I bought a shirt at Target over the summer. I almost never buy clothes there for myself, but it was a cute black and white striped sleeveless shirt, made in a linen knit, with a faux placket detail at the neck and little vee-slits where the side seams meet the hem.
I shouldn’t have bought it. It was cut off square, and every time I wash it, it gets more askew, trying to spiral around me. The side seams twist clockwise, the left to the front, the right to the back. The center back seam veers off center. The front placket skews to the right. No amount of pulling or shaping or blocking will fix it, because the fabric was cut badly.
Every time I wear it, and I do because I’ve found the right cardigan buttoned just so hides the most egregious flaws and lets a bit of the black and white stripes show, I think of my mother. She’d have held it up in the store, noticed that the grain of the fabric was off kilter, declared it flawed, and she wouldn’t have bought it - as cute and as cheap as it was.
Because she sewed, she knew that "the fabric of a garment should be cut either straight along the grain, or in the case of a bias cut, on a clear angle, usually 45 degrees, which allows for the fabric to stretch. If it isn’t cut properly, the garment can pull out of shape with wear." And she taught me enough to know what to look for.
In this case, cute won over prudence. I should have known better.
2 comments:
I thought when my clothes did this it was because I was shaped funny or washing them wrong.
This is a thing anymore, sort of on trend if you will. Like you, I sew and like you, I will not buy clothes cut crooked on the bias (as opposed to a true bias cut design--your shirt is not that!).
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