Monday, March 5, 2012

piping ... with gadgets!

Over the weekend I made piping for the first time. It started off pretty basically with me (roughly) cutting bias strips from some red fabric before folding each strip in half and inserting the "piping cord" (in my case it was jute string because I couldn't find the cord I'd bought especially!) ...


Now for the sewing part ... I actually started sewing the cord into the bias using a zipper foot, but remembered I had a piping foot, so I switched after a few centimetres.


The piping foot (which is kind of like a large invisible zip foot - see pic below) makes sewing much, much easier and more consistent.


Finally, I trimmed my piping using this neat little "piping wizard" tool I bought last year at one of the quilting shows. It lets you trim the seam allowance of the piping cord to a number of different widths by putting the cord part in the appropriate groove and then cutting off the excess fabric with a rotary cutter. Easy peasy!


The end result was very satisfying and I was really happy with my gadgets. It was also good to learn how to do something new. I'll be back in a couple of days to show you (hopefully) where the piping ended up!

Have a creative week!

5 comments:

BOB & MABEL said...

I love piping but have never attempted to make it myself. I think I need a piping foot.

CurlyPops said...

How cool!

Jackie @ Fred-and-Cissy said...

Can't wait to see what's in the pipeline! Your piping looks really professional. I love the idea of making some but I've never tried it - maybe one day.

Mary said...

Nice job. Best thing about using the piping foot to make it is that when you sew it in to the seam, you will not have to take out this first row of stitching like you would probably have to do with the zipper foot stitching. As you can see, it is much closer to the filling than the piping foot stitching. You will appreciate that when you actually insert it into a seam. Have fun!

Annie said...

IMPRESSIVE! I attempted it earlier this year, but gave up - very interested to see what you make with it.