Tips to Sewing with Directional Patterns

Today I'm gonna show you how to do a pattern layout, but more importantly how to work with directional fabric. This particular pattern that I'm gonna work with is one of my favorites it's a simplicity, 98, 18, and it makes up into a fun camp shirt. Camp shirts are usually nice and loose, perfect for summer, and they usually feature bright, big patterns. So I thought this butterfly print would make a wonderful wonderful camp shirt. Not only that, but this particular fabric is a wonderful one to illustrate the concept of a directional fabric.

A lot of our fabrics it doesn't matter which way you lay your pattern pieces you could put the top of the pattern piece, let's say your shoulder up here, and you could put the back shoulder down here, and it just wouldn't matter because it is a non-directional pattern. But this particular one has a direction and it's going to look very funny, if my butterflies are flying up the front of my shirt and then flying down the back of the shirt. So, take a look and as you can see, none of these butterflies is flying down, they're all flying up or slightly to the side. So that's the way I wanna make sure that I face, the top of my pattern to include the shoulders, and the sleeves. Now, when you get a pattern, and it's gonna be hard to see on here so I went ahead and enlarged, the back has a lot of information.

And so I enlarged it so you could see a little bit better. The first thing it does is tell you a little bit about the pattern, written description and how the different views, are different from each other I guess is the best way to say that. As you can see there are four views on this pattern, two or longer, two are shorter and I'm gonna make the shorter one today. And you have an option of long sleeves or short sleeves and I am again doing the short sleeve one so that is option D. As I come down here it gives me, my measurement for at 45 inch wide fabric how much fabric do I need, if my size is a six, eight, 10, 12, and so forth, so I can come down here and see how much I need which is, a minimum of two yards.

The top part tells me also what types of fabrics would work very well with this pattern, because sometimes the knit won't work as well on certain patterns or a woven fabric won't work as well. So they give you some very very good options, and then they'll also tell you what it's not suitable for. And then it tells you the notions that you need right down to how many buttons or snaps, or zippers or whatever the case may be. So this is the main information that you get off the back. When you open up your pattern, the pattern pieces obviously are inside and they're on a very thin tissue paper, and then you have your general directions.

And this is where you find not only the layout, this the first thing you'll find, it'll also tell you about what the markings mean. But then it also has the order of work, how you will put your pattern together once it's cut oops! Once it's cut out. And each individual step with illustrations, but we aren't going into all that today. I went ahead and also blew up, the pattern sheet for the layout.

So you could see a little bit better, what we're going to be working with. This piece has five pieces, it tells me which pieces I need to use, in the fact that pattern piece four is optional. It shows me the size of the fabric that this is a 45 inch wide, and that this is with a nap, and then in 60 inch wide, in this particular case, when they do a pattern layout they give it for the most economical and efficient way to lay everything out to make the most use of the piece of fabric that you have with the minimum amount of waste. In this particular case, both of the main pieces, in fact all of them are going in the same direction, whether it's non-directional or not it really wouldn't make a difference. In this case, it's showing it for the width nap, and whenever you have a choice if you have a directional pattern, you wanna use the width nap option.

A nap is what we have on something like corduroy, velvet, velveteen, similar type fabrics because as you run your hand one way, the fabric will look different than if you run it the opposite way, that is the nap. So you need to figure out which way your nap is running, to lay out your pattern. Well, it's the same thing with direction you wanna make sure everything is running the same way. And the reason you do that on nap is because it would look funny if your fabric is, with the nap going on the front going up and down on your back because actually changes, the lighting on the fabric and also the intensity of the color to the eye. So you really want to make sure that you are aware of that little tidbit there.

Now the pieces, as I said are out of a very thin tissue, is how they're made. And one problem with that is that over time if you make the same pattern over and over, they do tend to tear and show a lot of use as you can tell, this is a well loved pattern. So I'm going to be using a permanent pattern, and that is simply tracing the pattern onto a polyester woven type of fabric. You can see the fibers in here that have all been meshed together and it has no grain, and you can easily transfer your pattern onto here trace it on and then cut it out, so I'm gonna use that today. Before I start pinning it though I want to show you one more thing, that you need to be aware of.

When you buy fabric, you gonna and go in the fabric shop and nine out of 10 fabric shops will just cut the fabric, and you get the edge in it. This has been pre-shrunk I went ahead and washed it, but you can see where this was. I went ahead and straightened my fabric because since this is directional, and it has a very distinct pattern, I wanna try and not necessarily match it but have the same continuity going across the front of my shirt in the back. In this case on very good fabric which this was, this is by timeless treasures it's actually a quilting fabric quilting is always a hundred percent cotton. And so that's why I chose this 'cause it breeze and it's very nice for camp shirts.

But if you look at your selvage edge here, you can actually match that pattern up. See how that forms whole butterfly, lemme pull this over a little bit better so you can see. Now I suddenly have a full butterfly. So if I were to... So that if I cut it out very precisely, with my seam allowance there, and ring it in, it's going to match up perfectly in my design.

You can see it matching here, you can see it matching all the way across. Because I probably am not going to be that exact to be honest on my fabric, I don't necessarily have to get the grain lines even I would have to match my selvage more like that, but I do wanna at least make sure that it's going to be straight going across. When I did that, you can see how that is off by almost an inch from the original cut. What you wanna do is line up your selvages, and pull it down to the point where you are nice and flat going over to the fold line and press it. And that will help your fabric be a lot nicer for working with and actually more true to the grain.

If this was a plaid, what I would recommend is coming across, go ahead and lay your fabric back so that you could see your lines, and make sure that those lines of a fabric or stripe, were lined up all the way down. And I would probably pin them as I want in two or three places so that my fabrics don't slip there is nothing more annoying, than getting a garment finished and realizing that your plants are off but just that much so a little bit of precaution is worth a pound of cure. So again, I've got my little butterflies matched up, and now it's time to lay out my pattern. The marks on a pattern will tell you quite a bit, and we'll go ahead and use their layout as we do this. This is pattern piece two, and it is going to go right up here on the fold, and I'm going to put it up as close to that I'll leave just a little bit for my cutting.

And we wanna put it there on the fold line and always double check that this is your fold, because you don't want to find out you did an oops. You can use pattern weights which they're weighted little doughnuts if you will, and put those down. I don't like them to be honest because there is a possibility for slippage, it's not quite as important on my fold piece but for anything with a grain line I want my grain line to be absolutely straight, and I'll talk about that in just a second. So rather than using my weights, I like to pin, and I like to use the clover pins. And they're called that because the tip looks like a clover.

The nice part is they're perfectly flat, so when I use my ruler to measure for my straight of grain which you'll see in a second, the ruler is going to fit on here and not slide like it would with a round headed pin. You don't need a lot of pins, we're just gonna come along and pin in a few places actually the best thing to do is make sure you pin that fold line first because that is literally your baseline. So we're going to pin that, you wanna make sure everything is flat always pressure fabric, before you start laying out your pattern, and make sure you press your pattern pieces because you don't want any wrinkles as you work. The better you do at this stage, the easier and nicer your garment will go together. Now, you don't need to pin a ton just enough to hold it in place, in key parts.

I pinned a little more here, because I have a curve and I wanna make sure that that doesn't slip when I'm cutting, also up here, but as you can see I just did kind of key points. Now, when it comes to your grain line, this is a very very critical part of sewing. Your pattern will always mark, the grain line and it will tell you if it's on the strait of grain, which is perpendicular to your selvage, if it's on the cross grain, rather lemme back that up. It will show you if the grain line, is on the straight of grain, which is parallel to your selvage. If it's on the cross grain, which is perpendicular to the selvage, or if it's on the bias, which is 45 degrees to the salvage.

This case it's on the lengthwise grain, and we want to make sure once again that our butterflies are flying North, that they're going to be flying up to our face. Because if you think about it as you look at this your eye is going to be drawn in the direction of the butterflies flight, and that you want your garment to focus on your face and to highlight your features. The other reason you wanna do that is because of the tree branches in here, trees grow up, so we don't want to have our trees growing down. When you get ready to put this particular piece on, we're gonna refer back to our guide, and it's showing, to put this over near the fold line. You don't wanna put it on the fold line, but just near it to maximize your fabric usage.

Here's the trick though. I need to come up here, and find out where my marks are, now, I don't have a notch on the side seam. That's what you usually match when you're trying to do your shoulders, and your sides, and your front, on a directional fabric. That's going to be a little bit difficult. So, what I'm going to do, is I'm going to look and see where this line is at.

And it, as you look here very closely, it's right at the head of that little purple butterfly, is where that line matches up. So I need to find a little purple butterfly and the first time I've got him is here. Okay. Now I can't do anything about it being further over, and that's because this piece is wider. That's because you have to fold your front back and under, for the part where your buttons and button holes go that's one reason why it's bigger than the back of your pattern.

So this pattern will not be able to meet and make a whole butterfly. But it can at least carry on the same plane across, so that as you look on your waistline you gonna see this butterfly. And then you'll see that butterfly at the same level, it will make for a much more pleasing garment. Now, as far as the grain line goes how you get it on the straight of grain, is you are going to take and measure your grain line. You put your ruler right on the grain line, and you're going to come down to your selvage which is always straight of grain, and measure how far that is, but it helps when my rulers right side up.

So we're going to try that again, and I'm at 14 and a half. So what I usually do is I go ahead and I pin that grain line. And then I come back and make sure that I didn't shift at all, because, if this grain line is not perfectly aligned, with the grain itself your garment will tend to shift and not hang correctly, So I know that this is at 14 and a quarter. I'm going to come along, and check partway down my grain line. And in this case, I'm at almost 14 and three eighth so I want to just move, just slightly, until I'm at 14 and a quarter.

I'm going to go ahead and pin it, and then I'm going to do one more because this is a rather long piece. And this time, it's up just a little so I want to slightly shift my pattern, make sure I'm at 14 and a quarter, I like to hold down here so it doesn't shift, and go ahead and pin. Now I know that I'm on the street of grain, and as you can see, this is very interesting. My front line here is actually not quite square with my fold line. So that tells me that the fold was off slightly, it's okay over here, sometimes that happens.

But by measuring to the grain line and not the straight edge I am ensured that this piece will fall correctly once it's made. So then we just go ahead and continue pinning, I'll just pin a few here. I just wanna check this one more time to make sure I'm at 14 and a quarter. Actually I'm off just a little bit, and the reason I noticed that was because of where my butterfly was falling for where my line is. So I just wanna move this just slightly, and don't feel bad if you have to do this it's better to have it right the first time than not, so let's see if that'll fix it.

14 and a quarter, that's better. And now you can see where my button holes are going to be, where that fold line is, I've got just a little tip of the butterfly showing here I've got just a little tip showing here, I feel better knowing that that's straighter. Alright, so basically have this on now you can see where with my pattern layout, it showed that the pattern pieces were going to be right next to each other. I've got a gap and that's because, we were lining up on the repeat. The way you can tell a repeat in a pattern, is literally to look at it.

And in this case it's very easy because I can see it right here on the edge. And in this case, my repeat measuring at the same spot, which would be all the way up to here, is approximately 12 and let's call it an eighth inches, 12 and an eighth inches. So you have to allow for at least that much extra fabric when you buy it. If you know you gonna have a repeat and I would probably would that much allow even a little extra, because of doing the sleeve. Now lemme show you for doing the sleeve what I would recommend.

In this case let's just take this on up. And this was a piece I happened to have at home and I just happened to buy a lot, not knowing at the time what I was gonna do with it I just fell in love with the fabric, so I'm kind of lucky here. But again if I was buying this for a garment, I would definitely want to make sure, that I had plenty of fabric. So in this case, I need to look, and see where my notches are. And actually I, yeah this will work because of where the leaves are.

In the notches are I've got my front notch on this side my back notch is here. So I want to look that my back notch is just below this butterfly, which is this one right here. So if I put it just below where here, so I just kind of walk my way over. And I'll be pretty darn close, if you wanna measure for sure, he would be, always make sure you're straight to this edge to get your best measurement. So it's not crooked I can see that he is just the bottom edge of his wing hits the middle of the darn.

So then I can come over here, make sure I'm straight, and we're gonna have the bottom edge of his wing, and it should hit right at the middle of the not the darn rather than notch. And that should be right, right about there. So what I'm gonna do is just put a pin as an anchor. Now I wanna check my front notch, and for that case it's right, let's see if I can find a good point. It's right at the tip of this intersection between my butterfly's wing coloring.

So I'm wanna figure out where that is, it was right there. And I know this looks like minutia and it is, but when you get your garment finished, you gonna be a lot happier that you took the time to make it look right. So one more time I'm going to come here, see where I am. Okay. Okay I'm here one more time the notch okay.

Looks like I need to move up just a little bit, too much, there I'm good with that. So now I know that's about where it needs to be, but grain line trumps matching any day of the week. Because you certainly don't want your sleeve to not fit properly for movement. So, I wanna measure my straight of grain, I'm at 11 and a quarter, and then I want to check it again at the end, and I am still at 11 and a quarter. So this piece went on nice and easy, it should all match up.

And then we just have to do the rest of our pieces which would be the collar, and the facing. Now these are going on the grain. The other way, as in your collar is not laying this way, It's going to lay this way along the length wise of the grain. In this case, I would come back up here, to save my fabric. Oops!

And I could literally at this point even though, the pattern is showing for it to go between the sleeves and the outside here, I could do that. I can put it there, or I can put it anywhere in here. It's more a matter of if I wanna save large, chunks of my fabric for other projects perhaps I wanna, use it to applicate a pocket or make a pillow, or who knows what I might want to do with this fabric so I may want to be considerate of where I put my pieces. So now all I have to do, is put those in, do the same thing with the grain line. Again, very important grain line with your collars because you want that collar to fit on nice and curve as it needs to around your neck and lay flat.

So I cannot emphasize enough the importance of making sure your grain line is perfectly straight. Now when we get ready, to cut out the pattern, when you come to your notches here, right now it's showing that the notch is inward and you can cut that notch that way if you wish. But I like to actually bring my notch out and cut that little triangle facing out, because then there's no chance, that I slip into my garment or cause any kind of tearing. It's just a little bit of insurance there, and insurance is always a good thing when you're sewing. So I hope that you will find that directional patterns really aren't that difficult they just take a little more care when you work with them.

And that now you understand all of the markings, and reasonings on a pattern. to help you achieve the best possible garment that you can.