How to Choose the Right Fabric for Clothes

Have you ever wondered how to choose the right fabric for cloths. Selecting the correct fabric is the most difficult task you’ll face as a seamstress.

Let’s talk material complications.

The back of patterns, except for Burda and some Indie patterns, give a lists of potential fabrics to use for your make. However, selecting fabric gets more complicated fast. When a pattern says to use a jersey knit, that does nothing to narrow down the possibilities for what kind of materials can be used. Jersey knit fabric has many different weights.

Jersey knit fabric also has many different fiber content ranges (material blends and percentages). The wrong fabric choice will turn your sewing project into a disaster. If you had ask me how to choose the right fabric for cloths a decade ago, I would have said to stick with purchasing fabric in person . Today, however, there are less physical store locations than existed years ago. This makes it much more difficult to decide on the best material to use.

Don’t worry. Just mimic. Simply, find the twin of your desired pattern in a retail store.

View D of McCall’s 7906 looks  like Tie Belt Button Front Midi Skirt from Gap.

Use the fabric content description to decide which fabric to purchase.

Online clothing stores have fabric descriptions included. Gap Inc. has a fabric and care section underneath the skirt describing its fabric as 97% Cotton, 3% Elastane. To purchase the correct fabric, simply look for other materials with the same or similar fabric content.

Here are a few similar options listed from left to right. * All of them have 97% Cotton and 3% Elastane. But unfortunately, none of them are still available because they came from the now extinct Fabric.com.

• Bloom Stretch Cotton Sateen Stripe White Black 
• Morocco Blues Stretch Poplin Turquoise
• Forever Blue Stretch Cotton Poplin Stripe Zebra Navy 
• Theory Moss Gray Stretch Cotton Poplin
• Morocco Blues Stretch Poplin Solid Coral 
• Rag and Bone Inkwell Stretch Cotton

When learning how to choose the right fabric for clothes, keep all your tags.

The clothing tags on your garments are another way to figure out what kind of fabric to select. I don’t keep tags because I don’t buy store bought cloths often. Instead, I window shop local stores and take photos of clothing I like. I also take photos of the tags!

Make a fabric swatch book filled with scraps of fabric from your previous fabric purchases.

Simply, use double sided tape to affix your fabric scrap onto a fabric swatch guide page. Fill in the specifications of each fabric. Your specifications include information like:

• Fiber Content
• Source/Item #
• The amount of fabric purchased

The guide provides a tactile method for selecting fabric. However, it also makes it easy for you to decide what to make with the fabrics from your stash. To get your free fabric swatch guide template, subscribe to my blog here.

Other helpful articles:

A Sewing Machine Buying Guide for Beginners 

The Best Vintage Sewing Machines To Buy Now 

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