Quilting Fabric
Quilting fabric is actually the most important element when it comes to quilting. First of all, it doesn’t matter how many quilting ideas you have in your head. You need to learn about the details of the fabric so your quilts turn out as beautiful as possible. One of the important topics includes fabric grain. The grain of the fabric is important because it can either make your quilt a beautiful work of art or work against you the entire time. That’s because if you cut your quilt patches against the grain or with the grain you will get different results. You need to know a little more how quilt fabric is put together to understand about quilting.
Most employees at a quilting store should know about quilting fabric and how you should cut the patches to make them turn out properly. Now, fabric grain simply means how the different threads make up a patch of fabric. There are several things that make up the grain including warp threads, weft threads, and more. Warp threads are the long threads used in fabric. They are the grain that runs lengthwise. You can tell which ones these are by looking at the fabric as it comes off the bolt. These are the threads that run continuously through the length of the fabric. Weft threads are the threads that are woven along the entire length, perpendicular to the warp threads. This results in the crosswise grain. You should also know that the crosswise and the lengthwise grains are called the straight grain. Another important term is selvage. A selvage is made up of the bound edges.
You should always cut along the bias, which in quilting simply means any cut that doesn’t run on the straight grain. Now that you know the basics of fabric grains and why they are so important to quilting you are ready to get started. Many times when you buy your fabric someone else will cut it for you. However pay attention that it is cut the way you want because otherwise you may end up with some patches of quilting fabric that just don’t work the way you had hoped.