Abstract: Cleaning of dirty rectangular sheets of fabric must proceed through such steps as laundering, dewatering, drying, spreading, and ironing. At present, the spreading step remains yet to be automated and, therefore, must be manually carried out. Several methods and apparatuses are disclosed which enable a rectangular sheet of fabric to be spread by gripping the rectangular sheet of fabric at one corner thereof and another corner diagonals to the one corner and suspending the rectangular sheet of fabric in the shape of an inverted triangle and, after the edge of the rectangular sheet of fabric is deprived of a twist and is consequently straightened, gripping the rectangular sheet of fabric at an arbitrary corner and a point terminating an arbitrary width of an edge extended from the arbitrary corner and spreading the rectangular sheet of fabric by means of the grips. The methods and apparatuses enable the spreading step to be automated.