How to Measure Fabric for Sewing
To be a seamstress or tailor you need to know how to measure fabric for sewing. Ask anyone who sews, and they'll tell you that making pattern fabric into a finished piece requires knowing how much cloth to buy before you begin. Know how to measure fabric for sewing so you have enough to finish the job. Just pick a great fabric, measure it correctly and get more from the fabric you buy for sewing.
Things You'll Need
- Fabric (Bolt length)
- Tabletop (6 by 4 feet, minimum)
- Pattern segments
- Ivory soap bar
- Yard stick
- Measuring tape
Instructions
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Place a bolt of chosen fabric at one end of the tabletop. Roll the tube or oblong bolt holder to the other end of the table to spread out one layer of cloth. The bolt should end up by your right hand and the loose end to your left. If the fabric has a finished side and an unfinished side, lay out the fabric so the unfinished side is facing up.
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Determine the grain of the fabric by pulling north and south and then east and west. The grain runs along the strongest resistance to the stretch. If when you pull north and south the fabric resists stretching more than when you pull east and west, then the grain runs north and south. The grain runs east and west when the resistance runs in that direction. Always cut with the grain whenever possible.
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Lay the pieces of pattern on top of the fabric spread out on the table with the longest cutting sides running with the grain. Depending on the width of the bolt of fabric, the pattern pieces may be laid out one over the other and on thinner widths they may be side by side. Arrange the pattern using as much of the fabric piece as possible before using up the next yard length of cloth.
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Mark the fabric with the edge of a bar of white Ivory soap 3 inches away from the closest pattern piece at the end of the layout. Use a yard stick or ruler to draw a straight line from the top edge to the bottom edge, keeping the line square. Remove the yard stick from the top of the cloth and collect all the pattern pieces and store them safely away from the newly measured, but uncut length of fabric off the bolt.
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Run a measuring tape from the free end of fabric up to the newly marked soap line. Divide the full length by 36 to determine how many yards of fabric you will need. Every 36 inches of fabric can be divided in half and then again in half to go from a yard of cloth to a half yard, to a fat quarter as quilters call a quarter yard of cloth commonly used in quilting.
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Tips & Warnings
Layer the fabric when the pattern demands more than one of each piece. Folding the uncut fabric back and forth will let you quickly discover how many yards you will need to finish the job. Count how many pieces you need and layer that many times to get the right number of yards for the job. Use a measuring tape to measure out pre-sized fabric requests. Remember that a yard equals 36 inches, and anything less than that is divided by two and then divided by two again to make a quilter's fat quarter.
Prints can become misaligned if the fabric is cut out without confirming the orientation of the pattern for the front of the garment. Graphically, the design can quickly become a disaster when a custom fabric is cut wrong because the measurements and the orientation of the cloth reversed the pattern from one piece to the next.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit sewing image by Greg Pickens from Fotolia.com
