Burlap Fabric – More Than Just Sackcloth

Burlap fabric is one of the loosely woven natural fiber fabrics. Burlap fabric is indeed more than just sackcloth. Burlap as a loosely woven natural fiber is in the company of other loosely woven natural fiber fabrics such as the elegant and beautiful boucles. The fabric characteristics and sewing requirements follow that of loosely woven fabrics.

Fabric Characteristics:

• Easy to shape and ease

• May fray badly

• May stretch out of shape easily

• Frequently has a one way pattern

• May be bulky or heavy

• They sometimes have slubs, which can deflect the needle and result in a broken needle, and crooked stitching

• They may pill due to slubs

• Can slip at stressed seams

• Sometimes have more stretch lengthwise

Working With These Fabrics Requires:

• Sewing machine needles should be 60/8-100/16 sharps and universals depending on fabric weight

• Hand sewing needle should be sizes 5-7

• Sewing machine settings recommended are a stitch length of 1.75-2mm

• Sewing machine feet should be roller, walking foot or wide straight stitch foot

• Thread recommended is all-purpose cotton, polyester, cotton/polyester blend

• Tools and equipment recommended are sharp scissors, sharp shears, rotary cutter and mat, pins

• Layout depends on the fabric, nap layout may be required

• Marking tools such as chalk, soap sliver, safety pins and thread can be used

• Seams recommended are plain, and decoratively serged are some examples

• Hems recommended are plain for example

• Seam and hem finishes recommended are serged, zigzag, multi-stitch zigzag for example

• Edge finishes recommended are facings, bindings, bands, ribbings

These Fabrics Are Suitable For:

Burlap is best suited for home décor projects, due to its coarseness it is not commonly used in apparel.

For information about the notions, tools, and equipment required to complete a sewing project, click here to view the sewing notions home page.

For more information about this family of fabrics some great references are:

Claire Shaeffer’s Fabric Sewing Guide

For more interesting information about burlap fabric, click here on Wikipedia.org and click here on eHow.com
To continue exploring information about fabrics follow the links below.

Canvas Fabric
Fabric Facts
Fabric Content
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