Part 1: How to Lay Out the Pattern: Sewing Tips

Video Transcript

" Hello! This is Stephany from Stephany’s Simply Sewing on behalf of expertvillage.com. I’d like to show you how to lay out your pattern. You’ve already prepared your fabric by washing and ironing it, you’ve chosen your pattern pieces and pressed them with a dry iron. You will need to have pins, tape measure, scissors, and it helps to have a shorter ruler. The first thing you want to do is go ahead and fold your fabric. Have you ever had a pair of jeans that simply would not hang straight? That side stream would just not stay on the side. Well the reason for that is because it was not cut on the grain, so when you fold your fabric in preparation for pinning, you do need to make sure that your fabric is folded square. As you can tell, this particular piece of fabric is not folded square. You can tall that because of this wrinkle right here. The way that you straighten it out is to slide the fabric one way or another until it hangs straight. There you go, you have your fabric hanging straight and this edge is even. This edge is called your selvage. This is the finished edge that comes from the factory. This is your cut edge. When you’re laying out fabric, you will want to pay attention to your selvage as well as your fold line. When you’re getting ready to pin down, you’ll want to completely straighten out your fabric and get it folded smoothly with your selvage edges matching. Once you have accomplished that, you can begin laying out your pattern. Your pattern envelope instruction does have a layout guide in it. It’s a picture of how you will lay out your pattern. Generally, you can use simply your pattern pieces to figure out how to lay it out. When we talk about fold lines and grain lines, that’s when it is important to pay attention to how you folded your fabric. That is step 1 of pinning your fabric and your pattern together. "