Tips For Cutting Fabrics Accurately And Efficiently

The most crucial part of a garment is the choice of fabric since the right choice of fabric material accentuates the entire look of an outfit. What’s even more important is how the garnet is cut and stitched.Have you ever finished a piece of clothing only to discover that the seams are all twisted? Or when attempting to match up seams after stitching, they have two different lengths? How about a finished garment's hem that, after a few uses, becomes uneven? Most of the time, the way a fabric is cut is the cause of all of these issues. 

Creating a well-fitting garment begins with precise cutting along the grain and in this article we’ll talk about it and guide you through the knicks and knacks of fabric cutting.

Benefits Of Cutting A Fabric Properly

Making smooth, lengthy cuts to ensure that the pieces line up properly while sewing is important as sloppy cutting results in messy clothing. Correct fabric cutting improves the appearance of the finished product and makes it look well tailored. The grainline will not only fit better and hang elegantly, but the seams will also line up properly. When utilising a pattern, it's crucial to cut along the line that corresponds to your size.

Expert professionals are aware of it and employ various techniques to cut cloth properly for production as a way to save money. The most significant item on your costings sheet is the fabric you choose, which can account for up to 80% of the cost of the finished garment. Fabric yield needs to be properly controlled when cutting fabric for manufacturing if you want your business to grow successfully. Create a straightforward fabric costings document that includes the following information: fabric type, fabric width, fabric supplier, and fabric yield. Fabric consumption expenses must be recorded throughout the sampling process. Then, using this page, you can estimate how much fabric you'll need for your manufacturing. This is one of the main reasons why proper cutting of fabric is important which results in less wastage of fabric.

Tips & Tricks For Cutting Fabric Accurately 

Here is a quick guide on cutting fabric accurately and efficiently. For students who have expertise in cutting fabric, you should recall these from college. However, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the procedure, these pointers will serve as a guide to help you cut every time properly and effectively while avoiding costly errors like wasting time and materials.

• Prewash And Press Your Fabric

The initial step before cutting is a crucial one that is sometimes skipped. You should pre-wash and iron your fabric. This may appear tedious to the impatient. However, you absolutely should not omit this step because spending hours crafting a garment to perfection just to have it shrink in the first wash is the last thing you want to do. So pre-wash the clothing and iron out any creases to ensure that the fabric lays flat. You can also iron your pattern pieces, which you might not know! Most patterns have numerous wrinkles when they first emerge from their packaging, which can make it difficult for them to lay flat. You might as well smooth out your paper patterns if you're going to the trouble of smoothing out your fabric, right?

• Make Selvedge/Grailine

Your fabric's self-finished edge is known as the selvedge—the sides that remain intact. This serves as the fabric's straight edge and is where you locate the grain. The selvedge and the longitudinal grain are parallel. A directional grain line will be printed on most of your pattern pieces. Use a clear ruler to align the grain line of each pattern piece with the selvedge or straight edge before glueing them to the fabric. To ensure proper alignment, a cutting mat with a grid is also useful.

• Mark Your Fabric

Make sure to carefully mark your cut lines so you can easily follow them. Use just enough pins to secure the pattern or template if you're using one, but don't use too many or the fabric may bunch up. Additionally, utilise pointed pins only.

• Grip The Shears

When cutting, hold the shears firmly while cutting along the template edge or cut lines. Keep in mind that you want everything to stay as flat as possible, so maintain consistent contact between the bottom of the scissors' blade and the table or cutting board.

• Use Tissue Paper For Slippery Fabric

If you've ever attempted to cut a fabric like silk charmeuse or chiffon, you are aware of how challenging it is to maintain everything in position and straight. Here's a tip: before positioning the pattern pieces and cutting, sandwich the fabric between sheets of tissue paper. It won't wobble about as much!

• Prints And Naps

Remember to pay extra close attention to how you're laying out your pattern pieces so that every piece is facing the appropriate direction and matches up if your fabric has a directional print or nap (like velvet or corduroy). The same is true with coordinating plaids and stripes. For this, you might need additional yardage.

• Side Of The Fabric

Always position your patterns on the wrong side of the fabric, mark it, and cut it. In this manner, all notch and mark creation takes place on the fabric's reverse, where it is invisible from the exterior or right side. Additionally, since right sides are normally together when sewing, all of your marks will be facing you, where you can readily see them and match them.

Best Tools For Fabric Cutting

To make sure that the cloth cutting process is clean and secure your tools should be sharp before you start cutting, whether you're using ordinary scissors, an electric fabric cutter, or a rotary cutter. Use this opportunity to perform some quick maintenance on your tools; the blades frequently need to be changed over time due to wear and tear. To make cutting and minor fraying easier, you might also wish to place another piece of fabric underneath (or above) your fabric. Now you only need scissors instead of those high-maintenance rotary blades, which is especially helpful for people who don't have enough money for expensive rotary blades.

However, we’ve given a plethora of fabric cutting tools below that’ll help you pick and choose the one that’ll make your job easier.

• Yardstick

This long ruler has measures written on it. In order to line up your first cut without worrying about your first mark being too big or little, it must be at least 30 inches long.

• Mat

I advise choosing the largest size you can afford for your mat and ruler. As a result, you won't need to move the cloth around the mat as much while cutting a yard or more of fabric. Once more, this is a personal choice of mine. Additionally, the mat will feature marks that you can use to align your cloth. Although smaller mats and rulers make it easier to transport them to different places.

• Hand Operated Scissor 

This is the first and oldest technique for cutting fabric. Scissors are typically used to cut fabric with one or two plies. Fabric may be neatly and precisely cut with practice. For left-handed or right-handed use, there exist several pairs of scissors. Cutting fabrics using scissors takes a lot of time, increasing the cost of fabric cutting for each item. Because of this, the usage of scissors in the clothing business is strictly restricted. However, in homes or tailoring shops, cutting cloth is primarily done using scissors.

• Rotary Cutter

Rotary cutters are available in several sizes and resemble pizza cutters in appearance. The smallest are 18 or 28 mm, the most popular are 45 mm, and the biggest are usually 60 mm. The 60mm rotary cutter packaging states that they can cut up to six layers of cotton cloth at once or thicker textiles. When cutting around curves, the smaller blades are advantageous. When you realise that your blade is getting dull and isn't cutting very precisely, it's recommended to replace it to ensure seamless fabric cutting.

• Round Knife

It looks like a circle-shaped knife. This knife has a highly sharp point and uses a motor and electricity to operate at a very rapid speed. The speed at which the round knife is used ranges from 1000 to 3500 RPM. The blade's diameter ranges from 6 cm to 30 cm. The base plate, electric motor, handle, blade guard, and so on are the key components of this device. Figure 2 depicts the machine that makes round knives. There are three different types of blade edges, including waved, toothed, and round. A round knife has a 10 times better capability for cutting fabric than a straight knife with the same RPM.

• Pins & Chalks

Some people feel that using a pin and chalk helps them do their task faster than usual and without having to worry about losing any fabric because they can go back and fix any mistakes they make after fixing their intended placement on the main cloth. By doing it this way, it won't matter if you make a mistake because all you need to do is make sure the pins are taken out of the extra fabric, and everything will be OK. Additionally, since pins create faint traces on the cloth when they move around, you can reuse those markings by brushing chalk over them so that it leaves a mark that might serve as a guide for cutting.

To sum it up, scissors are by far the most practical piece of fabric cutting equipment and tools for anybody to have at home because they can be used for a variety of tasks, including cutting fabric straight. Other tools, like rulers or chalk markers, are only particularly effective for specific cutting tasks, while pinking shears perform well but aren't as cost-effective to use if you're on a tight budget because they are more expensive than standard scissors. Regardless of the approach you use, it is always recommended to avoid accidentally ruining your cloth with cut lines that could create weak points in your material where it might rip or tear. Keep these above mentioned hacks in mind to cut your fabric accurately and efficiently.