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On Fleece

Let's open up and be honest about fleece, the polyester kind, it's a version of a nightmare to work with. It's great for warmth and has that great texture that *most* people love. Unfortunately it has two things that drive people up the wall: STRETCH of knit fabrics, and BULK of high nap fabrics.

From a distance the fuzzy nap may make it look like it isn't woven (or knit), but it is so it has the normal fabric qualities like grain, cross-grain and bias. That fuzzy puff of a top tends to obscure the directions, the right and wrong side.

But never fear!

Most fleeces have the high level of stretch in the cross-grain, and the mid-level stretch in the bias, with the least stretch along the grain.  And the wrong side can be found by stretching along the cross-grain and seeing which way the fleece curls. It'll curl to the wrong side.

This is *really* helpful when it comes to figuring out how to construct fleece clothing.

For knitters: it's just like a project done in stockinette stitch, the project curls towards the back side of the project. The fleece is made on a very large loom which knits the fleece and then in the end for lack of a better word felts up the 'nap' (the texture). So when you pull on the cross-grain it curls just like any hand knit work.

So when the "How to Sew with Fleece" websites tell you that there are a few ways of going about these things, there really are.

Now that we've got that out of the way on to the recent fleece projects!

Photos Pending.

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