Sewing with Flannel: Tips and Techniques

If you haven't tried sewing with flannel, you definitely should. Oh, everybody loves flannel. It feels good, it's soft, it's warm, it's cuddly, but it can be a bear to work with, so let me give you a few tips to make your life easier. First of all, today's flannel is not your grandmother's flannel. It's thick, it's luscious, and it comes in all kinds of fun prints. We've got children's prints, we've got fall prints, we've got plaids, we've got dog prints, you name it, there's a flannel for everybody. I love to make little dog quilts for my dogs out of the dog fabric, they love to rat in it and root around and get soft in their beds. So everybody in the family gets something out of flannel, but when you work with it, even before you start working with it, you need to be aware of a few things. First of all, flannel is a directional fabric. It has a nap, and a nap means that the fabric has fibers that if you cut a piece in one direction, it will be darker than if your grain line in your piece is going in the opposite direction. So on a garment, you wanna make sure all your pieces are cut in the same direction, like with all the necklines facing to the left as you lay it out. This would be a neckline here to my left and then here's the neckline to my left so that it's all directional. If you switch it and don't lay it out correctly, you will see a dark side on your garment and then in the back you'll see the light side, and it just doesn't look right. So take the extra time and determine which way you want your nap to run. Before you even get to the cutting out stage though, you're gonna want to preshrink your flannel. Flannel is notorious for shrinking and you don't want to put all the work into a garment or into some pajamas for the kids and have them suddenly have floodwater pants because it shrunk in the washer. So before you wash it, run a line of stay stitching at the end, each end of your fabric. Stay stitching is done with a regular sewing stitch of 2.5, that's the equivalent of 12 stitches per inch. Run it 1/8 of an inch away from the edge of the fabric and then throw it in the washer. If you don't, you are going to have all kinds of little threads in your washer and dryer and it's just a pain, so do that ahead of time. The other reason for preshrinking flannel is that it's a very, very linty fabric and you want to get some of that top lint off before you start working with it. You are still going to have a certain amount of lint as you sew those, so make sure that you are frequently dusting out your bobbin with the little brush that comes with your machine or gently blowing it with a little bit of air, but you want to clean out the bobbin area. If you don't and that lint builds up, not only will your machine not perform to its optimum capability, you will also get little bits of lint stuck in your stitching line, and it just looks ugly. So it's bad enough when it's in a seam line, but if you've done top stitching on a garment and it's showing on the outside, it looks icky and it's very hard to pull out. So prewash and make sure that you are cleaning out the bobbin on a regular basis. Flannel is also extremely stretchy. Every fabric is going to be more stretchy in the cross grain than the straight of grain, but flannel tends to be even more so, and it is extremely stretchy on the bias. So when you are working with flannel, make sure you stay stitch your curves, stay stitch your neckline, stay stitch those arm holes, stay stitch the facings, and that will help keep it from distorting. You also wanna make sure that you're using interfacing on your necklines, your collars, your cuffs, your front plackets where your buttonholes go. You're supposed to anyway, but sometimes, we tend to be a little lazy and not always do it. Don't skip that step when it comes to flannel because it is extremely stretchy. Flannel is a lot of fun. I think if you follow these simple guidelines and make sure that you remember that it's directional, remember to prewash, preshrink your fabric, clean out your bobbin, oh, and definitely make sure that you finish your seam edges. Every single seam, make sure it's overcast or use your serger as you're stitching, whatever. Make sure you finish the edges because if you don't, you're gonna have a lot of raveling threads in your garments, and if you follow those simple rules, I think you'll find that flannel is a real joy to work with. One last tip before I go, in order to keep your patterns nice and accurate as you're cutting, consider after the flannel comes out of the washer and dryer from preshrinking, adding just a touch of sizing to it when you press. It will fill in the threads of the fabric and make the fibers a little stronger and make it that it won't distort and twist as much while you're cutting out. It just adds a little extra crispness to your fabric while you're cutting and I think you'll find it'll be a lot easier to cut out and then sew your garments and projects. So try flannel, it's a lot of fun.