Hey friends, it's Haley at Seamwork. so you might be used to me doing fabric videos
where I run through all of the patterns that Seamwork has released that month and then talk
about the fabrics. It was really fun to make and I love sharing fabric with you,
but I wanted to take a little bit of a pivot. In this new series, I'm going to
be sharing a new fabric every month. I'm going to show you some applications for the fabric,
talk a little bit about the fabric, so that you can really build your fabric knowledge and we can
create this really cool fabric library resource for you. This month, I want to talk about rib knit. So
rib knit is a really trendy fabric right now, you see it a ton in ready-to-wear and it's becoming more
and more readily available in fabric stores and that means that we get to work with it and play
with it and use it for our projects, which I always love. So what is rib knit? Rib knit is a textured knit
that has vertical ribs in it and those ribs are created by alternating purl and knit stitches,
which give it kind of this like ribbed, stripy texture and the ribs can come in different
widths depending on how many knit stitches are side by side with how many purl stitches. So
lots of different varieties and textures can be created with this. It also comes in a a bunch of
different fiber contents and different weights so it's actually a really cool fabric to work with
across all seasons. I'm going to show you some examples and talk about them. All right, first up
I have this Julia tank, this is the Julia member bonus and this rib knit, I'd call this kind of
more of a mid-weight rib knit, it is a cotton-poly blend, I think it has a little bit of spandex in it
and you can see that it's like a little bit firmer, it has a little bit of stretch. Something that
rib knit is really good at is it has a little bit of mechanical stretch, so what that means is that
even if the fabric doesn't have spandex, which now that I touch and feel this, I kind of
don't think that it does, it will still have a good amount of mechanical stretch to it, which
is just stretch that the fabric has inherently by the way that it's woven, or in this case knit.
So this is one example of a rib knit and I think this is
pretty common type of rib knit that you'll find in a lot of different fabric stores.
Next, I have the Elli henley and this in contrast is a really really drapey rib knit
and this fabric it gets its drapiness from two different things, the ribs on this are
a lot smaller and tighter, so it's like two rib stitches by two purl stitches and I think that
that makes it a little bit flowier, a little less rigid and also the fiber content on this this
has a bunch of rayon in it, has a bunch of spandex. You can see how stretchy it is and so even though
these two fabrics are both rib knits , really different hands. You can see how
this one hangs really heavy, really drapey and this one has a lot more structure to it.
Both are great options, it just depends on what you need, what your fabric calls for.
If you have a pattern that doesn't need a high stretch percentage this is a really great option
to create something that has texture, um something that has a little bit of body and interest
whereas this is going to be great if you want something that's like a little bit clingier,
forms to your body and has like a higher stretch percentage. So these are two examples of really
classic garment weight rib knits. I also have this sample, this is the Hollis wrap, which is the new
Seamwork pattern for the month of November 2021 and this is kind of like a variation on a rib knit.
So what it is, instead of those ribs running vertical the ribs are actually running horizontal
so this isn't giving quite the same effect in terms of the stretch across the body, but it
is giving an effect of texture and body, which can be really lovely. Again, of course with all knit
fabrics you're really going to want to defer to the pattern instructions and what is recommended
for stretch percentage. Most patterns are going to include a little stretch percentage guide
so you can do that really easily. This has enough stretch for the pattern and it also just has
some really great fun texture to give your homemade garments that like really special feel.
You can also use rib knit as trim, which I think is probably one of my favorite applications because I
just love a little trim moment. So first I have the Lito dress and it has this kind of like classic
ringer tee style and a ringer tee is you know, known for having those
contrast rib bands at the neckline and at the cuff of the sleeve and so
that's what we did here. We used some contrast ribbing to create that ribbing is really great um
trim for necklines and for cuffs because lots of times it has a lot of stretch, specifically
if there's extra spandex built in there it has the mechanical stretch from the rib knit
of the fabric and then it has the stretch from the spandex and so it's really good at
holding shapes and navigating the curves of the body. This is like a medium weight rib knit,
has a little bit of spandex in it, it works really great for projects like Lito. If you were making
a sweatshirt and you wanted to have contrast cuffs um on the sleeves and on like a hem band
or in a neckline something like this would be really good to give you that professional finish
and also keep your bands from being kind of like floppy or sitting up straight at the neckline.
If you were to make a sweater and you were using like a sweatshirt fleece
um if you cut your neckband from the sweatshirt fleece sometimes you can get kind of like a floppy
neckband, but using a ribbing there will really help you to create that nice smooth line.
You can also see this illustrated in the Larkin bomber. Here we're using a heavyweight ribbing,
you can buy this in the form of trim, it'll come like on like a trim roll or sometimes you
can find heavyweight knit by the yard that you can use as trim but you can see we're using it
in the same way to navigate the curves of the neckline and get that really nice smooth line.
So those are some applications of rib knit. I hope you learned a little bit about this fabric and are
feeling extra inspired to sew something cool for yourself. Do you have any fabrics you want to learn
a little bit more about? Just let me know in the comments below. I'll see you next time, happy sewing!