The day I realized I'd been cutting patterns on the wrong grain for 2 years

I was at this sewing meetup in Austin last month, showing off a dress I'd just finished. This older lady named Barbara looks at it, runs her fingers along the collar, and says 'honey, your bias is fighting you.' I had no clue what she meant. She pulls out her own pattern piece and shows me how the grainline arrow should be parallel to the selvage, not just eyeballed. Turns out I'd been lining up the fabric folds wrong on like 20 projects. The shoulders were always pulling weird and the hem never hung straight. I thought I just had bad luck with patterns. Barbara was so cool about it, she even sketched a little diagram on a napkin. Has anyone else had a basic sewing rule click way later than it should have?

3 comments

3 Comments

drew559d ago

The napkin sketch part is pure gold.

kevin_west9d ago

Holy crap, wait, on a real napkin mid-meeting? That's insane.

casey6829d ago

and the napkin diagram is still taped to my wall lol. @drew55 right? I had the exact same thing happen with how to finish a neckline facing - didn't learn about understitching until my third year sewing. Barbaras are saints, honestly. My friend Jess finally showed me after I complained about facings curling out on every single top. Felt like the dumbest person alive but hey, at least we know now.

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