Tarp Reinforcements & Fabric Grain/Bias

Hey guys, firstly I want to express my appreciation for all the guides and countless helpful threads that have made it so easy for a beginner like me to make my first gathered end hammock. :)

I'm currently working on my first 8x10 rectangle tarp and had some thoughts while making reinforcements for the tie/guy-outs. I've gone through quite a few tarp making guides and haven't seen one that mentions the importance of making reinforcements that correlate to fabric bias and stress resulting from the tie-outs (or maybe I just haven't read enough!)

Now I saw that Spock made reference to what he called "outboard reinforcement" in this thread: http://www.hammockforums.net/forum/s...98&postcount=4, which is exactly what I'm referring to, but I just wanted to know if this is just common sense (i.e. everybody takes fabric bias into consideration) or whether it is that important at all.

Perhaps this is something important to note when making triangle reinforcements by cutting squares in half as well?

For more info on fabric grain/bias, check out this page: http://sewing.about.com/od/beginner1/p/fabricgrain.htm

Thoughts? Experiences?

Thanks,
Moses

My preference would be to have the patches match the weave of the fabric.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Redoleary

My preference would be to have the patches match the weave of the fabric.

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But, on a corner tie-out the stress is running against the grain of the tarp fabric. So, a corner tie-out should have a reinforcement piece that is unbias to the direction of force.

Does that even make sense?

Bias is an issue mostly when the pieces are large, or they have movement/slippage built into them. With the reinforcement triangles on a tarp corner the triangle is usually stitched most of the way around and then stitched through where the webbing is attached. IMO bias is not a key issue in that application. I haven't been concerned with the bias or grain on those pieces.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AaronAlso

But, on a corner tie-out the stress is running against the grain of the tarp fabric. So, a corner tie-out should have a reinforcement piece that is unbias to the direction of force.

Does that even make sense?

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I understand what you're saying, and it would likely be fine, I really don't know. My preference is based on a sail corner reinforcement patch, where convention dictates to make the patch to have the same weave orientation as the part of the sail its being sewn to.