I took in a lot of the information about the neck chillers and started to make some. I made 8 on the first run, and took them to a blacksmithing workship I went to. Even though it was not above 70 degrees, and there was a nice breeze blowing, I still sold 5 of the 8.
I need to make a lot more, and don't want to spend hours measuring and cutting strips. Has anyone got any ideas for cutting out a large number of strips fairly quickly? I've got three different fabrics, one a bit wider than the other two. I was thinking of perhaps laying them out in a stack and cutting three strips at a time, but I'm not sure my shears are up to it (fairly inexpensive Fiskars). I know I should invest in a rotary cutter and make myself a straight edge longer than the widest fabric, but that won't help today...
If you're serious about sewing vs dabbling, you need to invest in the proper equipment, it makes all the difference. The rotary cutter is a Godsend for those with arthritis or other maladies. Of course you also NEED good shears too- your hands will be grateful. I say this from experience and one who doesn't like to buy needless stuff-takes up valuable stash real estate and money. ciao, Michelle
I know you can't do it right now, but as soon as possible you might want to consider a Salem strip cutter:
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I have one of these that I use for bias strips so I don't have to measure out. It's kind of slow as far as setting up, but it works for me.
Meanwhile, you might take a piece of corrugated cardboard or heavy plastic and measure out your strip widths, cut out the lines to within an inch of the ends, and draw them onto your fabric like a stencil. Pin the layers of your fabric and then cut.
Buy a cutting mat, a rotary cutter, and a quilting ruler - as big one,
24 1/2" by 6 1/2". Then all you need to do is stack up several layers of fabric and slice them off in one go. We quilters do this all the time for quilt pieces large and small. I have 16 poly satin waistbands to cut, in 3 sizes, tomorrow, and this is how I shall do them.
The equipment is pricey, but will save so much time and effort, and will come in so handy for all sorts of other sewing projects, that it will soon pay for itself.
If you can spare the fabric, it's a woven cotton or cotton/poly blend, and assuming you want a 2" wide tube finished, measure along the selvage and put a dot of ink every 5.5". Snip through the selvage at the dot, along the crossgrain of the fabric. Rip the fabric on the crossgrain to the other selvage, and snip through the selvage. Sew your tube with
3/4" seams (which will take up the distortion of tearing the fabric). BTW, Fiskars should be able to handle three thicknesses of "quilt fabric" with no problem. If you decide to cut and need a cutting line, the edge of a much-used bar of soap drawn along a straightedge works well. So does a soft (B) pencil.
I always rip mine. My SM and work tables all have self-adhesive measuring tapes along the edges. Snip every 4" along the selvedge, and rip away. You can assign good help to assist with this. I'm pretty sure that I already posted about my older niece losing track of things (undiagnosed ADD, in her skeptical aunt's opinion) and ripping some cloth the wrong way (i.e. along selvedge, rather than across it). So a brief training session can't hurt.
--Karen M. making some of Union Jack fabric for a British car show
I understand that cash is a problem; but I'll explain my method for your consideration. Required: 2 rotary cutters, 1 cutting mat, 1 length of
1/8"thick x 2" wide x whatever length required aluminum strip, and a specially made clamp. The clamp is made from scrap wood and is used to clamp the two cutters in position (parallel and the desired distance apart). The clamp is basically two strips of wood notched to hold the cutter handles and held together by two bolts and wing nuts. The metal strip is your straight edge to guide the cutting. Just run the wheel of one cutter along the straight edge and the other cutter will follow. This cuts each strip in one pass with no marking/measuring required. Watch for holiday sales at Jo-Ann's. I bought cutters and mat new for 50% off. Jim
I would measure and mark, then make a small cut at each mark and rip the fabric. Years ago when you went to buy fabric, it was torn and not cut. It's much more accurate to tear instead of cut.
Some fabrics do pull, but a tight-woven fabric suitable for a neck cooler isn't going to stretch any -- you might get a lettuce-edge effect, but that usually irons out if you dampen it a bit -- and it's all inside the seam allowance anyway.
It's likely that a couple of threads will ravel out, leaving a slight fringe. I consider this all to the good, as (unlike a cut edge) this initial raveling is all the raveling the edge is likely to do, and the tapered edge left by tearing is less likely to show through to the right side than the square edge left by cutting.
A problem arises when the threads are too strong or too slippery to break before you pull hard enough to draw them; in this case, threads may pull inches or even feet into the fabric. In some blends, some of the fibers are stronger or slicker than others. This is particularly likely to be a problem if the stripes of a fabric are of different fibers.
Another problem arises when the fabric is so strong that you can't tear it at all, or have to pull so hard you get side effects -- heavy canvas, for example.
No knit fabrics tear neatly. Tearing works by breaking one set of threads between two threads from the other set; you have no parallel threads in knitted fabrics.
But most woven fabrics tear neatly lengthwise*, and the majority of those also tear neatly crosswise.
Joy Beeson
*The lengthwise threads are usually stronger than the crosswise threads, so it is easier to break the crosswise threads, and the lengthwise threads are better at keeping the tear going straight. But few fabrics have a really radical difference between the warp and weft.
Denim is a noted exception: in real work denim (now extinct), the indigo-dyed warp threads were too strong to break at all, but the undyed weft threads were loosely-twisted and easy to break, so it could be torn lengthwise, but not crosswise. It was also very difficult to draw a weft thread, because it was fuzzy and weak, but the weft threads were also coarse enough that you could cut along one without first drawing it. (On the wrong side, that is. On the right side, all you see is warp.)
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