Knits 101 Session 5: Cutting Knit Fabric

Now that your fabric's all prepped, you're ready to begin cutting and getting ready to sew your first project. So, the first thing you might wanna think about when cutting is how to mark your fabric. There are a variety of different marking tools, you know, out in the world. These are just a few that I grabbed from my house 'cause I tend to collect them. Of course, you wanna use things, depending on what kinda project you're doing, if you're marking on the fabric where it's going to be a finished project, you wanna make sure that you're not using something that's permanent.

So, this is an air soluble, or water soluble pen, and you can just draw on it like so. You can see, like, as I draw this works pretty well, but it pulls on the knit as it goes. And the same is gonna be true for this guy, which is a heat resistant, or a heat soluble pen. Even more so, like it's kinda hard for me to draw at all on the knit and it pulls as it goes. If you have a really delicate knit, that can actually cause snags in it as you're working.

This is just a white charcoal pen, which will work very great on darker fabrics, but not so much great on this really light one, but it also pulls. Tailor's chalk is great if you're using dark ones as well, or light ones, it doesn't pull as much, especially if the edge has been blunted down a little bit. But my favorite thing to mark knits with is actually a Sharpie, which I'm gonna use this here, so just in case in bleeds through, it doesn't permanently mark my table. If you were tracing a pattern, you can just, very lightly, trace around the pattern and, as long as you cut out within the lines that you've traced, it gives a really good mark that's gonna stay there because it is permanent, and you can cut it off and you won't see that anymore. It sometimes bleeds through, but on dark fabrics, it's really nice.

'Cause the silver one shows up, whereas the other ones might not. But then, if you don't want permanent marks, definitely use tailor's chalk. So, when you're getting ready to cut, you might need something to mark with you. You also might need some pins. Now, with knits, you wanna make sure you use extra fine or silk pins to pin the fabric with.

And these ones are especially nice, because they're glass head, which means that you can iron over them and they will not melt as opposed to plastic headed pins, which will just melt to your fabric. So, I highly recommend extra fine, glass headed pins. The reason you want the extra fine pins is because they will not mar the fabric in any way. You also wanna make sure you have very sharp cutting utensils. If you don't have a sharp enough cutting utensil, it will cause a run in the fabric.

I recently just bought some fabric from a big box fabric store, and they had very dull scissors. And when I picked up the piece to take it away, I realized your scissors are dull because there were runs throughout the cut edge of my fabric and so, I took it back to them and asked them to use sharp scissors to cut me a new piece. Not just to be picky, but because I didn't want runs in my fabric. So, when you're cutting you wanna make sure that you have, oh, the extra sharp, which is good, change out your rotary blade on your rotary cutter if you need to. And use your sharpest scissors.

That's also a good idea. Sometimes cerated scissors can also cause runs, so, bare that in mind when you're cutting. But, you wanna make sure your fabric is all on the same levels. So, if you were cutting this, you wouldn't wanna, oops, aha. You wouldn't want to let it run off the table because then the weight of the fabric hanging off can pull on the knit, which will skew the piece as you cut it out, it skews the pattern piece as you cut it out.

So what you wanna do instead, is make sure that you have it carefully placed on your entire cutting surface. And yeah, smooth it out nice and smooth. That's the biggest thing with knit, just getting it nice and smooth. And this particular pattern piece requires a fold, which makes it even harder to get it perfectly smooth, but we shall endeavor. So, I'm going to put this right here, right along this fold.

Now, you can use your pins here, and pin it all the way around. But, what I like to do instead, slowly but surely we'll get this where it needs to be, is use my patter weights. You can buy pattern weights at the store. They come in a variety of different shapes and sizes. But you can also just kind of use anything you have around that's heavy.

So, I actually ordered these D-rings in a heavy gauge wire, and they ended up being way to heavy for the purse I was trying to make, and I was going to return them, when I realized, they are really heavy and they would make excellent pattern weights. And so I've been using them ever since and they're perfect because, you know, some things you might use as a pattern weight, are gonna grip down into your fabric, and that's good, but other times you need something that's gonna slide around easily so you can move it out of the way as you cut. So, if you were doing this, you wanna line pattern weights with your edges here, get it nice and neat, and that's gonna hold the pattern piece in place. Again, if you're more comfortable pinning, definitely do so. Just be careful to choose appropriate pins.

Now, you can go ahead and rotary cut around this or scissor cut around this. I'm gonna show you my favorite way of rotary cutting, 'cause I'm gonna stick with making sure I get nice and straight, even seams. So what I do is, I take my rotary cutting mat underneath, my pattern piece on top, my pattern weights, and then I'm gonna cut. And you can see I have a little extra of the pattern here, so I can cut that away. But I'm gonna line up the cutter right with the edge there, and then just kinda move, 'cause this is slightly a curve, move my acrylic ruler as I go, very carefully.

Some people are uncomfortable doing that, so if you are, don't do this. But, I find that this makes sure that I cut nice and smooth and neat as I work. And I just cut right along there, and I get a nice, move my pattern weight, this piece is fairly straight here until we get there. So, you can see I get a nice, smooth cut edge right there as I'm cutting. It follows the line of the pattern.

Of course, I also wanna go ahead and mark this, you can mark that with any of our marking utensils. Make sure, again, that you're cutting in the way you're most comfortable cutting. So, I would go ahead and cut around the rest of the way of this pattern piece, so my cutting board's not super large, so I have to keep repositioning. It's best to do that on a larger cutting mat or one that you can move easily underneath. I find that if you actually have to move it, it helps to hold the pattern wights in place and pull holding onto the fabric, when you're moving it to cut as you go.

And that's cutting knits. Make sure it's all on the same surface. Make sure you have a sharp cutting device. Use silk pins or use pattern weights. And just be careful as you work so you can make sure you're not causing any snags.

There you go. You got your fabric all cut out now, and it looks like we're ready to finally start sewing. So, get ready, 'cause in the next session, I'll teach you all about how to sew knits with a sewing machine. Stay tuned.