OPB Sew-Along: Cut It Out!

Okay, who’s ready to get to work on this pattern? I am!

First, gather your supplies. You should have ¾ a yard of fabric (I’m using some thrifted plaid cotton), your assembled Charlie Bag pattern, an iron and ironing board (if you have a spare spray bottle, fill it with water and grab that, too), and something small but heavy (a few cans of food will work perfectly).

A note on prewashing
Okay, in an ideal society one would prewash all washable fabrics before sewing with them. This would help to prevent potentially project-ruining shrinkage (insert Seinfeld reference here) down the line. In the real world, however, I don’t have a washer or dryer, making prewashing all of my fabrics both obnoxious and pricey. My rule is that if I’m making something that I will want to throw into the washing machine (i.e. most items of clothing), I prewash. If not, I don’t. I prewashed this fabric because it came from the thrift store, but if I had gotten it new, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. If you, however, do have a washer and dryer and can wash your fabric in without much trouble, you should go ahead and prewash.

Here we go!

1. Iron it: Pull out your fabric and give it a good iron to remove all creases and wrinkles. I’m lazy, so I like to iron as hot as I can (be careful with this – always test to make sure your fabric won’t melt!). I usually don’t load water into the iron (I don’t want it to come leaking out if I’m working with a delicate fabric); instead I fill a spray bottle with water and use that for steam (I find it works better than my steam setting, anyway).


iron

2. Get on grain: for a good finished product, it’s important that you cut and sew on grain. This means that your straight lines run parallel to the lines of the fabric’s weave. Since the cutters at fabric stores almost never cut your fabric on grain, you’ve got to do it yourself at home. Luckily, it’s super easy.

- Cut a notch two or three inches away from the cut edge of your fabric. A notch that’s about two inches long is perfect.


snip

- Riiiiiiiip! Grab each side of the notch and pull. Your fabric will naturally rip between two threads, giving you a line that is perfectly parallel to the weave.


rip

- Repeat the process on the other cut edge of your fabric, and you should have a perfect rectangle. If your ripping has caused your fabric to pucker along the edge, just yank it back into place. If that doesn’t take care of the problem, a hot iron will do it.

You can also use this technique to remove the selvedge edges of your fabric (the edges that are finished by the manufacturer), but since I’m lazy, I just avoid them while I’m cutting out my pattern.

3. Prepare the fabric: Lay out your fabric on a table or a bit of empty floor. Place it right side up. For this project, you’ll be working across the width of the fabric, so you should be sitting facing one of your newly ripped straight edges, with the selvedge edges of the fabric to your right and left. Take one selvedge edge and fold it in about 11” lengthwise towards the center, so that the wrong side of the fabric is facing up. Since your fabric is now on grain, it should be easy to get a nice straight fold.


lay out fabric and fold

4. Get ready to cut: Grab your main pattern piece and lay it on top of your folded fabric. Note that one edge of the pattern specifies that it should be placed on the folded edge of the fabric– make sure to do this! I never pin my patterns to my fabric: it takes to long and can cause distortion. Instead, I use pattern weights (mine were Nate’s grandmothers). Cans of food or any other small, heavy object work well for this. Just set your weights down on your pattern, making sure that everything is straight and you don’t have any wrinkles in either the pattern or the fabric.


arrange your pattern

5. Transfer markings. When you look at your printed pattern, you’ll notice some short lines coming in from the sides of the pattern in a few place. Make sure to transfer the location of these lines onto your fabric. You can do this with a piece of chalk, a disappearing ink marker, or even just a regular old pen (be sure to keep the line less than ½” long), but my favorite method is to simply put a little snip (about ¼” ) in the edge of the fabric.


markings to transfer

A note on cutting tools
I am not one to insist on fancy tools for sewing – I’m definitely more of a “make do” type of girl. When it comes to cutting tools, however, the better your tools, the less stressful sewing will be. So while any of the following will serve your purposes just fine for this project, if you plan on sticking with sewing, I recommend investing in a step up (or putting it on your holiday wishlist)!



Good: regular household or craft scissors. These will get the job done, but potentially with more swearing than the other two options.

Better: Dressmaker’s shears. The blades of dressmaker’s shears are bent, so that you can keep the bottom blade fairly flush against the floor as you cut out your fabric (allowing you to cut around your pattern more accurately). They also tend to have longer blades than household/craft scissors, making it easier to cut out the long edges of clothing patterns.

Best: A rotary cuter. A rotary cutter will allow you to cut out fabric without needing to pick it up and distort it. It’s also really fast and easy to use in tight spots and around curves. Of course the danger of cutting yourself is a lot higher than with scissors, but the ease of cutting is totally worth a little blood loss. Make sure to use it with a self healing mat, if you don’t want to ruin your cutting surface!


6. Cut it out: Using your chosen tool, cut out the pattern, staying as close to the pattern edges as possible.


cut

Yay! You should have something that looks like this –


unfold to find this!


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Optional bonus technique: pattern matching. If your fabric has a printed pattern, you might want to try pattern matching. This is a simple technique that will make your finished project look much more professional.

a. Find a distinctive spot on your pattern repeat. Look at the piece of fabric you’ve just cut out, and measure the distance between that distinctive spot and the bottom edge of the fabric piece. I decided to use the bottom of the thick horizontal bands that run through my plaid. Measuring, I found that the bottom of the fabric piece was about five centimeters away from the bottom of the horizontal band.


measure

b. Use your measurement to guide you when preparing to cut your second pattern piece. Since the bottom edge of my first fabric piece was 5 centimeters from the bottom of a horizontal band, I positioned my the bottom of my pattern in the same spot. Now when I sew the two pieces together, the bands should match up on the front and back of the bag. That’s all there is to it!


line it up

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7. Do it again: Repeat steps 3 through 6. You should now have 2 bag pieces.

8. Pocket time: Place the pocket pattern on one piece of your remaining fabric (unfolded). Transfer markings onto your fabric (see photo of the pattern above). Cut around the pattern.


cut out pocket

Ta-da! You now have two bag pieces and one pocket piece. We’ll start sewing on Thursday!