Sunday, March 3, 2013

Fraying fabric

I mentioned last week that I was trying a new technique while washing fabrics. Mostly I prefer washing so I can remove the chemical finishing and add starch when I feel like it.
The recommendation was that one sews raw edges together before washing to minimize the edges that can fray. So I tried it, along with a second recommendation of just notching the corners of the raw edges.
Five WOF pieces were sewn together and I notched two longer pieces of fabric.
Here are the results.
The pink fabrics are sewn with a large zigzag stitch, the brown and black were notched.
Conclusion: neither technique is very effective. The sewing technique guarantees that you will spend time and fabric stitching and unstitching (or cutting) the sewn edges. The notching technique had no discernable impact on fraying, but is very fast.
Next technique to try sometime, if I feel like it, is to pink the edges. 

1 comment:

quilthexle said...

You could use the thread trash for creative adventures ;-)) like felting or so ! but please be careful: very addictive ...
Take care,
Frauke