How To: Fabric blocking

How to block your fabric

That's the problem with being a self-taught sewer - you don't know what you don't know.

What is blocking?

A woven fabric has long threads going down the length of the fabric and interwoven threads across ways at right-angles, nominally.

I've never bought any material that was actually at right angles, and I thought that was just how it came*.  NOW I find out that you can shape the fabric back so that the threads are actually at right-angles, usually quite easily.  This process is called blocking.

Blocking technique from Craftsy.com

Is my fabric skewed?

Probably. You can check by folding tearing down the grain and then folding so the selvedges (short "finished" edges) are together.  If the fabric is blocked, the torn edges will match up. They probably won't. You can also check by using a cutting mat with squares marked on it, a set square, or checking if the diagonals are the same length.

What do I do about it?

There are a few things you can do. The most simple is to simply press your fabric into the right position (if it's cotton or another natural fibre and you plan to wash it, you probably want to pre-shrink it by washing in hot water first).

Fold it in half lengthways, pin it to your ironing board every 5cm along the selvedges, and use plenty of steam as you iron it, pulling as required to reshape it.

If it's REALLY off-square, you can pull on the opposite corners of the fabric to square it up. Do this a few times, checking each time to see how you're going, and don't forget to iron again after you're finished. This works best, of course, with smaller lengths of fabric.

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* This is what I thought when I wrote Mocking up fourth. Luckily it wasn't a final piece (in any way, shape or form).

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