Knits 101 Session 2: Knits Up Close & Personal

Okay, now we're ready to look at knits up close and personal and learn all their special secrets. So of course we have these little knit samples I have here. Knits have wales and courses. Wales are referred to, are basically these vertical lines that you see here. Or you can think of them as like walls. They're the traditional looking Vs that you see on knitwear or knit, anything that's knit. It's much easier to see on these samples than it is to see on actual fabric. So I'm showing you on the large area. But if you look at your knit fabric at home, you'll see these. You might need a magnifying glass, but you'll see them. So you have these wales that go vertically and on the other side, you have courses, which is the horizontal line right here. The course is just the course that the yarn takes as it goes through the knitting process. So it's kinda really easy to see right here where this lighter pink line goes through the purple and then it comes over and then it goes through here. And you can actually see the knitting process where it's like a loop with another loop kind of within it, creating this knot that holds and creates knit fabric. So wales and courses are similar to your grain lines on your fabric. Whenever it says, find the grain line on your pattern piece or whatever project you're working on. Or if it says, find the maximum stretch. What, in general, that's going to be along the courses or perpendicular to the wales. It will stretch better in that direction than it will stretch in this direction. So, as you can see, it stretches just a little bit, but this way it stretches quite, quite a bit. So when you're trying to find the right direction to put it, you always wanna remember to take the most stretch and put that around your body, because that's where you want the most stretch. If you put the most stretch going vertically along your body, it's actually gonna make whatever you're wearing, whatever you've sewn, droop as you wear it because it will stretch throughout the day. And then it'll just look kind of baggy and saggy. And that's sad. So then you also kinda want to think about how to find the right side of your fabric. Now this is the fabric that I have kind of used throughout. You'll see it in many different samples. Whenever you're looking at fabric and you're trying to find the right side, you can look at the selvedge right here. The selvedge will curl to the right side of the fabric. But if you don't have the selvedge, then you wanna just pull on one of the edges. Oh, look at that. And it will curve to the right side. So this particular selvedge is curling to the wrong side. That's probably just part of the manufacturing process. But looking up close and personal at this, I can see that. I can see the vertical wales, which is usually what you see on the right side of your fabric. And on this side, the horizontal courses are more prevalent. So this is the wrong side and this is the right side. And it curls as I pull it. So you can see it's curling right towards the right side there. Now, of course, right side and wrong side is just your personal choice. If you like the other side of this fabric more than you like this side of the fabric, then use the other side as the right side. It's all personal preference. So that's how to find the right side versus the wrong side. Now let's talk about stretch test. Because knit fabrics all have different types of stretch. And if you need to find out how much stretch your fabric has, you're gonna wanna get. Let's turn it this way. You're gonna wanna get a cutting mat out and you wanna look right here 'cause we're gonna be doing some math. So we're gonna go base 10, because that's how we've set up our math system. And base 10 is the easiest way to do it. Oh, but I did not cut this at 10, but that's okay. So here we can see that this measures right about eight inches. So when I grab right at the eight-inch mark and I stretch it, it stretches to about 10 and a half. Now I happen to know that this fabric is 30% stretch. So if it was 10, it would stretch to 13. So that's some really easy math. Let's take something else like this sweater knit that's very, very stretchy. So you wanna just grab a part that's kind of towards the center of the fabric and you want to line it up so that you know, you have exactly 10 inches. So here you can see, I have put my fabric on the cutting mat and I'm just gonna pick it up right along the 10-inch line and the one-inch line when it's laying flat and natural and I'm gonna stretch it. So this one is very stretchy. You can see it goes all the way to 15 right there. Which means that this is 50% stretch because 15 is five inches bigger than 10 and 10 divided by five is two. So that's 50% bigger. So this is a 50% stretch. And whenever you're taking 10 inches to measure this, you can just take whatever number it goes over and put a zero after it to know the percentage of stretch. So then this is kind of like a jeggings material. And we'll just kinda lay that out there and I will pick up at the 10 inch and the one inch and we'll stretch that. And that is also a 50% stretch, which is very stretchy. In fact, if I really stretch it, it might go further. So that's 70% stretch at its extreme maximum. Though, of course, if you were wearing these as jeggings, you might not want it to go that far because it sort of turns a different color and gets extra shiny. So bear that in mind. So that's a slightly less stretchy one. As we work our way down, you'll see that every fabric has a different amount of stretch. This is just sort of an athletic one here. When we pick up 10 inches and we stretch. This one only has 30% stretch. 'Cause it only goes to the 13 versus the 10. And you can also kind of base your stretch test on how much you want the fabric to stretch. If you want it to be extra tight, then take that into consideration and cut your pattern pieces slightly smaller so that it basically is very form-fitting. If you want it to be a little bit looser, cut it a little bit bigger. Here we have some velour and I'm actually. So I'm purposely choosing to pull on the fabric where it is the most stretchy. So here we have velour and we put it at 10 inches and then we stretch and it doesn't wanna stretch very much. It only goes to 11, which means this is only 10% stretch. Now, if I stretch the other way, which of course we don't have 10 inches that way, it hardly wants to stretch at all. It only goes about a half inch. Which means that we wanna put the most stretchy part, which has the 10%, around our body horizontally. So that's how to do a stretch test. It's pretty easy. It's pretty straight forward. And I recommend doing it whenever you're getting ready to work with your knit fabric. You just wanna make sure that you know how much it's going stretch and how much to account for that stretch when you're sewing it. And now let's talk about ease. So when you're sewing. Oh, when you're sewing something from a pattern I have two patterns here. You need to take into consideration ease. This is a pattern for a woven. You can see it says right here. Fabrics: linen, lightweight denim, lightweight broadcloth. Unsuitable for obvious diagonals. Which doesn't really play in here but those are all woven fabrics. So this pattern is for a woven and this pattern, as you can see this little saucy wrap dress. It says right here. It says that you want two-way stretch knits only. And what that's referring to is when you have a stretch, a knit, it wants you to have a fabric that stretches both horizontally and vertically. And, for instance, this velour will stretch nicely. Well, as much as it wants to, horizontally. But vertically, it doesn't wanna stretch very much. So this would not be suitable because it's not a two-way stretch. But a jersey, you know, anything that you can test out and you can see that it stretches both directions is the way to go. So you have these two and they both have a bodice that's similarly shaped. And so I've cut the bodice out to show you the ease. This is the bodice for the knit piece of fabric. And this is the bodice for the woven pattern. Now the woven pattern is shorter. It only stops here. Whereas the knit pattern goes to kinda your waist. So that's why they're a little bit longer. But you can see that if we put the knit one up here and we align, oh, and also the neck line. So we're gonna line the shoulder seam right up top and get the folds all nice and straight. You can see that right here the woven pattern has more room on the side where it goes across than the knit pattern does. And it's not that much of a difference. These are both size 22 or 24. And it's not a big difference, but it's enough to show you that, when you're sewing a woven, you have ease put into it, which is just a little bit of room. So that, because the fabric's not gonna move a lot with you, you can get into that easily and you can move around in it. Whereas a knit is going to move with you. It's going to stretch as you wear it and move as you move. So here we have this knit piece and it's not as long as the woven piece because the woven piece needed more ease than the knit one did. And so when you're sewing with knits, you need to remember that you don't need as much ease. You can actually subtract. You don't have to worry about adding in ease as much when you're making your own patterns or prepping to sew something for yourself. But you should take into account the stretch test that you do. Because as you stretch it, you know how much it's going to stretch with your body. And if it's only going to stretch 30%, you need to bear that in mind when you're cutting out your pattern pieces. So there you go. That's knits up close and personal. I think we're now ready to start looking at all sorts of different types of knit fabric and learning what we should use them for. So be sure to stay tuned.