Choosing the right fabric for the sails wasn’t straightforward. Fine Egyptian cotton was the advice from other club members, so I eventually bought a length of this by mail order from Nylet sails. This cotton fabric certainly looked the part but it turned out to be unsuitable because it shrinks by at least 10% in both directions when it is washed, and then shrinks further when washed again. If you don’t intend to wash your sails after making them then this cloth is probably fine, but I wanted to make sure that my sails would be washable. Eventually I decided to use an old cotton bed sheet, knowing that this had been washed so many times that it could not possibly shrink any further. I lightly dyed this fabric with a ‘Stone’ coloured fabric dye to take away the bright white appearance before cutting out the sails.
I borrowed my wife’s sewing machine to hem the edges and to make the lines of stitching up and down each sail. A few trials were needed to get the stitch size and width of the hems correct. I sewed the lines of stitches along each sail first and then hemmed around the edges. My technique is to make a narrow hem by folding the edge of the sail over twice and ironing this down, and then to stitch along the hems to fix them (I’ve attached a PDF of my notes in case anyone finds it useful). This method seems to be pretty robust and I haven’t had to repair any of the sails since I made them. I have not hand-stitched a cord or rope around the edge of each sail, although this does make a very nice scale finishing touch if you have the time to do it.