Category: Crafts

Craft projects of mine

  • Making Continuous Bias Tape and Piping

    For my latest sewing project, I decided to try my hand at using some contrast piping along the waistband. I’ve only ever used piping once before, for the Comma Club Cushion I made for the Canva Hackathon a few years back. It wasn’t too hard though and I still had plenty of the cording left over.

    To make piping, you need bias tape. I should probably explain what the heck that means. For those who don’t sew: imagine fabric being woven on a loom. You’re picturing it as a rectangle, right? Pretty much like a big bedsheet. And that’s correct! Woven fabric has threads at right angles to each other, and it’s usually pretty strong and non-stretchy if you pull on it lengthwise or widthwise (unless it has elastane or something like that in it). However, if you pull on a piece of fabric diagonally, you’ll probably find that it does have some stretch. We refer to the direction diagonal to the weave of the fabric as the “bias.”

    If you’re cutting out pieces of fabric to make clothing, you normally want to keep the pieces oriented straight up and down to keep them from stretching out of shape. That’s why pattern pieces usually have lines on them so you can line that up with the straight edge of the fabric. Occasionally though – most often for certain dresses – you want a kind of flowiness that clings or skims over the body. In those cases, you cut the fabric on the diagonal. (You may have even heard the term “bias cut dress” or something like that.) Fabric cut on the bias is stretchy enough to move and flex around curves. That’s what we want for the piping, because it’s going to be applied around the curved waistband of my shorts.

    You can, of course, purchase pre-made bias tape (also called bias binding). That’s what I did for the Cushion, and it worked fine. But it tends to just come in plain colours though, and I wanted to use a special fabric. That means I had to make my own! I highly recommend you try this sometime. It’s really satisfying, and it doesn’t take that long. It’s also a great way to use up scraps of fabric that aren’t big enough to use in other projects.

    The method I use is based on this tutorial from Seamwork. I recommend you look at that one first, as it uses a small square of striped fabric and is thus slightly easier to see what’s happening. I started with a rectangular piece of my fabric that was 33 inches wide and 13 inches tall. (Actual size doesn’t matter as long as it’s cut “on the grain” – ie. straight.) And yes, I tend to use English measurements when sewing, just because my cutting mat uses them as well as most of my patterns. Feel free to convert to metric; it makes no difference to the end result.

    Next, I cut off one corner at a 45 degree angle. I used the lines on my cutting mat for this with a long ruler and my rotary cutter, but you can also do it by drawing a line and then cutting along it with scissors.

    Now you want to move that piece you cut off to the other end of the fabric to make a parallelogram. We could just cut off both opposite corners and throw them away, but that would be wasting fabric. By constructing a parallelogram first, you’re using every bit of it (which is nice, because this fabric is expensive!).

    Now I need to sew those two straight edges together to join up our parallelogram into a single piece. Here I’ve pinned the triangle on top of the other pieces, right sides together.

    Now to the sewing machine! I’m going to sew this seam with a normal straight stitch and a narrow 1/4″ seam allowance.

    Once it’s sewn, it’s over to the ironing board. First I press the seam to “set” it. (I have no idea if this really makes a difference, but I read a suggestion to do it once so I do. 🤷‍♀️)

    Then I place the fabric face down and use the iron to press the seam open and flat.

    The end result looks like this on the back…

    And now you can see our joined and finished parallelogram!

    The next step is to mark the width of your bias strips. I wanted mine to be 1 1/2″. Since my fabric is so dark, I flipped it over  and used a washable fabric pen to draw the lines with a ruler. You can just see them in this photo below. (They’re light blue.) The lines go right over the seam we just sewed. Whatever width you’re using, you’ll probably have a little bit left over at the end of your parallelogram. That’s okay; you can just cut it off.

    Now – we could just cut all these strips and then laboriously sew them all together. But where’s the fun in that? It’s time for SEWING FUN WITH GEOMETRY. We are going to turn this flat piece of fabric into a tube with a continuous spiral of bias tape going around and around it. Get ready for your brain to turn inside out!

    Basically, we’re going to line up the marks we just drew on the long sides of the parallelogram and then sew them together. However, if we just lined them up straight, when we cut them apart we’d get a series of circular rings of fabric. So instead we need to offset it by one so that the line goes around and around continuously. Again, I think the Seamwork tutorial does a good job of showing how this works. (It really is something you need to do yourself to really grok.)

    Here I am pinning the tube seam with right sides together. I pin at every single line, placing my pin at a 1/4″ seam allowance and making sure it intersects the other line at exactly that point. You’ll find the fabric doesn’t easily want to offset like this, and to some extent you have to keep turning it and coaxing it as you go.

    This is what the tube looks like all pinned up for sewing. It’s like a shirt sleeve, but twisted. You can see that the seam with the pins that we’re going to sew actually wraps around the tube.

    Sewing it is awkward but doable. Just do a little bit at a time, and keep rotating the tube as needed as you go down. The key is to make sure you’re not inadvertently sewing over any other bits of it as you go. Just keep a nice narrow 1/4″ seam as we did before.

    Once you’re finished, your completed spiral tube will look like this. You can clearly see the offset strip at each end as well as how the lines I drew continue around and around, over the seams.

    The last step is the fun part – start at one end and just cut along your drawn line! You’ll go around and around the tube in a spiral, with a lovely pile of bias tape accumulating beside you. This piece of fabric turned into a bias strip 7 yards (6 meters) long! Here’s a time lapse video of me cutting mine.

    And that’s it! I gave mine a final iron and pressed open any remaining seams. Now it was time to finally make the piping. I was going to use it around the top and bottom of my waistband, so I worked out roughly how much cord I’d need and cut off that much (plus a couple inches for safety). Then you just lay your cording down on in the middle of the wrong side of your lovely bias tape.

    Then you fold it over to sandwich the cord and place pins along the length as close to the cord as you can.

    The last step is to sew along the line of pins. You should use a zipper foot for this. This is a special sewing machine foot that only has one “prong” so you can get very close to a zipper (or your bit of cord, in this case).

    And that’s it! With my custom piping all finished, I was ready to use it in my sewing project. Stay tuned for that one…

  • The “Knitted” Laurel Dress

    As you may have picked up on yesterday, I made yet another Colette Laurel dress for Frocktober! I used the same mods as the Big Data dress: sleeveless, notched neckline, and pockets. On this one, I moved the pockets outwards slightly as they felt too close together. I also cut the back in one piece rather than having a waist seam.

    The fabric is called Breeze by Rosemarie Lavin for Windham Fabrics. It’s actually a quilting cotton that I picked up at Morris & Sons earlier in the year. I bought it on a lark, mostly because it’s printed to look like knitting! I thought I’d make a simple blouse out of it, so I only bought 2m of fabric. Unfortunately that was barely enough to make this dress, so I’ll have to wear shorts under it for modesty. Still – cute dress for a hot day!

  • The Big Data Dress

    I made a new dress last weekend! This is a sleeveless Colette Laurel that I modified to have pockets(!) and a notched neckline (using this free hack). I’ve made a few sleeveless Laurels before, and the main attractions (besides looking nice) are that they’re fast to make and don’t use very much fabric. I had about 2.5m of this fabric, but it’s a quilting cotton and thus very narrow (less than 45″ wide). It’s navy blue and covered with a stream of binary numbers in light blue and silver. (So cute!) It’s called “Binary Solo” from RJR Fabrics’ collection “Silver Circuits.” My Mom made a point of showing it to me at her shop back in Indiana, and I just had to have it!

    I’m calling it my “Big Data Dress” because, as Juliet Houghland pointed out at YOW! Data recently, all stock images of “Big Data” are blue and involve binary. 😂 I wore it to Girl Geeks last night and it was a big hit!

    Sewing notes: Based on my measurements, I cut a straight 18 (the largest size) on this pattern. It’s roomy, but given the style of the dress and the crispness of the cotton, that’s what I was aiming for. It’s very comfortable. There are bust darts on the front and diamond-shaped darts on the back that keep it from being a completely shapeless sack. The hack instructions were easy to follow, but I didn’t bother tracing the pieces onto new paper. I bought the pattern PDF, so I can just print another one, right? So I just cut the front and back in two and then taped on some extra for the seam allowance. I had been worried about getting the print to line up across that center front seam, but then I hit upon the obvious solution. Cut it on the fold as one piece, and then split it up the middle. Voila! Lines up nicely. I finished the neckline and armhole edges using bias tape that I made – as always – using Colette’s continuous method. (For reference, I used a 9″ x 9″ square and just managed to eke out all three openings.)

    What I’d do differently next time: I’m not sure why the back piece needs the corresponding horizontal seam. Maybe it’s because Sarai made hers out of linen, so it’s more visible and looks weird if it’s not there? But my print is so busy that I could have easily left it out and saved myself some cutting and sewing time. I’d also move the pockets out a little bit further as the 2.5″ from center she suggests seems a bit close for me. Lastly, I’d probably consider putting some interfacing behind the neck notch. (I still might do that, actually.) I noticed when I was wearing it yesterday that one side wanted to flop forward and fold down occasionally, so a little bit of extra stiffness there couldn’t hurt.

    Overall I’m very, very happy with this one! It’s cute, comfortable to wear, and a real conversation starter.

  • Frocktober 2017

    As I’ve done for several years running now, I’ll be raising money this “Frocktober” for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. I’ll be wearing a different dress every day of the month, with over half of them made by me personally. Last year’s total was $1481.04, so this year I’m aiming to top $1500. If you’d like to help, my fundraising page for 2017 is here: [page no longer available].

    This year I’m offering a special perk: for the first three folks who donate $100+, I will personally teach you to sew your own dress (or something else if you’re not a dress wearer)! I’m not going to do it for you, but I’ll walk you through choosing a pattern, picking out fabric and supplies, and every step of the sewing process. If you’re not in Sydney, this might have to be a combination of email and video chat, but we’ll make it work. 😄

  • East Neuk Hoodie

    This may well be my favourite thing I’ve ever knitted myself.


    The pattern is East Neuk Hoodie by Kristen Orme.  The yarn is KnitPicks Comfy Worsted in Fairytale, and I used about 20 balls. It has a hood, a placket neck with three buttons, a pocket, and (randomly) elbow patches. It’s soft and comfy and well-made, and the colour is beautiful. I ❤️ it!

    This was such a fun knit, despite the fact that my tension was way off when I started so I had to frog the whole thing and start over. Once I settled on the right size and needles (4mm), it was smooth sailing. My row gauge was still off, but that’s easy to compensate for as you go. (I did have to do some maths to make sure the sleeve cap came out the right size.) Overall it’s slightly large, but I wanted this to have the ease of a sweatshirt so I’m happy with it.

    My one worry is that the yarn is going to pill. It shed a LOT while knitting (my couch is covered in pink fluff), and the comments on the KnitPicks site indicate that others have been disappointed with its tendency to pill. So I’m steeling myself for it now, knowing that I’m going to have to give this the occasional shave. I still love it though.

    Ravelry details are here!

  • SQUIRREL!

    Squirrel Stuffed Toy PDF – Grainline Studio – Super cute little pattern. Very tempted. I think I’ve even got the materials to make it!

  • Two-Handed Fairisle (Flat)

    I’m stuck in the house sick with a cold, so I decided to shoot a quick video of the technique I’m using for my current knitting project.