Do you recognize it? You want to make a pair of pants and you have a nice fabric lying around. In your head you’re already shining on the red carpet. Then your pants are ready …. Unfortunately it is not the pants you had hoped for. Mega disappointed and 1 big question mark above your head. How did that happen? Well, it can have several causes. The wrong pants pattern was chosen for your figure (but that’s another subject), but often it’s the fabric that doesn’t suit the pattern you made. Okay, then you’ve already learned that and that’s not bad at all, this happens to everyone once or more. By mistakes you’ve made you learn quickly and you firmly resolve not to make that mistake again. In good spirits you get to work on your new project and you open mister Google and start looking for the fabric you need. You type in what fabric is suitable for pants. And then you got a huge row of fabric types and names that you could make pants out of. Jeans, Cotton, Wool, Linen etc. Yes!!!!!  but that one jeans fabric is not the same as the other one. Because you have jeans with stretch, without stretch, 8oz and 12 OZ, 270 gr/m2 or 370 gr/m2 with polyester, without polyester. 180 gr/m2 or 340 gr/m2. Whattttt grams???? What are you talking about? Well, that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about. How do you decide which fabric is the right fabric for you AND your new project?

Choosing fabric is:

1 Answering questions, analyzing and ruling out fabric types. In the end, the good fabric remains.

2 Fabric weights to help you choose.

First of all! If you have bought a pattern, the instructions often state which fabrics are suitable to make the pattern with. Yeahhhhh that makes life simple. If you want to use a different fabric, make sure it has the same properties as the one recommended. That will make your end product similar to the end product of the designer of the pattern. But that also means you have to go and do the analysis for the fabric yourself.

Some fabrics are easier to sew than others. If you are a beginning sewist then a cotton fabric is best suited for your projects. You want to have some grip on your fabric and the fabric should easily do what you want. Would you start with a smooth slippery silk organza fabric then you will be fighting with your fabric throughout the project, with your machine that seems to eat your fabric, your ironing, you name it. In one word … misery. Organza is even still an occasional struggle for the advanced sewist … And another tip: even though denim is a cotton fabric and it’s incredibly fun to make something out of denim, because denim is always good, don’t start with that as your first project. Denim is a heavy and stiff fabric that is difficult to sew especially if you have several layers to sew. Machines often have a hard time when they have to process denim. You need special needles etc. If you do absolutely want to start with denim, make sure you choose a light denim fabric. (I explain this a little further down in the article).

Knitted fabrics or woven fabrics. Another fabric you should not start with as a beginning sewist are knitted fabrics (e.g. Fleece, Sweatshirting, French Terry, Jersey). These are fabrics that are very nice to wear, but difficult to work with. Because they are so stretchy, they have to be worked in a certain way, which is not easy to master. If you don’t work it well, it will start to bobble and make your clothes look unattractive. It is better to start with a woven fabric. One that is more tightly woven, so the fabric doesn’t wobble in all directions.

1 Answer questions, exclude fabric types. In the end, you are left with the right fabric.

At the bottom of part 1 of this article, you will find a list of questions that you can use to choose your fabric. I am going to describe these questions 1 by 1. 

1 What is your new project and how will you wear it? The first question is simple, what will you be sewing? Pants, blouses or a dress? Fabric for pants is stronger and sturdier than fabric for a blouse. After all, if you make pants out of blouse fabric and you go through your knees once, you tear out of your pants. So pants are basically made of a medium or heavyweight fabric. What is that medium or heavy? I’ll explain that later, no worries!

2 Then you start to ask yourself when am I wearing this garment?  In summer or winter or even more specifically, autumn or spring. You are not going to make summer pants from a heavy woollen fabric. Unless, of course, you’re a cold person of the first degree. Summer fabrics are often the fabrics of natural materials because they are breathable fabrics and often it is the lighter fabrics. Next question, does your project have to meet requirements? Waterproof or not, super warm, preferably as airy as possible. Do you want to wear the garment piece all year round? If the fabric must be absorbent, choose natural materials. Cotton absorbs a lot of moisture, but strangely enough, wool absorbs more moisture without feeling damp. In any case, think carefully about what you are going to use the garment for.

3 Where do I wear this garment and what do I do?  Do I wear it at work at the law firm or while working in the garden? Or maybe you teach small children at a school… Do you already see the hands with paint coming at you? Or do you wear the dress to your friend’s wedding? You determine whether your garment often ends up in the laundry and with that, the fabric must therefore be able to withstand the washing machine at least at 40 degrees. Or the dress that you wear to the wedding that will not be worn so often can also only go to the dry cleaners. If you make pants and you also work with them in the garden, then the fabric may well be a bit firmer. After all, you don’t want to snap out of your beautiful new dungarees once you go through the knees.

4 Is the pattern model tight-fitting? Normal? Or loose-fitting? For example, if you make a nice fitted jacket, then you also want the waist to look nice. If you make the jacket from a somewhat firmer fabric, then the waist looks more beautiful. If you make it from a very flowy fabric, it will look like a T-shirt. That said, if you want a jacket that has more of the idea of a cardigan, then you want a somewhat flowy fabric because then the look is also more of a vest.

5 Does the fabric you choose suit you and the clothes you already have in your wardrobe?  If you are a classic type, the wrinkled linen probably does not suit you very well. But if you are a natural type, linen suits you very well. Next, what are you going to combine your garment with? The blouse you are going to make must fit a specific pair of pants. Make combinations in your head and walk with a possible sample of your fabric (if you already have something bought) to your clothing closet. If you still need to buy fabric, take those specific pants with you. Something almost impossible is remembering colour.

6 How is the model of your pattern? If you have wide pants, you want them to fall nicely around you and not that the tent poles still have to be delivered after, because they can stand almost independently 🙂 If you make jeans, you want the fabric to be a bit firmer. If you make a winter coat, you do not want the wind to whistle through it and your jacket to flutter, but that there is a bit of firmness in the fabric. Preferably even windproof and maybe even waterproof. If you make a pair of work pants, you want the fabric to be a bit strong and can take a beating.

7 Knitted fabrics.  Do you have a pattern where the advice is to make it from knitted fabric? Then do it! Patterns made for knitted fabrics are drawn tighter. There is no over-width in it. That means you need the stretch in the fabric to be able to move. If you make it from a woven fabric, the outcome will be that your garment will not fit in the end or in the best case you cannot move in it. Patterns for knitted fabrics often have a drawing in the instructions in which you can compare your fabric. If your fabric stretches as much as that drawing, then you’re in the right place. Less is not OK and also nothing more. Stretch fabrics can stretch in two directions or four directions, take that into account. Also, pay attention to in which direction the stretch runs. For pants, you’ll want the stretch to run from side to side and not top to bottom. With a T-shirt you want the stretch to run from left to right as well as from top to bottom. PS: Knitted fabrics are not really for the novice sewist.

8 Woven fabrics. If the instruction says that you should use a woven fabric, do so. If you do use a stretch fabric, the result can look baggy. On the points of knitted fabric or woven fabric, it is not wise to deviate from the advice.

9 Examine the pattern you want to make. If you have a pattern in mind, take a look at Instagram to see what other people use for fabrics. Dive into your wardrobe. There is a reason you choose this pattern. Often you have something similar hanging in your closet. What is that garment made of and do you like that? Should it be slightly thicker or slightly thinner fabric? Check out Pinterest. Shop in online stores and see which fabrics they use and what the effect is. Go Window shopping, yeah!!!!

10 If you have chosen fabric. See how wide the fabric is. Fabric comes in different widths, 120 cm, 140 cm and 150 cm are the most common. Here you have to pay close attention, because if the prescribed fabric from the instruction is 150 cm wide and you must have 2 meters of it, then you have a problem if your purchased fabric is only 120 cm wide and you have bought 2 meters of it. Then you will not succeed in getting all your pattern parts out. So buy more fabric. Wonder how much more fabric you have to buy. Then place your pattern parts on a signed piece on your table of 60cm width. This way you can see how much you ultimately need.

Before you buy the fabric, check the selvedge of the fabric very carefully. Sometimes there is a cm or even 1.5 cm from the selvedge in the fabric another row of holes next to the selvedge. Pay attention otherwise, you will have holes in your garment later.

11 Check the stretch! If you buy fabric that can stretch. Check whether the fabric goes back to its original width. If this goes very slowly, then the chance that the fabric will bobble and your clothes will look baggy is high. Do not buy the fabric. No matter how beautiful it is. The quality is not very good. You can calculate how much stretch fabric has. Grab a piece of your fabric. Preferably a piece of 10 by 10 cm. Grab a ruler. Stretch your fabric until you feel resistance. Place the fabric stretched along the ruler and read off how many cm that is. Suppose that is 15 cm. Your original patch was 10 cm, then your fabric is stretched 5 cm more than your original piece. 5cm is 50% of 10cm. So your fabric stretches 50%.

12 Rigid fabric versus nice smoothly falling fabric. The Jeans fabric is stiff. You can almost leave the pants on their own. That beautiful beautiful prom dress falls beautifully along the body. From the fabric of the prom dress, you do not have to try to make jeans. That’s never going to get the right result. If you go to the store and you have found a fabric, roll the fabric off a few meters and hold it up. And assess the way the fabric falls. Have in your head what your result should be and assess whether what you see fits your project. Falling of the fabric is quite a thing to judge well, but it also has a huge impact on your result, you know jeans made of prom dress fabric. Another example. If you want a skirt that falls nicely along your body, you need a fabric that falls nice and with a soft flow. If you want a petticoat skirt, you need a fabric with little fall and that is actually a bit stiff by itself.

You go! You can get it right!

13 In-store vs. Online. Nowadays you can shop for everything online. But the difficulty of shopping online is that you don’t feel the fabric and don’t see the colours well. They can still put so many photos online, only when you have the fabric in your hands do you have all the info you need to judge whether it is the right fabric. So if you’re already shopping online, order a sample if possible. Often that is not so expensive, because it can just be in an envelope. The second advantage of shopping in a store is. …. people are working there with knowledge of their business. In the smaller stores, they really want to help you. Make use of it. Two know more than one! In other words, you are a beginner… just go to a store, that’s the best. For advanced … also just go to the store. 1 that is so much more fun and 2 we just want all those shops to continue to exist … then we also have to go there and buy the fabric there.

14 Color. As I said, it’s almost impossible to remember the colour. Does your new project have to match an existing garment? Take that garment to the store. What you have to pay attention to is which colour is the light. Colour exists by the grace of light which is reflected. In other words, in fluorescent light, the light reflects differently than in daylight. Fluorescent light has a different colour than daylight. Daylight is the most neutral colour there is, unless, of course, you do that at sunset because then the colour is a bit more yellow. (Golden hour is what they call it. Beautiful, but not suitable to judge a colour). Another thing with colour. See if the colour matches your skin colour type. Are you a summer type, winter type, autumn type or spring type? Don’t you know? Enable mister google and find out. You now have the power in your hands. When you buy clothes you are at the mercy of fashion trends and those are not always good colours for you. Now you make your clothes and so you have the power. Choose only those colours that make you look super beautiful.

15 Always wash your fabric before you start.

Sometimes we are so incredibly happy with our first pattern and the new fabric that we can’t wait to get started. Get to work and immediately fall behind the sewing machine. Children and husband are forbidden to disturb you and you work hard well into the evening. Eventually, your product is ready. Proud as a peacock you show your new clothes. Then you have to wash your clothes and after drying you put them back on and whattttttt it won’t fit anymore… Ah nooooo… Shrunken in the wash. Well, that!!! … ALWAYS wash your fabric before you let even a pair of scissors come close to it. For shrinking of the fabric, we call it.

16 Iron your fabric on the wrong side of the fabric. The fibres of your fabric and a warm iron are not always the biggest friends. Your fabric can change colour, your fabric can start to shine and your fabric can even burn. Always test somewhere on a dot or a remnant of fabric what your fabric does when you iron. Especially with wool. Wool will shine if you iron is too hot or you leave it on too long. Always try how the fabric behaves with ironing on a leftover piece or a corner. Tip; try to make it a habit to always iron on the back of the fabric. Is this really part of the topic of conversation, yes and no. Once you’ve washed your fabric, you’ll need to iron it before you can start pinning your pattern on it. And you don’t want to see it go wrong at the last minute after all the effort you’ve made above to find a beautiful fabric for your project.

17 Last but not least: First make your project in a fabric that does not cost that much. I always make a test model of cotton that has an average thickness and is really cheap cheap cheap. Then I know what the pattern does and I can also see better where the model should go. Smoother or stiffer, thicker thinner etc.

Analysis for choosing the right material for your project.

2 Fabric weight.

Oh oh, they are going to do the complicated thingy talking about fabric weight. Yep, so sorry. It takes a bit of effort, but then you master a tool that you can easily use to choose the right fabric.

Fabric generally weighs between 70 grams and 610 grams (2.47oz and 18 OZ, help you are now also going to throw in ounces? Yep, because the whole world isn’t Dutch)

Weight isn’t explaining everything and that is why you also need all the information above. Namely, you cannot say that 1 type of fabric weighs 70 grams. For example, cotton is not necessarily 120 grams per square meter. You have a thin blouse for the summer of cotton in 70 gr/m2 and your jeans are also made of cotton and that weighs 290 gr/m2. What you can say is that if a fabric weighs 290 gr /m2, you should not make a thin summer blouse out of it. How much a fabric weighs depends, among other things, on how thick the thread is with which the fabric is woven, the colour it gets, what the specific weight of the material is (sorry chemistry) And whether a print is printed. Below you can see an overview with examples as a guide.

Okay! So you see 5 categories.

Very very lightweight fabrics, Lightweight fabrics, medium weight fabrics, heavyweight fabrics and very very heavy weight fabrics.

What are the characteristics:

Very lightweight fabrics, they are airy to wear, you hardly feel them, often a little wrinkle sensitive, generally not very strong and often transparent. Wash carefully. A bit more difficult to process with sewing.

Lightweight fabrics Are just like the previous category and very nice to wear. They are slightly firmer, but still often transparent, and wrinkle-sensitive. Again, stay careful with washing. Incorporating this substance into your sewing is already easier.

Medium weight fabrics, These are the substances (up to 280 grams in) that make the novice seamstress really happy. Easy to handle. You can make anything out of it. Easy to wash. Just fine fabrics.

Heavy weight fabrics, these are the real heavyweights. These are often the woollen fabrics and the types of denim. Mostly winter clothing and then also the more difficult projects such as suits and coats. Outerwear etc. Because it often concerns wool, self-washing is often not possible and it becomes the dry cleaner’s job. This is not bad because wool is self-cleaning and so it does not have to go to the dry cleaners as often.

Very heavy fabrics. This type of fabric requires a special machine and we do not all have it. If you already have it then this fabric must be sewn very carefully. Absolutely dry cleaning actions and really not suitable for the novice sewist.

The weight of the fabric is very useful to know if you have two similar substances that you both like. The weight can then help you to choose which one is just a little better for your goal. If you wear your project a lot and therefore wash a lot, then a heavier fabric is just a bit better. But if you make a blouse and you are in transition, for example, then you want that fabric with that lighter weight, because the airier the better.

Fabric weight can also help you choose fabric in relation to the model. If you have pants that need to fit tightly. Then use a substance that is a bit heavier. It is stronger. If you want a light, airy and beautiful dress, choose a lighter fabric. The heavier the fabric, the more likely it is to be stiff. The stiffness of heavy fabrics can therefore also be used for choices in wearing comfort. Denim of 370 gr/m2 will feel stiffer than that of 270 gr/m2.

PS: The weight of the fabric says nothing about the quality of the fabric. Just so you know.

Some more examples:

Blouse fabrics:

• Linen
• Flannel
• Silk (for more advanced sewists)
• Cotton Voile
• Cotton Batiste
• Double Gauze

Pants fabrics:

• Linen
• Cotton
• Denim (for more advanced sewists)
• Wool
• Cotton Twill
• Cotton Chambray

Dress fabrics:

• Linen
• Wool
• Cotton
• Viscose
• Silk (for more advanced sewists)
• Knitted fabrics (for more advanced sewists)

Skirt Fabrics:

• Viscose
• Cotton
• Denim (for more advanced sewists)
• Linen

So that was quite a story, but you can now make a well-founded choice.