What You Need to Know About Quilting Fabric

hi my name is cindy rang with the fabric patch in euphrates washington and i'm going to take you on a little tour of the shop to tell you everything you need to know about quilting fabric i'm going to take all of the mystery out of it tell you some industry secrets tips for selecting and just some things that you want to make sure you understand before you get all of your fabrics and put them together for your [Music] project my daughter and i have owned and operated a busy quilt shop in washington state for over 20 years we have a retreat center an active youtube channel and a large pattern line featuring our creations my two sons work on machines one daughter-in-law is our videographer and the other is a long-arm quilter we are a family that love each other we laugh together and every once in a while we get some work done we have a crew that are saints for their efforts at keeping us on track thanks for joining us on our wild ride [Music] okay let's start by talking about quilter's cotton and what that is quilter's cotton is a specific industry grade gray good that everybody uses and so what it is is it's also known as 60 square and what they mean by that is that in one square inch there are 60 threads so 30 warp threads 30 weft threads all in an inch and somebody will say well but 200 thread count or 600 thread count isn't that better it is not better because again what we're looking at is we're bringing it all down to measure what is in one square inch and a 60 square quilter's cotton gray good is what will resist shrinkage wear and tear it will hold all of that ink and that die together so that your quilt will last for generations without showing any signs of wear or discoloration okay so first let's talk about the most common fabric that you're going to find which is the printed gray good and so what they do is they start with their gray good they put it on these great big huge rolls and they roll through all of these colors these this ink that they put on top of the fabric on top of the gray good now i'm going to show you kind of a little a little kind of an industry secret and it's something that some of you if you've been quilting for a long time you already know this and it is how to read a salvage so if you look up close on this you'll see that on every printed fabric salvage they have the colors that they've used the first color on was the blue and then they did this kind of deep red then the bright red then the silver and then they did either a different blue or the same blue so what's nice is that you may not care the order that they put the the ink on top of the fabric but what's really nice is if you're trying to match something you can find that salvage and this is all you need to take with you to the quilt store to find that perfect red is that color right there the other thing that you want to know about printed fabric is that the average repeat is 24 inches and that's because that's the size of that roll when it's rolling that fabric before it repeats that same color and repeats that same color repeats that same color so that's why so many of our printed panels and my right side up are 24 inches so they're 24 inches wide by the 42 inch from selvage to selvage because that's the way that it's printed you can occasionally find a 36 inch repeat but those tend to be just a little bit more spendy okay let's talk about digital fabric some people are kind of nervous about digital fabric but you really should not be in fact it truly is the wave of the future and i think that certainly in my lifetime it will all be digital the reason is because they still start with the exact same gray good it's that same 60 square high quality quilters cotton but instead of going through that printing process on the rolls where they have issues with possibly something could slip a little bit possibly that role could collapse a little bit there could be variations with a stripe what happens with this is it's basically it's almost like it goes through a printing machine so everything is nice and flat and there's incredible clarity the other thing is that when we go through the printing process with fabrics we have our selection of 29 pantone colors and that is it when we're going through like an inkjet printer essentially you can do anything anything you want any color sky's the limit mix it any way you want to shade it any way you want to and again not just with massive amounts of color but also massive amounts of clarity so if we're doing something like for example this dean russo print this is fantastic because all of that detail that is so clear with his artwork can really show up so that it looks exactly like his artwork there's no issues with the eyes there's no issues with those tiny little hearts and peace signs everything works out just great the other thing that's kind of fun about digital fabric is that since it's not going through that traditional printing process they can do anything they want on the salvage so that's one of your ways of knowing is this a digital piece or a printed piece because when you're feeling it it doesn't feel any different it's not going to wash any different it's not going to wear any different it's all going to be great but down on the salvage they don't have to indicate the order that they put the ink down so they might have something kind of fun they're still going to have the colors that they used but it's not going to be that same look as with printed fabric the other thing that's nice is again because of the clarity you can see hoffman they appreciate digital fabric so much that they make a color card this is the exact color of all of their 1895s which is their modeled basically solid kind of batiks that they use so they went ahead and did a digital print on a one yard panel and this is exactly that color so anybody who wants to have one of these you can sew it up into something different you can cut it up if you want to but it's just kind of nice to have all of those colors and it's exact because of the way that it was printed all right another type of fabric that i think some quilters tend to avoid for some reason is batiks but there is no reason to batiks are my personal favorite and i think they're the favorite of many of the people in the store because there's such vibrant color so many options it's very rich and the other thing is that there's technically no wrong side so the idea of no wrong side it may not matter so much when you're piecing but if you have picked up a jelly roll and you have kind of a pile of strips and you're nervous about how you're picking something up you don't have to worry about it so much because the front of the fabric looks just like the back of the fabric now some people are going to challenge me on that and say well there really is a wrong side and there is if you look at it long enough and hard enough you may be able to tell the difference between the two sides but you really have to kind of squint you have to have the right light and you have to really figure it out and so for me it just i do try to use the right side but i would never ever ever have the need or the desire to rip out something if i got it wrong one way i'm just going to show you a little trick if you really want to know what the right or the wrong side is you just fold the fabric you grab a hole to the corner and you pull it and what will happen is it will bend to one side every time no matter what you do and however you straighten it when you pull it it will bend the reason that it does that and this is how it'll help you to remember which side it's bending to it's bending to the wrong side of the fabric the reason that it's doing that is because we have more additives and more finishing on the right side so the right side is a little bit stiffer and so whenever you pull this even no matter how it was positioned it's going to bow to the wrong side so anyway so that's one way that you can tell the difference if you want to but again it's not really very necessary one thing that you want to know is how they make batik fabric there's a lot of really cool videos about it but they do it with a lot of dye and they do it with a resist and so what they'll do is they use some wax to be able to color the fabric so this particular one with the pumpkins on it they probably first dyed it an orange and then they put a resist on it before they put the other colors on it so that the other colors um didn't bleed into that orange that's why there's so much color on it is because there's layer after layer of dye it's also why the fabric is a little bit stiffer some people don't like that i like that because a lot of people spend a lot of time adding starch to get their fabric a little stiffer to make it a little bit easier to work with this naturally comes that way and what will happen is after you've washed your fabric three or four times washed your quilt three or four times after it's quilted it'll get soft you won't notice a difference between the feel of the batik fabric and the feel of other basic cotton fabric all of that finish comes out the other thing that's nice about it is because of the process and how they do it if you are doing raw edge applique where you're putting a fusible web onto one side of it cutting it out and fusing it down you really do not have those frayed edges that other cottons will have so lots and lots of reasons to love batik fabric another type of fabric that you should be aware of is woven fabric now you want to be kind of careful because there is other woven fabric that is used for different things but if you're getting it from a quilt store and it is quilt store quality woven fabric made by moda or henry glass then you know it is still that same 60 square thread count that we just talked about the only difference is that instead of printing the 60 square grey good or or weaving it and printing on top of it what they're doing is they use these machines and they thread these machines so that when they are producing the 60 square grey good the 60 square fabric they're using um dyed threads to be able to produce it so they're not dying on top of it so what will happen is you'll end up with something that truly has no right or wrong side because it's all woven with dyed threads what you might find is you might find some slight inconsistencies on one side from the other side just because the thread might run under or the thread might run over so every once in a while you'll see a slightly different pattern so you may want to be a little bit careful about which side is the upside and which side is the downside but it may or may not be something that you would notice what's really nice about wovens is two things two things that i use them all the time one is if i have to have a perfect plaid or a perfect stripe because this is woven i know i will have a perfect one inch plaid or a three inch stripe or whatever it is i'm looking for there's not going to be those variations that will occur with the printing press the other thing that i'll do is if i'm making a rag rug or some sort of a chenille project where i want to have those little edges i love it because look at this one you can see these are the edges and this is where those threads come to the end so you can imagine what this would look like in a chenille project and so they make jelly rolls and layer cakes out of woven fabrics and so if you are doing a raggedy squares or a raggedy rug it works out perfect so again you can use woven fabric with your other pieces in your quilt and it washes perfectly washes the same no difference except again it might be a slightly more expensive it could run 80 cents to a dollar more expensive because of that process of of getting it on the machine and threading all of those needles to actually weave the fabric when you're making it so it does run slightly more expensive but it's worth it if you want something that's kind of perfect flannel is also 60 square quilters cotton but the difference is that they are using a thread that is a little bit of a looser fiber because then what they do and this sounds really horrible but what they do is they do this mechanical brushing it's a very specific process where they run the fabric through an extra step where these tiny tiny little blades essentially rough up the fabric to give it that soft soft soft feel so it's really nice it doesn't wash out it doesn't go away you can't press it out of it it's just always going to be soft and again since you're still starting with that same 60 square cotton you can put this with anything you can put it with batik you can put it with regular cotton you can put it with digital cotton it's not going to make any difference it's just the fiber that's used that makes it different it's also why you can find something that's a little bit of both so this is a woven fabric that has been brushed which is another term for mechanically brushed to make it flannel and so this one actually has a flannel side that was brushed and a flat side so you can kind of decide and sometimes when you order this fabric you may not know that it's going to come that way it's a special surprise that the wrong side of this fabric is basically just flat cotton the front side of it is this brushed woven fabric that feels just like flannel another fabric that you want to be aware of is something that can either be called quilter's canvas or quilter's linen and what it is it's usually made by either moda will do it northcott does it i think even hoffman puts one together and what they do it's that same 60 square fabric or 60s yeah 60 square fabric but what they're doing is they're replacing about 20 to 30 percent of those threads with a flax thread which means that it just has a little heftier weight so when you feel it you can tell that there's something a little bit different going on a little bit heavier a little bit more luscious little more oomph to it sometimes you find that it's 54 wide but absolutely that same shrink shrink factor wash factor so you can use it with your quilts you can use it in all of your projects they just make it because sometimes somebody wants a little bit heavier fabric for bags or for maybe some outerwear something else where you want just a little bit more heft to your fabric but other than that you can still put it in everything else because it's not any different all right i want to talk for just a second about the finish on fabric and finish is all of the additives that the specific fabric company will put on top of the fabric to make it soft and that's in fact what they're doing they're putting a softener on it they're putting a stain guard on it they're putting a sun guard on it maybe a little bit of starch there are some companies that can have up to maybe five or six things they have their own private little formula that they that they use to put on the top of the fabric to make sure that your fabric will withstand the sunny sewing room the stain from the kids the the pressures of being pieced and so that is why i can tell with my eyes closed i oftentimes can feel fabric and i know which one is art gallery i know which one is moda i know because they have their special little recipes and they're all very soft it is also why i personally do not pre-wash my fabric i have not pre-washed my fabric in probably over 10 years because i appreciate all of the work they've gone through to go ahead and make this fabric soft and resistant to stain sun and pets okay so whether you are using printed cotton digital cotton woven flannel batik whatever it is as long as you're using a quilt store quality industry quality fabric it'll be fine you can absolutely put it together you don't have to worry about anything at all that whole universal shrink factor and wash factor they've taken that into account one there's two little tiny things that i just want to mention before we close and one is about the idea of bleeding people worry a little bit and that was why everybody washed their fabric before they used it because they didn't want it to bleed typically that will not happen it doesn't happen at all if it is going to happen it will happen with red dye the reason for that is because the molecule and red dye is a little bit larger so oftentimes there's some excess surface die most of the fabric companies they're aware of that and they do a special treatment so that they're very careful with that but if you are worried i would only be worried with red batik and even at that you maybe could go ahead and pre-wash it if you want to but if you just use either some sort of a retain or color catcher when you first wash your quilt you should not have a problem i have not had fabric bleed for me in over 12 years probably long long time no worry about that the other thing that i just want to mention is that if you are using solids you probably want to know which solid you purchased because there's probably 15 to 20 different blacks is it a kona black is it a andover century solid black is it a michael miller black whatever it is you want to know which one you got so that if you do need more for your project you'll get the right one otherwise it can absolutely be noticeable in a quilt so those are my last couple of tips and little a few of those little industry secrets and we hope that you have a great time shopping for whatever fantastic fabric is in your next project thank you for watching our video we invite you to leave a comment hit the like button or better yet subscribe to our channel so you never miss an episode you can also visit our instagram twitter facebook or pinterest pages or find all of those things and our online store at fabricpatch.net

Channel: The Fabric Patch

Views: 34,735

Rating: 4.9756098 out of 5

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Id: 3sL-rwe9T2o

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021