I know that you are trying to do the right things
and you've pre-washed your fabric, even ironed and pressed it out.
But then you've discovered
that, well, the green line just seems off your edges of the fabric.
And so we just just don't match up anymore.
And the fabric just looks twisted and warped.
And you're thinking, what do I do?
In this video, I'm going to take you through a number of solutions
that you can use to help fix the green line of fabric after you've
pre-washed it
Welcome back, my sewing friends.
My name is Everwood and I'm the creator of Vintage Sung School dot com.
And as you know, today's topic is fixing the great line of fabric
because you probably already know that you need to prewash.
And I've made videos of why it's prewash and how to prewash.
And I will then close down below.
Now, you the problem, though,
and this came from the question came from one of these videos is then
what do you do when Ukraine line is just like skewed and off from it?
So first I want to talk you through what the problem is exactly.
So we know 100% what we're looking at quickly
and then we'll talk about a few reasons why this happens.
And then solutions because it will depend on what reason
might have happened on yours as to what solution that you will then
maybe choose for your fabric that you have because it is my goal to help
you understand what is going on in your sewing so you can better
make these decisions and problem solve all these things on your own as well.
And it's only by learning it and understanding why
that we can do these things.
Okay, let's take a better look at what the actual problem is.
So when we're ready to lay out a fabric,
we're usually laying it in like folded together in half.
So we have a fold and we're going to cut out and lay out our fabric from there.
And you need to line up your grain line properly.
So we usually put our salvages together and then either or is to
then obviously lined up out like crosswise
so left salvage crosswise green as well.
And so you can get this by either pulling one of the threads through here
and getting that line that comes through, or you can snip a little bit and tear it.
And then of course, it has straight down these angles and we have the lengthwise
grain which runs along without parallel with a grain line
and the crosswise grain which runs 90 degree angle from there.
And so the problem lies is that when you line up your salvages,
then your crosswise what length?
No longer match, or if you try and match these ones up, then the actual salvage
is starting line up and it just seems really twisted your fabric, right.
This is what we're looking at.
Let's look at a few possible reasons as to why this might happen.
Well, the first obvious one is upon construction
as fabric is made We have a loom set up and you have all of your warped
threads, you lengthwise threads all set up this way,
and then you have your weft threads
or your crosswise grained that it turns out to be coming this way.
And the shuttle distills it all up and starts creating the fabric.
And as this is done, all the fibers get pushed in
and it can be pushed in at a slightly different angle.
Of course, maybe this side more than this side
or it's warped and twisted as it's being constructed in those yarns,
as they're all pushed in, just twisted in a weird type of way.
Or the yarns could spin or something like that has gone awry
in the construction process.
And well, there's not much you can do to fix that, but that is a possible reason.
Another reason is a loose
weave fabric, someone that's really loose and very prone to fraying.
You will be very easy to maybe it's been washed to severely
and it has been spun in different areas, and it's actually stretched out
in different places because it is loose and it's very prone to being stretched
and moved in different ways.
So that could have also happened a knit fabric.
Now, this is an interesting one.
So this is
commonly caused on knits
because there's two ways you can knit fabric.
You can do it in length like we're kind of used to seeing or it's
actually circular knit, so it's knitted in a big tube, so to say.
And then they cut it and open it out and make it flat.
But as you might imagine, if you're doing a continuous circle,
did you see this as I do it?
It's one sides up here, one side's down here.
So naturally that's a bit of course, exaggerated.
But naturally the grain will be off
because of it's a circular knitted pattern in there.
So that can really happen quite a lot.
Thankfully, it doesn't matter so much with knits.
The Green Line will get to that in the next part.
And the other reason is that maybe it has been printed.
So you have say let's go for something really obvious
straight print, but it's actually been printed off grain.
So maybe they put the design on top, you know, like printed on top.
And they've they've made it slightly off.
So your grain line doesn't match the prints
or the stripes or something like that.
That can also happen.
And to Y, not necessarily the grain line might be fine.
Or maybe they're trying to elude you.
Maybe the straps are off or maybe the grain lines
like of the either one, but they're not quite lining up.
So it is important to understand why, because what you do with a knit
be different than with your fabric.
If it has print, if it doesn't Which leads us to the possible solutions.
First, let's just get a few obvious ones out of the way.
You absolutely must.
If you haven't already give your fabric a really good steam and iron to get out.
All of the creases and lots of steam
helps reset your all of these little yarns that make up the fabric
helps sets them back into place and be where they should.
Maybe that's all it needs.
So lots of steam and an iron. Absolutely.
Before you go anywhere else, then maybe it just needs
a little bit of manhandling to get back into green.
So I have this one here.
And what I mean is sometimes you maybe just need to kind of,
you know,
tell it what to do a little bit and just readjust
that green line a little bit and just kind of rejig
and just maneuver it back into shape a little bit.
That might be it need just to twist and turn all of those yarns
that make up the fabric just to kind of move them back into shape.
Now, be careful.
Don't be too strenuous with your fabric, of course, but maybe it just needs
a little metal moving with steam even can help back into shape.
So if you try those and it still seems often a twisted green.
Here are some solutions.
If you have a print, any kind of print
on your fabric, again, I'll use the really obvious one of stripes.
It does doesn't matter which way it is going.
If your stripes go this way or if your straps are going this way,
follow the obvious pattern on your fabric.
No matter what the Green Line is doing,
the visual cue of these stripes outweighs any green line factor.
Because if these are off a little bit, you will absolutely notice that.
Whereas if your green line's off a little bit, it's probably less
noticeable then like obvious stripes in the wrong direction
and some prints,
you might just be floral clusters, but they still have a sort of nature to them
that follow up patterns are still always follow your print pattern.
Just visually that's going to outweigh your green line in most cases anyway.
If your fabric happens to be in it, well, this one's a bit easier because really
you just want to go with the direction of the stretch anyway.
So even if you find it's twisted and you know, like circular
type looking, now that I said that, you probably think, oh my gosh, that's it,
go with the stretch.
So generally you always want the higher stretch across the body
rather than lengthwise, but
to when it's of course to do both, but follow wherever the largest stretch is
and you need to be consistent over the whole thing, of course.
More on that in a minute.
If you have a woven fabric, there are a couple of suggestions.
I'm going to show you my method of doing this in dust up next.
But first of all, you could actually do a single lay fabric.
So instead of folding it over and cutting it
on the folds like we mostly do is mostly just to save time.
And because we fold it out to create
two pieces, we're just going to do a single lay fabric.
So lay out your fabric in single layer, and it just means that you'll have
to manually flip each of your patterns to cut.
Don't cut two of the same piece.
Remember, cut one and then flip it over to create a pair
of pattern pieces if it's on the fold.
But you could create a do it on a single layer.
That way you can, whichever way you decide to choose the grain and it's
you can do it more consistently throughout all of your pieces.
And now my method that I have and now this is what I teach
all my students in vintage sewing school is a little bit different.
It's not for everybody or every case.
So this is what I do when I'm laying out my fabric to get ready for cutting.
So it does help
if you especially if you're just starting to have your crosswise green
actually mopped so that tear it down or pull
your threads to make sure that you've got two right angles there.
It just helps to know when you're kind of close or not.
You might be going by that, but it does.
It is helpful as a guide, particularly when you're starting
to make sure it's all ironed out.
And now I apologize for the audio of maybe disappearing a little bit
as I go back here to demonstrate
lining them up.
So what I do is I sort of go by the drape of the fabric because that's
what it naturally wants to do and that's what I'm most concerned with.
Rather than lining up proper grain lines, I go with the drape.
And so what this is involved, it can be tricky you need to hold out
your fabric and don't let the weight of fabric fall like that over here, but
you need to hold it up, fold down,
and you need the longest stand that you can manage to do this from.
It will not work if you only do this halfway.
You need to do it from a long distance like this. Right?
So as far as your arms can reach and as I said, not suitable for everybody
and this is what we're going to do,
so you need to grab the piece as long as possible.
So it is together I'm going to do mine just a little bit less
so I can get a little bit closer and you can see a little bit better.
So even though you should do a full, full arms width
I'm just going to
make mine a little bit smaller for the purpose of this video.
Okay, so here's what we do.
The way that you hold this will be up to you however your fingers work.
But I like to put mine in between.
Basically, what we're going to do is slide each layer
individually through like each year.
And so what I do is try and get the grain of the fabric.
So you can see as I twist the top layer this way,
you can see how it is skewing the drape of the fabric.
And if I move at the opposite direction, I start getting
weird, twisted right lines in that direction.
Yeah, you can see what's happening, right?
And so what I do is a balancing act.
And again, you need the longest length of this possible to make this work.
And usually I look from behind
and I just keep moving them around
until I get that full, that beautiful, perfect drop and drape of the fabric,
keeping my salvages together as best I can.
And now in this drapey fabric, it is super hard because it'll just want
to droop down in the middle in a stiffer fabric.
This is much easier,
but once you've kind of got that perfectly happy you keep moving it
and you've got the perfect drape and you think that is just perfect.
What I do is then very gently lay this down on the table
and then from there I can just tweak those salvages
and still get those savages lined perfectly up,
just kind of part of the fabric and just work it out.
But that
is how
I get my fabric laid out, because then what I'm doing is going by the drape
and the fall rather than whatever the particular threads are going by.
And as I said, if it's a night, you still go by the stretch first.
If it's a print, you still go by the print first.
This is that is my method anyway of getting the green light.
It doesn't work all of the time, but for most of the things, I find
it works really well for me and my students really love that idea too.
But if you can't hold your arms out, it's pretty tricky.
I know, I know. I must admit it is tricky.
So the overarching rule through all of this on any method,
any solution that you might choose
to kind of move forward with, what you've got is to keep it
whatever you choose, keep it consistent through all pattern pieces.
So if you lay it down, you choose a different green line.
Maybe you can get crosswise instead of lengthwise or the knit
you've going for the stretch in a different way.
Make sure that all of your green line pieces are still
whether they're parallel to the salvage or slightly off that they are
all in the same direction to each other.
So all of the pattern pieces, all of the green lines of those
are all in the same parallels directions on your fabric.
That way, each piece will have the same consistency
through every area of the garment, the same amount of flex each way,
and it will at least look consistent through your garment
because there's the most obvious, the most worst thing you can do
is have one piece, you know, with a grain kind of falling this way.
And the other one is like slightly this way.
And it will just look super, super weird.
So keep it consistent.
Is the absolute number one rule to follow
through anything when you're doing working with the grain lines at all?
As I said, there is no one way to fix anything in sewing,
and it's not really fixing the grain line, of course, but it is
just how you can keep moving forward with your project.
And not overthink it.
If those grain lines don't match up perfectly,
let me know what you think below.
Have you ever seen that my method before of holding it at allowing
the drape be the guide I'd love to hear it.
Will you use it?
Also, leave your tips down below for us on what you have done in the past
to help find your Fix Your Green Line when it has not worked for you.
Because they'll be read the comments because there's so much information
down there.
As always, we are sewing community, helping each other out.
I've lost some links to all the other videos
I think it really enjoyed down below.
And until next time I sewing friends happy sewing I.