Make Your Own Bias Binding

Hello my lovelies! How has your week been? I was so impressed with Lu's clay fruit and veg. She does it so neatly! How does she do it?????

In my little patch of Two Crafty Brownieland I have been sewing. It's now just over a year since I started sewing my own clothes! I will be writing a full blog post about that next, but I am waiting for the official TCB photographer (aka Lucy) to come and help me take pictures. She is in great demand and is very hard to book!

This year I am participating in Me Made May, a challenge that has been running for 8 years now over on this blog. You make a pledge to do something involving handmade/upcycled items of clothing for a month. Since my wardrobe is almost completely handmade now, I decided to give it a go. My pledge is to wear mostly handmade every day, and to aim to get my wardrobe finished by the end of May.

One of the things that always put me off homemade clothes was ugly, unfinished seams on the inside. When I started sewing my own clothes, I was determined that things should look as good on the inside as they did on the outside. So for wovens I always do french seams, and I usually finish my necklines and hems with pretty binding. It has taken me a while to perfect it, and it does take time, but I love, love, love the effect. You need surprisingly little fabric and if you do a load at once, it goes a long way. There are different ways of making binding (strips folded in half etc) but I do the traditional binding you would buy in a shop.

What you need is

Fabric - half a metre or a fat quarter

Matching thread

A binding maker like this 12mm one

Cutting board and rotary cutter makes it much easier to cut.

Iron and ironing board 

Two Crafty Brownies Sewing Essentials

What you do is

Decide how wide you want your finished binding to be. For the method I use to sew mine on, the full width of the binding will be visible so I use 1" strips and my finished binding is half of that.

Cut your fabric into strips. Cutting on the bias gives a much more stretchy binding and I prefer this for going around necklines and armholes.

To do this, fold your fabric into half along the diagonal. You can fold it again to fit your cutting board, but be mindful of cutting along the right edge, I have ruined fabric and ended up with wierd strips with a right angle in the strip.......

Some of your strips may be long enough depending on what you are using it for. If not, you will need to join them, and I find it best to do this before attaching it. Of course you could just sew a straight seam to join the strips, but I prefer this way......

Lay your strips at right angles with right sides facing as above. Sew along the line marked by the grey needle. I pin either side of my sewing line to hold things in place.

Trim the ends to about 1/4". Press the seam open and voila, a lovely neat join!

Now take your strips to your ironing board. Feed one end into the binding maker, ironing as the folded end comes out. For this bit I turn the steam off otherwise you'll burn your fingers. Once it's all folded, I turn the steam on and iron both sides, keeping a bit of tension on the strip as you pull helps. Now you have gorgeous binding to use on whatever you like!! Shall I quickly show you how to finish a hem?

Oh ok then! Wanna grab a cuppa or something stronger? Lay your binding on the right side of your raw hem as above. Leave a tail of a couple of inches for joining. You'll be sewing along the iron line at about 1/4". Sew all the way round till you are a few inches away from where you started and finish, again leaving a tail and making sure you have enough to overlap the two ends. Keep your binding a tiny bit stretched as you sew, it looks better. Now this bit is tricky. Stay with me.......

You basically want your ends to overlap an inch if that was the size of your original strip, or just a tad less as the binding is stretchy. I used a strip of my binding as a guide, see above. You're now going to join the ends just like you did before, laying them at right angles, right sides together. If you left enough unstitched in between this should be possible, though fiddly. Sew parallel to the two pins down the middle. Trim, and you should find it lays nicely down against your raw edge. You can now finish sewing along the iron line and it should all fit nicely. Flip the binding over to the wrong side and sew again all the way around near the other edge of the binding.

It does take practice, darlings and I have had many a glitch and the occasional Bad Word. I learnt this from the internet, possible from you, Anne?

Well, I'm sure only the most hardened of sewists are still with me....... but part of the purpose of this blog is to keep things so we can remember how to do them!! I'll be glad to have this record, I know.

Ok my lovelies, have a lovely weekend and keep reading!!

Much love,

Jenny xxxxxooooo

Comments

[Kelly]

I'm one of those for whom this is entirely over their head. But that doesn't stop me from admiring your beautiful work and being totally impressed!!

[Two Crafty Brownies]

Aw Kelly, youre so kind!! I suspect Im the only one wholl ever read that post again when I forget how to do it! Hugs, Jenny xxxxx