The agony of grain perfection defeat

Getting this project off the ground has been a challenge.  It should have been cut out and half sewn by now.  Hmmm.  wasn't this supposed to be my Fall coat?  The sticking point has been that, try as I might, I can't align the grain of this fabric.  Nothing so far has been easy.  The weft fibers on this brushed twill are very fine and fragile, so I was unable to pull a thread across the width of the cloth.  Instead I had to tear the fabric.  But what I assumed would be a little 1/2" strip turned into a whopping triangular hunk about 8" wide.  With the ends basted together a la Edna Bishop the fabric skews off on an impossible angle.  Hopefully the pictures give you the idea.  I immediately ran to the Pattern Review message board and received a variety of responses on how to remedy this problem.  The most common suggestion was to dampen the whole mess and try to stretch / coax it back into shape.  Using the London Shrink method I rewet the cloth and struggled with it for over an hour.  All the pulling, smoothing and swearing was to no avail.  Then I attempted to subdue the beast with the iron.  I surrender!  There is just no way to turn this giant twill parallelogram into a neat perfectly aligned rectangle.  Sorry Edna!  I've folded the cloth down the center, aligned the selvedges and will cut out the imperfect coat.