Why We Tear Our Fabric Yardage At Warman Cozy…

One of the controversial quilt and fabric issues…(funny that there can be controversy even in quilting, haha!)

I know there are some people so solidly on either side of this issue and as is the case with many things, I am somewhere in the middle and can see the argument for either side. When I was opening this shop, this was something I really debated but ended up making the decision that snipping and tearing the fabric plus the extra inch we add on to each cut is the most fair to the customer. And so that is where I landed for this shop. Here’s some more info about it if you’re interested:

When the fabrics are transferred from the rolls they come on from the mills to the cardboard bolts we have in store, they are occasionally slightly askew (sometimes more than slightly). Not that we always care about grain of fabric - I’m not trying to be the “quilt police” here - but it can make a big difference in the quality of our quilt piecing and the way a quilt top will lay (and is especially important in garment-making). After all if we aren’t cutting out pieces on the straight-of-grain, then we are actually cutting them to some extent on the bias. And we all know that bias edges stretch easily making it more likely for our cut pieces to get distorted before they are even sewn into our quilts.

If we were to rotary cut fabrics right off the bolts here in the shop, in many cases by the time the fabric was trimmed to square it up to on-grain, we could be shorting the customer on the amount that they need for their projects (and the amount they are paying for). In the case where a bolt is rolled evenly, either method (rotary OR snip and tear) would give the same result. But since many bolts are at least slightly off in the way they are wrapped, the number of perfectly straight bolts is small.

When 100% cotton quilting fabrics are torn, they will tear along the grain of the fabric. For many of the people who are not fans of snipping and tearing, it is because you do get a small wavy/frayed edge and some amount of tear-back. In most cases with good-quality fabric, that frayed edge is about 1/4” per side. When we add an extra inch on to each cut (including on our in-house made fat quarters) we are covering double the amount of the tearback/fray. Once you trim off the small amount of fray from the edge, you know where your straight-of-grain line is and can cut your strips right from there to have your piecing be on the straight of grain.

In a small number of the bolts we carry here in the shop, the tear-back is larger than 1/4”. When we get new fabrics in to the shop one of the first things we do before they go out on the floor is snip and tear off some fat quarters. This gives us a chance to see on each bolt how it handles the tearing. When we do have one that doesn’t tear well, we have a system in place for that and we do have a small number of bolts throughout the store that we rotary cut rather than snip and tear.

I know this method is more old-fashioned and not as common in quilt shops today but as you can see it is something I have put some thought into. In closing, I know we will never make everyone happy. But I do feel good about my reasoning behind it and at the very least, I hope you can see that I have good intentions here even if the snip and tear isn’t your preference! Thank you for reading along and for visiting us here online or in the shop! We do appreciate having the chance to be a part of your quilting journey!