How to Prep Your Fabric For Sewing

When you find that beautiful new fabric that would be perfect for that pattern you’ve been waiting to use, it can be so tempting to not prep your fabric for sewing and go straight to cutting into it. But this could potentially ruin your final piece and cause some frustration during the making process.

There are two things you need to do before you cut into your new fabric. The first is to wash it and the second is to iron it. Let’s talk about washing your fabric first.

Washing and drying your fabric

When you are washing and drying your fabric you want to think about how you are going to be washing and drying the finished piece. Do you plan to put it in the washing machine or wash it by hand? Will you use the dryer? However you plan to wash and dry the finished piece is how you want to wash and dry your fabric.

Let’s say you machine washed and then hung the fabric to dry. You cut out your project, sewed it up, wore it a couple times, and the threw it in the wash. When it came out of the wash instead of hanging it, like you did with the fabric initially, you put it in the dryer with your other clothes. You folded your laundry, put everything away, and then a day or two later pulled out that piece you made to wear it again only to find that it had shrunk in the dryer and didn’t fit properly anymore. How frustrating and disappointing would that be?

This is why you want to make sure you wash and dry the fabric the same way you plan to wash and dry whatever you make from it. Then, if it’s going to shrink up, it will have already done that before you cut it out and you don’t have to worry about it getting wrecked when the time comes to wash it.

For me personally, I always throw my fabrics in the washing machine because I’m a busy mom and if I can skip having to hand wash something I will. But, when it comes to drying, I prefer to let my pants and dresses hang dry. Since most of the pieces I make are dresses I’m hanging pretty much all the fabrics I buy.

Ironing your fabric

This step may feel extra but it will help you out a lot when it comes to cutting out your pattern pieces. If there are lot of wrinkles or creases in the fabric from being in the wash it will make cutting a little more complicated. Taking the fabric over to your ironing board and smoothing it out will make cutting out your pattern so much easier, and more accurate too. I’ve skipped this step a number of times when starting a project, and I pretty much always end up regretting it.

If you have a large amount of fabric, you could just iron a section big enough to fit your pattern pieces and leave the rest for another time. If you’re folding the fabric up to store it you might end up having to iron the rest again anyways before you start using it.

My iron has different heat settings for different fabrics. If yours doesn’t have these settings you can check out this article for the different temperatures to use for each fabric. You want to make sure you don’t burn your beautiful fabric before you even get started on your project, but not having a high enough heat may prevent the wrinkles from coming out properly.

Set up your projects for success

Little steps like these may feel like an inconvenience. I know when I’m really excited about a project the last thing I want to do is slow down the completion process by taking the time to wash, dry, and then iron out my fabric. Not to mention all the other little things like stay stitching, under stitching, pressing after each seam, making sure your pressing the right way, and so on. We want to get to sewing and putting out piece together. But all these steps are there to help to, to ensure your garment, or whatever it is that you’re making, turns out as beautifully as you imagined. When you’re tempted to skip over these things, ask yourself if you want a nice finished product, or a piece that shows how much time and effort you put into it by how beautiful and professional it is.

Best of luck on your sewing journey!