Bias tape tutorial

I saw this technique on "The Quilt Show" with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. They are pretty traditional but I usually find at least one interesting thing on each show. BTW, I give away a free 6 month membership each year around November or December. 

Probably half the people reading this will have seen this bias tape technique before, but it was new to me and I was pretty impressed.

First you start with a square of fabric. On the quilt I just made I only had 30" of fabric left large enough to make a square. I had lots of the green but I thought that would stand out like a sore thumb. 

This is the 30" square. I folded it and ironed a crease in the fabric to act as a cutting line.

Then I cut the diagonal using a rotary cutter and a straight edge. Then I brought the left edge (above) and the right edge (above) together and stitched them, and then ironed the seam open (less bulk). 

After ironing the seams open, I laid out the fabric and used a straight edge ruler to draw lines 2 1/2" apart. I used a pretty heavy permanent marker because the purple was so dark. Had the fabric been a lighter value, I would have used a fine line Sharpy. The dark line will be cut and end up inside the binding so no one will ever see it.

 Before sewing this last seam. I cut the opposite ends of the fabric (upper left and lower right) along the drawn lines about 5". Then I sewed the seam being VERY CAREFUL to line up each line using pins to make sure the lines would align 

Then I ironed THAT seam open.

From then on, I used scissors to cut around and around the tube I had stitched using the drawn lines. All the while I am hoping I will have enough bias tape to go around the entire seven foot square quilt. That is over 9 yards.

Would you believe I ended up with over 9 yards of bias tape!! I had 19" left over. This was out of a 30" square of fabric. I was impressed!

I ironed the tape in half and here is my pile of perfect bias tape. This took practically no time to make. I have to emphasis  aligning the lines using pins for EACH row of drawn lines before sewing the last ( 2nd) seam). 

Hope you found this easy to follow and useful for your sewing.

Finished, at last

Boy this sure seems like I have been working on this quilt for a YEAR! It is 
laid out across my bed but will need to be washed before I officially sleep under it.

Here we go. I had decided to do a 6" border on all four sides to give me the extra foot in width and length I needed. This was because of running out if fabric. I used the flip and sew method of attaching the first side. That was the side with the huge amount of extra batting I had included. The other 3 sides were a different story. I had to zig-zag the extra batting on to the quilt then I stitched the 6" of border ( 2" green and 4" purple) on along with 6 " of other fabric for the backing. Boy, did I go through a lot of fabric making this quilt. Good thing it is for me.

Cutting out the border fabric.

I am writing this in a paragraph but it took me 2 days because one of the sides had a massive mistake and it had to be torn out - both borders and the batting.

The borders (all of them) ended up looking like this - actually quite good!! Who would think a border could be so troublesome?

Then I trimmed the purple border to 4"

Stitched on the bias tape. (Don't forget to see the interesting bias tape tutorial on Monday)

Flipped the quilt over and attached the bias binding to the front with nice mitered corners.

And voila!

This will be washed before I officially sleep under it

This is why I am washing it. It spent the last week being dragged around my studio, thrown on the floor or falling on the floor. Plus there are little threads all over it so hopefully the dryer will pick them up.

Lessons learned - READ the direction before you start or a project will take much longer than you think. 

* Quilt washed on delicate, cold, with synthrapol and 2 color catchers. Dryed on delicate.

Day two and all strips joined

I was on a roll until I got to the 5th strip to join. This is the strip just below the top strip. On all of these strips I had at least two inches of batting sticking out as well as backing like this.

The 5th strip not only didn't have batting that stuck out beyond the quilt top but didn't even go to the trim line of the fabric. I will have to add some thin strips of batting or else there will be a void in the thickness. I can't even imagine how this happened.

After getting the strip of batting to stick to the fabric using a glue stick, I carefully trimmed the excess batting away and ironed it flat. In the other area where the batting was short. I used a zig-zag stitch to join it. Later I realized the stitching showed on the quilt front.

After the front joining strip was stitched down I was comfortable removing the zig-zag stitches showing on the front. 

Now all the strips were joined and I could start on the quilting of the front strips.

I had left this wide margin of unquilted strip thinking I was supposed to join only the fabric. Again, this was because I had not read my own tutorial - sigh. I still would have had to do something with the actual strip whether I had quilted to the edge of the strip or not so I guess this "looks better".

There was one spot where the seam was open on the backing so I hand stitched a small "patch" to hold it in place then just quilted over the front. The open seam did not show on the front, only the back. It was about  1/4" but I was not taking any chances.

The quilting of the narrow area ( 6 feet long though) took a LONG time. First the old Bother didn't want to work on fabric that thick. Then the NEW Janome Horizon just refused to work at all so I was back to my big Brother. I adjusted the upper thread tension and it worked a treat!! All done but it took hours!

Now it was time for the border. On strip 6 ( actually the first strip I made) I had allowed a huge flap of batting and backing. 

I did a flip and sew of 2 " of the green and 4" of the purple

I had to add batting and backing to the opposite end but it came out fine.

Today is over for me. I am exhausted dragging that heavy quilt around trying to sew while eliminating the weight (pulling). Tomorrow I will have the border strips on all four sides and have them quilted as well.

I may or may not have the binding on. We'll see. However I am doing a tutorial on the most exciting way for making bias strips I have ever seen. Now I do live a solitary life and everyone in the world may know this method of making massive amounts of bias tape but I kind of doubt it so don't forget to stop by an see the tutorial.

What a day

Today was the day to stop all procrastination and get at least one strip joined to another. After realizing that I had enough purple and green fabric to join any way I wanted. I did a dry run on scrap fabric.

This was a small sandwich on which I tested stitches. I cut it in half so I would have two straight cuts to butt.

Joining strips 1" and 2.5"

This is where I really made lots of extra work for myself sewing only the backing fabric. Did I bother to read MY tutorial on QAYG joing? No!

I know this looks sloppy and it is but I was just checking out the process of butting with no additional width of either fabric or batting.

The upshot of this was a huge amount of frustration. I had even washed and dried 6 1/4 yards of fabric to use on the backing side  to conserve the dyed fabric for the front.

After I actually read the tutorial, I saw how much extra work I had made. 

A printed copy of the tutorial

I also measured the distance  from each circle side to side and then placed the strips (butted) in rows. 

If I added extra material and batting it would look "off" so I knew butting was the way to go.  

I cut 1" strips for the backing side and 2.5" strips for the front. I ironed the 2.5" strips in half (1.25") and stitched them with the front strip, the quilted 6' strip and the backing strip.  

The first strip I agonized over making sure I sewed it perfectly. I did sew it perfectly but I stitched the wrong side of the strip. I had to tear that out. It was a long day with LOTS of mistakes but I soon got the hang. 

The first day I got three strips connected. I first had to trim the edge to be connected.

The I could attach the front 2.5" and back 1" strips and butt the edges of the strip

All of the joining seams came out this perfectly TIL DAY 2. I ironed them

then ironed the now folded 2.5" strip (now 1.25") over the join

and stitched the front strip down. This is the join as seen from the back.

Ironing the strips before stitching

The back of the quilt

  End of the first day. Mission completed - 3 strips joined