Fabric is the heart and soul of any sewing project you might want to embark upon, a good choice of fabric can make your products awesome and beautiful but a wrong choice of fabric can have a negative effect on the product.

There are various ways in which you can choose your new fabric, I often draw inspiration online and then work out how to make such design in the easiest way – it’s usually a bit of a trial and error style but it often works for me. Other options are making use of tutorials like the ones you find on blogs, YouTube and other websites, or you can make selection based on a pattern. You can also find fabric in a shop you like, or something you own before and use that old idea to make new selection. In this post, I will list some tips that will help you to easily make the right choice of fabrics for your product. Do well to follow these tips strictly in other to ensure you make the right choice.

Do proper research

Doing proper research before purchasing your fabrics is very important. Before you even step your foot into the fabric store, it’s worth doing some basic research about the product that you want to make and which type of fabric will be best for it. What I often do is to go window shopping and search around in stores and what ask questions on which fabrics are being used. There’s nothing more valuable than being able to touch and feel a garment to have the knowledge of the critical role that the fabric plays, and in that way, you can get a proper understanding of what types of fabrics are in vogue thus, making your projects feel new and on vogue.

Check the width

The Fabrics usually come in two or three different types of widths – 60 inches (150cm) or 45 inches (112.5cm) are the most common widths. The width of your fabric will determine how much you will need to buy. If the width is short and it is not going to be enough for your product, you will need to get one with a larger width.

Check the color

Most times, the lighting in a fabric shop can be deceiving, it can make a colour look different to how it looks in natural light, so before you purchase your fabrics you need to take the fabric into natural light.  Also, make sure to hold up the fabric to your skin to know how it will look on you if you are making something for yourself or someone with similar skin color. If the fabric is too close to your skin colour it will often not show very much when you use it to make your product.

Check the Drape

 When you are shopping for your fabrics, ensure you always unroll the fabric a few yards in other to see how it hangs. The drape or hang of the fabric will be an important element in terms of how the product will look like.