How to determine stretch factor

Hi There! It's been a while since I posted anything on here mainly because I am failing to find balance between work and my hobby, hahah!!and also I didn’t sew a lot for myself during winter but I am hoping to improve on that (fingers crossed). I hope you are keeping well wherever you are.

 

This week I am going to share a tip that I learnt working with  knit fabric. The polo neck you see below did not fit through my head at some point, haha. I had to change the design after learning this one important tip because it was never going to go pass my head!

                                

                                                            

Some time in May/early June I came across this pretty knit fabric  and immediately wanted to make polo necks  and so i bought 3 different colours! i can be extra like that lol, but that's the whole point of making your own clothes right...lol. I started working on one and finished it in less that an hour. That's actually one of the advantages of working with knits, there is not a lot of fit issues as it takes the shape of your body, and  no darts and fasteners are needed unless your pattern specifically requires one. Now came fitting time loo and behold my polo neck  wouldn’t  fit through my head!!!like whaaat???So you can imagine my frustration, so i looked through my wardrobe for my store bought polo necks to see where I could have gone wrong  and not so long I realized that actually the knit I had in hand did not have a lot of stretch to it compared to my store bought hence it wouldn't go through my head, lol you see sometimes I learn the hard way but I am glad I was able to come up with a plan B to make my polo neck pass through my head. I learned  that polo neck fabric needs to have at least 50% stretch factor. Below I talk about what all that means.            

                   

• KNOW THE STRETCH FACTOR OF YOUR KNIT FABRIC

This is very important feature to know so that you know which knit to buy depending on your design. This is what I needed to know before buying the fabric for my polo neck. If my polo neck had button closure it would have been  fine but that was not the look i was going for. Basically stretch factor is how much your fabric can stretch from a given length to another comfortably or without it being forced or distorted.

How to determine stretch ratio

Fold your fabric in half from selvedge to selvedge. Put 2 pins 4 inches apart and place a measuring tape below the fabric. Pull the fabric gently from the 4 inch mark towards the high numbers on the measuring tape. The measurement the fabric reaches(where you had placed the 4 inch pin) without distortion will indicate the stretch percentage. Using my fabric as an example, it stretched from 4 inches long to 5 inches comfortably. Therefore it only stretched 1 inch above 4 and 1/4 is 25%.This explained why my polo neck couldn't go pass my head as the stretch percentage is low.

I hope this will help you in your sewing journey. Avoid the mistake I made.

Thanks for stopping by the blog today!!!

Blessings!!