Now you have your pattern pieces, it’s time to cut and prepare your fabric for sewing. To be perfectly honest, this is my least favourite step, but cutting accurately and making sure edges are stabilized is critical to the eventual look of your garment, so it’s worth taking the time to be as precise as you can!
First, cut the selvedges off your fabric (they’re the the long sides of your fabric, which are usually stiffer than the rest of the fabric, and have often little holes in them). Cutting the edges off will help the fabric lie flat when you’re preparing it for cutting, as Anne of Gorgeous Fabrics describes in this post.
Cut selvedges off fabric
Now, find the grain of your knit, which is parallel to the selvedges – many knit fabrics have tiny ridges on one side on the grain, which you can use a guide (also, the ridges are indicate the “right” side of knit fabric). Bear in mind that the fabric store probably didn’t cut perfectly across the bolt, so you can’t assume the cut edge of the fabric is perpendicular to the selvedge – it’s easier to to find the grain if you *first* square off the cut edge of the fabric to make sure it’s at a right angle to the edge. Once you find the grain, you can put a piece of masking tape along it to give you a very clear visual marketing to use as you move onto folding the fabric. Tasia of Sewaholic has more advice here.
Fold your fabric in half lengthways along the grain, selvedge to selvedge.
Any pattern pieces placed on the fold will automatically be on grain (because the fold is on grain). For the others, carefully measure from the grainline on the piece to the fold (or the selvedge) and make sure the grainline marked on the pattern piece is perfectly on the grain. This is important, because if it’s not done correctly the dress may buckle or twist when you wear it.
Cut it out! I prefer to use weights (just washers from a hardware store), a rotary cutter, a metal ruler and mat when cutting knits – this way, the fabric stays flat the whole time and doesn’t shift around. Using the metal ruler on straight edges helps significantly with cutting straight lines – freehanding is possible, but harder! If you don’t have these tools, you can pin the pattern to the fabric and cut with scissors, or mark around the pieces with chalk and then cut them out.
For the Christine Jonson pattern, I don’t do the self-lining in the bodice, so you only need to cut one set of the bodice pieces rather than the two as indicated. Instead, I add a neckline binding. To do that, first measure the full length of the neckline: that’s the two diagonal necklines that wrap over your front, and the back neck. Then cut a strip *across* the grain (i.e. in the stretchiest direction of your fabric) which is the length of your neckline + 2 inches, and 1.5 inches wide. You may not have a large enough piece of fabric to do this in one piece – no worries! Just cut enough strips that are 1.5 inches wide to match the length of your neckline (personally I don’t care where the seam is as it’s unnoticeable, but if you want to make sure the seam is at the back of your neck or shoulder, measure accordingly!).
Be very careful with your pieces – you don’t want the edges to warp, especially the front neckline which is on the bias (and therefore much more likely to stretch out of shape). Now is the time to reinforce the edges with the knit stay tape. Fuse the tape glue side down (it’s the side that feels rough) onto the wrong side of the fabric, on the shoulders, neckline (all the way around), armholes, and front wrap sides (the vertical edges of the wrap dress). Don’t do the hem yet. I’m using 1 1/4 inch knit stay tape, but you can use thinner if you prefer (and actually I think I should have used a thinner one). You should use a press cloth, or a teflon shoe on your iron if you have one. Remember to press up and down rather than ironing back and forth.
That’s it, we’re ready for sewing! Woohoo! How are you doing wrapalongers, do you have any questions?
Will there ever be a time when cutting doesn’t suck a lot? Where do you cut? How do you go about it? The last time I cut out a knit dress, I spread everything out on the floor and traced and cut from there. This time, feeling clever, I pushed my desk and my kitchen table together length wise for the part I had to cut on the fold and then width wise for the parts I had to cut singly. I would like to have a state dining room with the 12 foot long table to cut on. Then I wouldn’t have to maneuver the fabric nearly as much.
I have a collapsible picnic table that I use – I think the bigger the cutting area you have the better! I use a rotary cutter and ruler as you can see in the pictures – for me that’s much more accurate than scissors, but I know not everyone agrees. Some people do find cutting therapeutic funnily enough!
I crawl around on my knees…argh!
I’d planned to use dressmaker’s carbon to mark my fabric up and then cut using the rotary cutter, but the carbon didn’t show up on my fabric. I ended up cutting with the rotary cutter through the pattern pieces and the fabric. Not best practices, but by this time it was after 9 and I just wanted to be done. How do you go about maneuvering the cutting mat under your fabric without distorting things?
So I firsy cut the pattern pieces out (usually from the tracing I’ve made), and rotary cut around them – so I’m not actually cutting the paper with the rotary cutter (which dulls it). Ideally you should have a large cutting mat but these pieces are big – I tend to cut what I can on the mat and then use fabric scissors for the rest
I could only find a sew in stay tape for knits, we are so deprived of supplies in the UK 🙁
Should I sew this in now, at this step, or wait until I actually start sewing the garment? Thnaks for any help/suggestions
Hmm depending on your type of fabric, I might only put that in the shoulders (which you will do at the next stage as you make them) rather than everywhere, otherwise it may distort the fabric. However I haven’t used sew-in knit stay tape before – does anyone have any other tips?
I just got to this step and realized I bought sew in instead of iron on! Is the iron on more flexible?
is it knit interfacing? If not, best to just skip it and maybe use elastic in the shoulders instead. You don’t want to use woven or you won’t be able to stretch the fabric when needed
Great tip I picked up from the Moneta sew along is to look along the fold and making sure you only see one column of knits along the fold.
I’m already behind! My pattern pieces are not ready yet due to the huge pile of work under which I’ve been buried! I hope I’ll catch up soon!!!
Any suggestion for stay tape. Could not find any for knits at my Handcocks, anything else that might work?
If you can’t buy it as a product, use a fusible interfacing cut into strips. It is far cheaper that way too.
Question: where the pattern directions say to “stay-stitch between the dots”- that’s where I’m going to use stay tape instead?
Yes, you should use the tape there. Stay stitching on knits is bizarre!
Great tip!
Thank you. I am going to use fusible knit interfacing.
Do you mean that I should open up the fabric and then re-fold it the opposite way it came off the bolt? Doesn’t it already come off the bolt length-wise?
Most knit fabric doesn’t come folded but rolled on a bolt. But regardless you should fold it lengthways, selvage to selvage along the grain
I believe the grainline is parallel to the selvage, not perpendicular. Otherwise, great tips for cutting knits.
Ah good catch of the typo!! Will change it asap