Have you ever wondered why sometimes the sheets on your bed don’t fit any more?
They were fine for a week or two, but after they got washed a few times, they don’t fit and now when you stretch them across the mattress, the seams down the corners rip and they just don’t fit.
A while back, during an Eavesdrop on a Telephone Conversation, expert hand quilter Dierdre McElroy helped us understand why this happens in sheets and how it might happen in our quilting fabric, too.
It turns out that sometimes fabric is made with an uneven thread count. That means that the number of threads per inch running the length of the fabric is different from the number of threads per inch running the width of the fabric.
Excellent quilting fabric has around 72 threads per inch going in both directions.
Some quilting fabric has 78 threads per inch going in one direction and only 60 threads per inch in the other. That means that as the fabric is stretched on the bias, it will give more in one direction than the other.
A further complication for us quilters is that when you are quilting, you rely on an equal distance between the holes made as the fabric is woven – the space between the threads. When the distance between those holes is not the same, even the best quilter will get uneven stitches.
The only way to solve the problem is to make sure that you buy fabric that has an even thread count. But how do you do that?
Some bolts of fabric have the thread count printed on the end. But when it’s not there – or if you think it might be wrong – it’s nice to have a tool of your own to check it out.
Dierdre and her mom developed a handy tool called the R.O.S.E. Thread Counter, and you can get information on this as well as more details about the challenges of working with fabric that has an uneven thread count here:
http://www.how-to-quilt.com/articles/1015-thread-counter.php
Happy Quilting!
Penny
