rip or cut PV

[chrise321]

I just received my XMarks material from Steve. Thank you Steve. I have one question, do you rip PV like wool or cut it?
Thanks for your advice.

[Chas]

If you can, I would rip.

Regards

Chas

[Aspiringloser]

I cut my PV. I've had no luck ripping it.

[Baldybrown]

I too would like the answer to this question. My new XMARKS tartan is a better fabric than my current kilt so I'm guessing it depends on the fabric. Did Steve rip or cut this wonderful stuff?

[Hothir Ethelnor]

I've ripped PV with no adverse effects. the 1/2" or so next the ripped area will be skewed but the waistband covers all of that up generally. You will also get more variation in the ripped ends then you would with wool but the tightness of the PV material keeps the threads from pulling across the width of the fabric, unlike Lochcarron wool which sometimes does that when I rip it.

[davidg]

Am I missing something here? If I am making an item where I want a straight edge I cut it. If I want a jagged, crooked edge with the possibility of threads being pulled and/or the rip going some place I didn't intend then I rip it

The answer seems simple to me if I want to have a professional finish as opposed to an amateur one

[Aspiringloser]

In my experience, wool rips much more easily than PV does. I even cut wool rather than rip it to prevent the unlucky event of threads pulling. It isn't that hard to make a straight cut. If you're as anal as I am about it, you draw a line to follow, equally spaced along the length, parallel to a stripe in the tartan. It takes longer but guarantees a straight cut.

[Chas]

Am I missing something here? If I am making an item where I want a straight edge I cut it. If I want a jagged, crooked edge with the possibility of threads being pulled and/or the rip going some place I didn't intend then I rip it

The answer seems simple to me if I want to have a professional finish as opposed to an amateur one

Sorry, David, but the professional way is to rip. When you rip, it follows the line between two threads - important when a threadcount is important. Whereas a scissor cut is only straight for the length of the scissors.

Regards

Chas

[RockyR]

MM PV cloth OR any mill's wool cloth: Rip it FAST. Cut a slit roughly 1.5 to 3" long along the line where you'd like it to rip. Grab one part (firmly) with your left hand and one part with your right hand and pull hard in opposite directions. The faster you pull, the better the chance that the threads tearing won't distort on the cloth. Even if they DO distort it a bit, you can steam iron that part and where the puckers / ripples are, they will relax and return to a more 'normal' look.

The worst for ripping is Welsh Tartan and Lochcarron's cloth... They tend to ripple near the edges, but a quick shot from a steam iron along the ripped edge will return them to normal.

[Alan H]

Personally, I cut ALL the cloth for my kilts...wool, PV, polycotton, whatever. If I get one or two or three threads off in the raw edge that will be buried in the waistband, who cares? There are places to be *extremely* precise in kiltmaking, and places where it doesn't really matter, IMHO. I have nightmare visions of a rip gone horribly wrong, destroying $40-$300 worth of fabric.