Understanding the Importance of Fabric Grain in Quilting

As a quilting instructor, I was constantly asked how important is the grain of the fabric. I tell you, sometimes people want to make things far more difficult than it is. There are regular times when the grain of the fabric is all that important. Now there's a lot of you who are just cringing when you hear me say that, but it's true. I learned to quilt from my grandmother who was a junk quilter. Meaning she never bought a piece of fabric for a quilt in her life. All of the fabric came from somebody else's leftovers or from old clothes. And every piece that she ever cut, she cut using a template and she laid it down on the fabric, however, she could make it fit on that fabric and get the most use out of that fabric. Sometimes it was on the bias, it was on the slight bias, Maybe it was on the straight of the grain, Maybe it wasn't. Who knows? Most of her quilts were made out of everything from cotton, to corduroy, to a double knit and polyester. Her quilts are gonna last forever, mostly because of that polyester and double knit. But it doesn't really matter except for when it does matter. I know that sounds like a oxymoron, but it's true. If you are going to piece a quilt from lots of small pieces, ideally, yes you don't want to have much of it on the bias, but you're always going to have some bias. Ideally you'd like it to be on the straight of the grain. which simply means where the threads are going in one direction or the opposite direction rather than on the diagonal. And the threads are not moving horizontal or vertical. when it's very very important to use your fabric on the Straight of the grain is in your borders. So yes, that's when it matters in the piecing of your quilt not so much. in the borders however, when you stretch your fabric in one direction, it's going to stretch a little bit more than the opposite direction. And generally speaking from the salvage edge to the salvage edge, which is the crosswise grain, you have more stretch than you have, in the length wise grain. The length of your fabric. So it's always best to cut your borders with the length of the fabric, because it has the least amount of stretch. And that's what we're looking for is stability on the edge of our quilts. Also, it can be important to you, but not necessarily to the life of the quilt. If you're using a fabric that you can see the weave in. If you don't have it on the Straight of grain and it bothers you, If you see that weave in a block, a square block and the weave is not moving with the edge of the block itself. if you have a straight edge here, but weave of your fabric is going at an angle, it might bother you. So then you might want to be concerned about it. But in the piecing of your quilt, the grain is not that much, not that important. The exception is that border, and then the second exception would be if you are using a diagonal set, meaning the blocks are set on point, and you have to have corner triangles or setting triangles. You want to cut those so that the bias is not across the outside edge. There's lots of information all over the web about using different types of cutting techniques for that type of a setting, so that you don't end up with bias along that edge. So we're just looking for a very sturdy edge to our quilts, so that they are easy to handle during the quilting process. And if we're going to hang them or use them they're going to have sturdy edges. So when does that grain matter? Not during the piecing, but on those edges. Now you know.