going to pair well with your other fabric, and that way you can use less of that precious fabric, and you have all those pieces cut out of something else.

Caroline: Mhm. Yeah. It’s a fun way to add a little pop of color or whatever.

Helen: Totally.

Caroline: So changing your pattern’s grainline is another way that you can cut creatively. You can often cut on the crossgrain. So the crossgrain sometimes will have a small amount of stretch. So if you cut large pieces on the crossgrain, your garment might grow a little bit. So you definitely want to be testing this out before you decide to cut on the crossgrain. Um, but this can be really nice if you’re making something that’s flowy or comfortable. It also doesn’t drape, uh, smoothly as fabric cut on the straight grain, but this won’t matter as much with crisp fabrics, but it might change the look of a drapey fabric. Small pieces like yolks, collars, cuffs, plackets, and pockets can always be cut on the crossgrain and even on the bias.

Helen: Yes, it’s true. It’s fun to play around with cutting on the crossgrain. One tip I have in this area: do it for all the pieces of the same kind. So, for example, you don’t want to cut half of your dress front on the crossgrain and half on the grain or the front of your shirt on the crossgrain and the back on the grain. You want that whole body of the garment to be all one direction, so you can do it all on the cross or all on the grain. But, like we said, those little pieces are great opportunities to cut on the cross.

And you can cut large pattern pieces on the bias as well. They will drape differently and probably hang a bit closer to the body, but this would be great for something like the Saltwater Slip from Friday Pattern Co. And it’s something that you would want to avoid in, like, a crisp, button down. More something for a drapey project. So to cut pieces on the bias, it’s easiest to draw a new grainline on the pattern piece, draw it at an exact 45 degree angle to the grainline.

And make a muslin when you’re experimenting with cutting patterns on the bias that weren’t designed for the bias. Because the bias has so much more stretch, it can really change the fit of the garment. So it is recommended that you test it out before you cut into that precious silk or something.

Caroline: Test it out or deal with the consequences.

Helen: Yeah.

Caroline: Okay., and we have some fabric specific cutting tips before we wrap up this episode. So firstly is in regards to interfacing. Some fusible interfacing doesn’t have a grain. So if you’re buying the kind of interfacing that’s, sort of, like, a bonded, almost papery type interfacing, um, that you can find it, a lot of craft stores, you can put your pieces on there any which way and cut them out. But a lot of interfacings, and especially knit interfacings, do have a grain, or for knit interfacings, they’ll have a dogs, direction of greatest stretch. So you want to make sure to position your pieces accordingly. And if you’re interfacing and fabric pieces aren’t lining up, shift them around until they do.

Uh, sometimes interfacing can, like, stretch out a little bit more than fabric. So sometimes you have to, kind of, like, smooth things out flat, and you can even check against the pattern piece for any inaccuracies that may have caused these pieces not to line up. And if you are finding inaccuracies, you can totally just trim them away and then fuse to your heart’s content. You also have the option of block fusing. This can work really well if you’re cutting out a lot of pieces that need to be fused. You can take a block of fabric and a block of interfacing, fuse them together and then cut them out as one piece.

Helen: Yeah. So much faster. Okay. Next thing is that knit fabrics curl at the edges. Ugh, so much curling jersey in my life.

Caroline: Yeah.

Helen: You can combat this by using spray starch on the edges and then pressing it. It will lie flatter so that you can cut and sew it. And after you’re done, you can throw it in the laundry and that spray starch will wash away. You can buy bottles of spray starch at the supermarket or online. You can also make your own easily. There’s lots of recipes online. Spray starch is super handy for lots of different fabrics. If you’re having difficulties sewing and cutting, like, knits and shifty, lightweight fabrics, try spray starch. Might be a life-changer.

Caroline: Mhm. The next tricky, tricksy fabric is swimwear knits. They’re so slippery. So you want to be cutting these in a single layer if you can. And if you’re using scissors, pin the heck out of it, and using a rotary cutter is great for stretchy fabrics because you’re, kind of, keeping them flat, um, which is gonna make your really accurate.

Next, shifty, lightweight wovens like rayon, Tencel, and silk. This is where rotary cutters are super handy. Once you get the grain in line, try not to move the fabric at all. Lay down your pieces, weight them down, double check your grain, and then cut.

Elisalex of By Hand London says, “If you must use fabric scissors, always cut from the left of your pattern pieces. This means have the inside of the scissors against the edge of the pattern rather than the outside. Like, if you’re right handed cut counter-clockwise rather than clockwise.”

This is good advice. You want to make sure you’re getting the edge of your scissors as close to that pattern piece as possible and so that you can see what you’re doing. Um, you can also give light and slippery fabrics a light spray with a starch to stiffen them. Um, and you can pin your selvedges together. You could even tape your selvedges to your cutting mat. Also, block interfacing with these shifty fabrics is a good idea because, like we said, the interfacing gets shifty, the fabric gets shifty. Before you know it, the piece you cut out looks nothing like the pattern piece, so block fusing is going to be a lot easier.

Caroline: Yes, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, heavyweight denim and canvas can also be a little bit tricky to cut out. So you want to make sure your sheers or rotary blade are really sharp for these and cut them flat to save your hands from hurting. Sometimes cutting, like, a lot of heavyweight denim and canvas can give you, like, crampy hands.

Helen: Oh, definitely. And napped fabrics like velvet, corduroy, and suede, or other things you might encounter, find the direction of that nap when you’re using these fabrics. You can do this by rubbing your hand up and down parallel to the selvedge. When you rub one way, you should encounter more resistance. And when you rub the other way, it should feel smoother and shinier.

You usually want the smoother and shinier direction to be running down the length of your body. I think I’ve done this on the show before, but, like, run your hands down your body, you know, a little bit sexy, that’s the way you want the nap to go. And then you want to orient every pattern piece in that direction.

Double-check everything before you cut. If you cut pattern pieces with different nap directions, they can look almost like two different colors. So that’s why we want the nap all running in one direction. I mean, if you end up making a mistake on a pocket here or there, I did this recently on my corduroy Yanta Overalls. Didn’t have the heart to unpick it. Just going to live with it.

It’s fine. It’s not a big deal, but if you want the nap all going in one direction, then definitely double check before you cut. And keep your vacuum handy because velvet and corduroy shed way more than you think is ever possible. Those little fibers are going to get everywhere, so make sure you leave some time for cleanup at the end of the day.

Caroline: Funny aside, Laura and I were looking at corduroys the other day, deciding what colors to buy, and we found this new supplier with, like, a million different colors of amazing corduroy. And she was sitting on the opposite side of the table as me, and we had all these samples laid out and we were picking colors, and honestly, even in a small little swatch, looking at it from her side of the table and my side of the table, it looked different, so we had to keep flipping the color around to see the true color. Um, it really, really does change. It’s subtle, but once, you know, it’s there. You can’t unsee it.

Helen: So you’re saying I should unpick my pocket?

Caroline: Helen, I’m saying you should do what makes you happy.

Helen: Yay. I’m already wearing them, so it’s fine.

Caroline: Perfect. And sequined fabrics can be tricky, too. Check if your sequined fabric has a nap. For sure if the sequinz are placed haphazardly, probably doesn’t have one, but if they’re all overlapping in the same direction, it does have one. So you want to be cutting sequins in a single layer, wrong side up and consider wearing safety glasses to protect your eyes from flying sequins.

Helen: Ooh, that’s a really good tip. Faux fur is another one you may encounter, especially coming up to this, uh, Halloween season. This one definitely has a nap, so be sure to find it before cutting. Mark out your cutting lines with a pen if you want. They’re not going to be visible underneath all that fur, and cut in small snips, trying to catch only the matting and not the fur pile. This will help with the cleanup in the long run. Caroline, have you ever made anything with faux fur?

Caroline: No.

Helen: I think I did once. I made a faux fur collar for a jacket, like, a detachable collar that I could put on a coat.

Caroline: Cute!

Helen: And it was super fun. Yeah. Just a little project. I think I still have some leftover.

Caroline: I’m not ruling it out. I feel like I, I would totally make something with faux fur one day, but I have heard horror stories about how much fur will end up all over your sewing room.

Helen: Oh yeah. When I went to go buy that faux fur, I, like, got it down off the shelf and I went to the cutting table at the fabric store and the look on that person’s face, like, I think they were genuinely mad.

Caroline: Don’t make me do it. Just don’t make me.

That’s it for today’s episode of Love to Sew. You can find me Caroline at blackbirdfabrics.com and Helen at helensclosetpatterns.com. We are recording in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.

Helen: Go to love to sew podcast.com to find our show notes. They’re filled with links and pictures from this episode. If you’d like to get in touch with us, send us an email@helloandlovetosopodcast.com.

Caroline: And if you love Love to Sew and you want more, you can sign up for our Patreon. For $5 a month, you get a full length bonus episode and weekly behind the scenes pics. For $10 a month, you’ll get all that plus a mini episode focused on sewing techniques and 15% off discount codes for Helen’s Closet and Blackbird Fabrics, and you can use the codes again and again. It’s really good value. Patreon is the best way to support us so that we can keep making quality sewing content. Go to patreon.com/lovetosew for more info.

Helen: Thanks to our amazing podcast team. Lisa Ruiz is our creative assistant and user of scissors. Jordan Moore is our editor. And Margaret Wakelee is our transcriber. And thank you so much for listening. We’ll talk to you next week.

Caroline: Bye!

Helen: Buh-bye!

Caroline: Okay. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. That’s the episode.

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