Decorator Fabric Tips and Tricks

Decorator fabrics are a lot of fun to work with. They're crisp, they're larger, you don't usually need as much of a width for doing your windows as you would with a standard 36 inch or 44 inch wide fabric. However, there are some things that you need to be aware of, especially before you buy your yardage or you're going to be making some costly mistakes. Today I've brought in a roll of fabric that I'm going to be making curtains from and the first thing I want to show you is, as you can see, it comes on a roll, which is very nice because it doesn't wrinkle as much and the fabric stays nice and smooth. As I unroll this, what I want you to notice, we're gonna fight with this a little bit, 'cause it is rather large.

The fabric itself has quite a few markings on the side and the first one that you'll notice is right here. It has the name of the manufacturer and a lot of times it will have the name of the actual fabric itself, what pattern it is, but this one doesn't, it just is from the Robert Allen Group. The next thing you'll notice is that there's an arrow pointing in this direction. This lets you know that the fabric is directional, that it can only be sewed in one direction if you want everything to match and it's letting you know where the top of the fabric is. You'll also notice these little circles with numbers in them and colors.

In this case, there are seven circles and the colors correspond to each of the colors in the fabric. You can see the kind of charcoal color here, the slate blue, the green, the lime green, they all correspond and that just lets you know how many colors there are and it's more for the manufacturer's use than for yours, but in case you're wondering, that's why they're there. You'll also notice the little crosses and the crosses show you where the repeat of the fabric is and if I measure this, I'm gonna do it with a ruler, since this fabric is slippery. I wanna measure from the very top of the cross here where it's crossing and then I'm gonna put this other ruler down here, this way to show you this is a 24 inch ruler to the top of the cross right here, an extra inch, that means we have a 25 inch repeat. So every time the fabric repeats, just as with wallpaper, you have to be aware that it's going to require 25 inches.

So what does this mean? Well, let me show you here very quickly on a piece of paper. I've got, for my project, I'm making curtains and the width of the curtain is going to be 55 inches and it's going to be 78 inches long for my finished length. Now, the width at this point in time isn't what I want to concentrate on, I wanna concentrate on the length and let's remember that our repeat equals 25 inches. All right, so for every, I've already cut this and where I cut it, let's back up a minute.

The first thing I did was, I ripped off the edge to make sure got a straight of grain. That's where you can see this and then when I cut this, you can see where it came off of my fabric here. All right, so this I'm gonna call as my header and I'll show you that in just a minute. So basically I'm using the top of this green piece here as my guide point. So the next time it occurs is 25 inches later, which is here, so that's one repeat, two repeat and going down and so forth.

Three repeats would only put me at 75 inches and I need a minimum of 78. So that means, let's do some math here, I've got 78 inch for my finished length. I'm going to do four inches for turning under for the top of my header, at the top of my curtain. I need to turn this under. So I need to allow for that.

I've got to allow at least four inches for a hem. So eight and eight is 16, carry the one, 86 inches is how long I need my length to be. The repeat is 78, so I need to cut 100 inches of fabric per length. If I want to match my repeat. Well, if you take 100 and you subtract 86 inches, that leaves you 14 unusable inches.

You can't use that. In this case, making my curtains, I need three panels. So I multiply that times three, that's 42 inches. That's over a yard of fabric that I will not be able to use when I make these curtains and the reason that's important to know, and the reason why you want to match it is because over a large expanse of window, your eye is going to notice if all of a sudden the pattern isn't lining up. It's going to be very disturbing.

It's going to look very unprofessional. Also, if you have windows in a room that are separated, but they're at the same height, you're gonna want the top of your curtain to be the same all the way along, so that that pattern flows through your room, but you also have to realize, you're gonna have to buy extra fabric to make this happen. So keeping that in mind, I also wanna talk to you a little bit about width of fabric. Let's make sure we've got inches here. Let me roll this up, I think it will be easier.

And I love being able to, as much as possible, when you go to the fabric store, have them roll your fabric on the roll, because it will be a lot easier for you at home to work with it and it will keep it from getting quite so wrinkled and those nasty creases in it, especially if you don't get to it right away. Decorator fabric typically will run 54 inches wide, as opposed to the 36 or 45 width that we find on bolts. So you usually we'll have 56 or 54 inches, but occasionally it will go as much as 60 inches. Let me measure this one for you. We're gonna take it from edge to edge and you can see that from salvage to salvage, I'm at 57 inches.

So that sounds like, okay, I've got some extra fabric, but what you have to realize is that you've got about an inch and an eighth that's unusable, that's your salvage and you certainly don't want that to show as part of your seam. You need it to be in the seam. So if I measure from the inside of the design to the inside of the design, I am at 54 and three quarter inches. So I've actually got a little bit of extra space here to work with. The reason the manufacturer has given me that and I hope we can see this here, is that as you line up your pattern across, you're going to see that, let's say right here, where my blue comes in, actually let's do it on the green, the green here.

I've got just a little tip. That tip actually matches up over here to continue that design. So that as you're matching your fabric, you're going to keep the design going and so you're going to need a little bit of fabric in order to match it and make the design work. Ideally, if the fabric has been printed in the perfect world, I should just be able to line up this edge of the salvage where the print runs out and stitch right down that line and it should match, but that doesn't always happen. Sometimes we have to fudge it and that's what I'm gonna show you next, is how to go ahead and match up your print once you've cut your fabric.

Typically when I'm cutting fabric and I'm trying to match up my repeats, I will take the actual piece that I cut and move it down, line it up and cut my next segment and this works really well, especially if you're doing a valance or something that isn't extremely long, you know, if you're working with something maybe about 28 to 30 inches long. In this case, my curtain is going to be a finished length of 78 inches. My cut piece that I need will have to be at least 86 and of course we determined with our repeats, I probably need to cut a 100 inch piece and then I'll have the extra fabric where I can come back and trim it to where I need it. In that case, that's a lot of fabric to be working with and lining up, so I wanna show you a quick little trick. When I first got the fabric off the roll, I told you that I tore straight across to make sure I had the straight of grain, which is why you see the ravels here and then I went ahead and figured out where I wanted my first cut to be, made that, which is on this piece and this is what I had left.

So as you can see, here's where my fabric originally came from. So now that I have this header piece, if I was to come down, let's say, I only need two repeats. So here's one, here's two. I can simply come down here, and match up my design all the way across and so what I'm doing is I wanna match my little cross there, which is my repeat. I wanna make sure I'm good here.

That I'm good and I can kind of pull it back and actually see where the print is on the reverse side to help me match it up and once I'm satisfied with how I've got it lined up, that it's exactly where I want it, then I can come along and I like to go back to my quilting tools just because they're large and easy to use. I can line up my ruler with my guide piece, take my rotary cutter and simply cut across the fabric to get a nice crisp edge. The rotary cutter will you just a nice, razor fine edge as opposed to scissors where they're coming up and down and sometimes as you lift the fabric, it will be a little bit more jagged. This way I get a nice true line and underneath the fabric, I would definitely have a cutting mat to protect my table. So that's pretty much how I go about getting my fabric cut and making sure that I have the right match across.

The next thing I wanna show you, is once your fabric is cut, how we're going to line it up and prepare it for sewing. Now that we have our fabric cut, I wanna show you some easy tips for matching it up. We have the two different pieces here and I folded them back so you can see how the designs are going to come across to match up from the two pieces that we cut. If I bring it over, oops, to where the line is, I'm gonna just roll it back, you can see that is just not going to match up exactly. So you really have to play with your fabric and in this case I found, in order to get it to match up correctly, I needed to press this back by three eights of an inch from the edge of the print into the fabric.

So once I've got that pressed and I've got a nice sharp crease, it will help with not only pinning it, but also when we get ready to sew. So my trick here is, I want to bring my fabric over to the actual edge of the printed salvage and that's where it should match up and I'm gonna come in here and I'm gonna start down here where it's a pretty obvious place and put a pin. And when I fold this back, sometimes I have to kind of play with it, it gives me a chance to look and see how I'm matching up and that's pretty close but it's still not right where it needs to be, so then you just play with it until you get it right where it needs to be. Oops. Let's double check that that's gonna come out right.

I'm gonna need to come up just a little. And then go ahead and pin. Now, when you pin, I want you to literally pin, pin, pin, pin, because it's also going to be your sewing line and even though I've got this sharp crease, sometimes when you get it under the sewing machine with the lighting and everything, sometimes it's hard to see where your crease is. So I highly recommend doing quite a bit of pinning. So I'm almost tip to tail when I pin.

All right. Let's do a little bit more. So let's see what we can take a peak and see how we're doing here. So I think you can see that it's lining up there and coming into the design, which is what we want. Now after you've pinned it, I highly recommend, and I've already done this, because this is a lot of fabric to manipulate, come along and do a basting stitch all the way down, just hold it with a basting stitch and then after you finished, what you can do is take this massive amount of fabric and turn it and now you can see how your seam line is going to match up and how we've preserved that print across the entire width of your fabric.

By basting it, you can make sure that it is indeed lining up and if you get off at all, I think I had, yeah right down here, I had a little spot where yes, I got off, it's very easy to remove a basting stitch and go back and adjust it and restitch it than it is if you've used a very tight sewing stitch, such as a 2.5 stitch, as opposed to a 6.0. So these are my tips for you and now that I've got my pieces joined for my big panel, now I can go back and if I am off anywhere, because fabric does shift, it does move, no matter how closely we cut, sometimes you'll get off. So like here I am off a little bit. I may want to pick a new starting point for my design, just move down to the next obvious space if I have enough and cut it and trim it now to my length and everything will be absolutely perfect. Remember, we had an extra 14 inches because of needing to cut 100 inches for the repeat, as opposed to the 86 actual inches that I need.

So this gives us a little bit of a fudge factor and assures that your draperies are going to come out absolutely perfect and look professional in your home.