Project 2 - Sewing Jeans Shorts. Stage 1 (Preparing the fabric)

Dear Readers,

Well....Today I am starting my second project with the desired outcome to  have pair of jeans shorts. I found this irresistible fabric in Merrickville (where I tend to buy fabrics for smaller projects) for a very cheap price of $3 a meter (couldn't say no).



For all those readers in Sydney, Merrickville is pretty handy if you live in the city as it is fairly close to CBD plus it is much cheaper than major retailers such as Lincraft and Spotlight.
Needless to say, if I am buying loads of fabric then the destination is Cabramatta.


Most of us who have done some sewing are aware that sewing can be enjoyable if there is  process/plan of action involved. Personally, I like structure when doing things therefore I tend to group the things when sewing anything as it is easier and it allows for any project to be broken down in sections/categories.


          Today I want to talk about preparing the fabric for the project and importance of preparing the fabric.

Step 1.
Pre-wash the fabric - I use the normal cycle in the washing machine- taking into consideration the fabric I will be using is denim, I had to wash the fabric in order to get rid of any excess dye

Why?

The untreated fabric and the residue  dye can leave marks on the sewing machine and it is not the easy thing to clean. Thankfully I have discovered  Chucks Magic Eraser (can be purchased in Woolies - if you live in Australia) and it does the trick... Love my Bernina too much..what can I say. Did anyone else experience with the excess dye and new sewing machines (as they all tend to be white Lol)


Step 2

Once the fabric has been washed, we are required to dry the fabric - again, this is light denim cotton - it dried in no time as weather in Sydney was amazing today. Just lovely sunny day...


Step 3

I like my fabric to lie flat on the cutting board hence I like to give  a quick press to smooth any wrinkle that can eventually affect the fitting of the garment ( as you can accidentally get one side of the pants longer/larger which can affect the design and desired silhouette)

Step 4 

Prepare the fabric for cutting. This is fairly straight forward stage as it requires that fabric is positioned flat on the cutting table. In my instance the  fabric layout needs the selvages  to match to ensure correct grain of the fabric.

This is extremely important step as any mistake with the grain direction can cause issue in fitting.

Initial Layout - matching the selvages

Fixing the fabric to ensure same width

Using cutting board to ensure consistency in the width

Once selvages are equal, the inconsistency in cutting of the fabric is more obvious.Can you see the difference?

At this stage we are ready to start pinning the patterns and cut the fabric.  This will be done in the next blog update. My fabric is nicely spread across the table and ready to be pinned:))))


This is how I prepare the fabric for cutting...any other ideas how else can be done? 


Cheers and stay safe:)))

Mike