You may have noticed in a couple tutorials I’ve posted on here that I mention squaring your fabric. I don’t mean that you fold up your fabric, cut it into a square shape and you’re good to go. Squaring actually refers to making sure the warp and weft threads are exactly perpendicular to each other.

The way to square your fabric is to first, find the weft on each raw edge that runs all the way through from one selvage edge to the other. One way to do that is to make a small cut in the fabric and tear but I’ve found that that makes the edge pretty much unusable and makes the second part of squaring very difficult.

The way I square my fabric is as follows.

1) Start with a woven fabric (this won’t work with knits and non wovens). Cut into the selvage about and inch in from the raw edge. The more fabric you square the better your eye gets at figuring out which side to make the slit. Sometimes you’ll find that the fabric was a far cry away from being cut straight and even cutting an inch in will not yield a weft thread that goes from one end to the other.

2) Pull at the threads along the selvage and find one that you want to work with.

3) Gently pull downward on the thread as you guide the fabric up. The fabric will pucker and gather. When it does, pinch where the fabric starts and gently guide the gathering up the thread you’re pulling. The gathered fabric will smooth out and it will leave you with a line where the thread is shifted. Continue pulling and guiding until you get the end of the fabric or until the thread breaks (which is the more likely of the two).

4) If the thread doesn’t break and you make it to the other end of the fabric then you will want to cut next to the shifted thread. Then proceed to step 6. If the thread breaks before you reach the end, cut along the thread that has shifted up to the point where you can no longer see the shift. Then proceed to step 5.

5) after cutting up as far as you can go, remove the threads in-between the newly cut edge and the shifted thread you’ve been working with, find the thread again and continue with step 4 till you reach the end.

6) Once your weft thread has gone from one end to the other, cut off the excess fabric on the raw side and remove all threads and the shifted thread. Trim down the edge one more time and you are now ready for the final step of squaring.

7) Fold your fabric so selvages touch. If, when you fold your fabric in half, your squared edge lines up with itself then you are ready to rock. If, like my fabric, the squared edge is off then you need to pull your fabric back into square. If your fabric is off like mine, where the bottom layer is showing on the right side, then you will want to unfold your fabric, take the bottom right corner and pull as shown in the picture. Continue working your way up the right side and along the bottom, pulling on the bias, till you get the upper left corner.

If your fabric is not square but in the opposite direction as mine, then just reverse where you’re pulling from and start at the bottom left and work to the upper right.

Fold your fabric one more time to make sure that it is completely even. If it is then you’re ready for some awesome precision cutting. If it’s not then repeat step 7 until the edges align.