Getting fabric straight.....

I'm a newbie to all of this and have made curtians, lots of curtains, easy ones at that. A few easy clothes, other bits and bobs but when I have pieces left not always can figure out the best way to put the fabric to re-cut.
Ok so it's a silly question but one that I frown about over and over again. Sometimes I buy offcuts and  pay for them by weight but then there isn't always a selvage to work from, so whats the best way to get the fabric ready to cut?

Can anyone help please..............

In school we would find a loose thread on a cut side and slowly ease it out.  Then you can see a line and the grain of the fabric.  I'm not sure that makes sense or not?

You can true up your fabric by making a small cut and then ripping it.  It will tear along the grain.

check out this:
http://www.purlbee.com/lovely-lined-curtains/2008/6/13/lovely-lined-curtains-pull-thread-and-cut-fabric.html

That's exactly what I meant    That makes it so clear!

Fantastic! I'm so glad I asked what I thought would be a daft question. Thanks so much. x

I've been folding things at the center along the line of the pattern (like, along the stripe, or through the motif at the same spot on each repeat).  I never understood this method before but came online to see about it tonight (keep seeing it in books as the best way to do it).  I will try this with my fabric I just bought--thanks so much for the purlbee link (why didn't' I think to look there!)

I do wonder why my old way is not the best way--is it just not likely to get it quite right?

In my sewing class we foldied the fabric in half and eased the corners until it hung straight as the way to find the grain.  I found this seemed to work OK but was too hard to do with very large cuts of fabric.  However i have never seen this technique mentioned elsewhere--does anyone have any thoughts on this way of going about it?

Thanks!  I hope it will be as clear when I try to do it tomorrow night.

Going by the pattern on the fabric doesn't always work because with printed fabrics they sometimes get a bit askew as they go along the roll.  You can see this clearly when you have the selvege and use a square.  I'd go for the pulling-a-thread method if you really want it to be exact (though it can be tedious depending on the weave).  Ripping sometimes distorts the fabric.

Interesting. But if you straighten the fabric, will the print of the fabric be off?  I mean, you wouldn't want stripes to be cut crookedly just because you'd straightened the fabric, because that would look awful.  Or is thsi not an issue when you straighten?  Perhaps it will make more sense when I try it.

Hi, can I post on this again?  I managed to figure out how to rip (I tried to tear the fabric strand by strand but somehow couldn't get it to work).  I then pulled a few threads to be absolutely sure I had torn across the grain and I had (one long thread from selvage to selvage with no threads above it). 

The weird thing is if I compare the righthand end (say where I start to tear) of the torn edge and the lefthand edge (say where I finished tearing), the pattern repeat is not "cut off" at the same place, in other words it almost seems like the pattern was not printed on the grain.  (If I fold selvage to selvage, though, the fold seems "cut" across the same part of the fabric from top to bottom, so that seems to be good--though I can't see how that would be right if the top and bottom wasn't).  What I don't want to happen is to have the fabric pattern slightly crooked on my final project (I am making the floor pillows from Amy Butler's In Stitches). 

Is this normal for fabrics?  This is Joel Dewberry Ginseng and as a not-so-cheap fabric I would have thought that once I straightened the fabric the cut ends would "bisect" the pattern repeats perfectly all the way across.  I'm pretty sure I straightened it right, but maybe I didn't.

Thanks for your suggestions!  I hope this actually even makes sense.  I'm very much a newbie and don't know any sewers to ask in person!  (I bought it online so I am nervous to take it into a fabric store and ask, even though I have to pick up some other supplies there....)

I am no expert at straightening fabric, so perhaps there is a way to do this, but I find if the pattern is directional (stripes, etc.) that it makes more sense to cut on the printed line as opposed to straightening the fabric.  A friend asked me to make her curtains out of a striped fabric and when I straightened the fabric properly, it made the stripes very noticeably off-center.  I cut it again using the edges of a stripe as my cutting line to make them look straight when they were finished. 

I should clarify that what I meant to say is that if you really want to be perfectly on the grain, you'd pull a thread, but I generally go with Andi and cut by the pattern of the print.  So tedious the other way and even if it's slightly off the grain the second way, I've never found it to matter.

 Wow I am so happy to have found this site! I love to sew and the information about getting fabric straight on the grain was very helpful. 

I' m a veeeery new newbie to sewing, and I had no idea how important the direction of your cut is. Thanks for the link from the Purl Bee - it's been very helpful.  I plan to study more about the warp and the weft, but is the reason cutting a certain way is important because it affects the fraying of the fabric?  Are there any other reasons?