Archive for the ‘Sewing Tutorials’ Category
January 5, 2010
Now that we have our bias strips cut, we need to join them end to end to create a long strip, cover our cording & apply it to the pillow face.
First to join the separate pieces of bias strips. Each of your strips will have angled ends as shown (below).
Now you’ll want to baste stitch your cording into place. A zipper foot works best for this. This is simply to keep the cording encased in the bias trim. If you get really good at the whole process of working with trim, you’ll find you can encase the cording and assemble the pillow all in one step. But, when just starting, it’s good to go ahead baste stitch your cording.
Now we’re ready to baste the cording on to the pillow’s face fabric. I’ve finished the edges of the pillow’s face and backing fabric. It’s nice to do that to keep things from unraveling inside. If the pillow doesn’t have a zipper, it’s not necessary to finish the interior edges since you’ll never access them. But since we’ll have a zipper, I serged those edges. If you don’t have a serger, you can do a zig zag stitch right over the edge on your regular sewing machine, and you’re good to go.
Apply the cording to the face of the pillow (below). Note to start stitching about 1 1/2″ from the end of the cording. This will allow us to join the beginning and ending of the cording when the time comes.
Sooner or later, you’ll come to a corner. You’ll need to do a little surgery on your cording to get it to turn a nice 90 degrees at each corner. Your pillow is square after all. Here’s a diagram below:
Here’s a pic of cutting at a 45 degree angle to allow the cording to turn at the corners (below). When you get to the corner and need to turn, drop your needle down to hold things in place, raise your foot and turn everything 90 degrees to head up the next side. Once turned, lower your foot and start sewing. Since your needle was lowered, you can pick up right where you left off.
Keep going all the way around, cutting your corners as you go. When you come back around to the beginning of the cording, it’ll look a little like this below. Cut the cording about 1 1/2″ past the starting point.
Next you’ll need to trim the cording itself inside the strip, but not the strip. To do this, I open up the stitches that are holding the cording inside and reveal the cording. When all is said and done, you’ll want your edge to look continuous, without an overlap. So you’ll need to trim the excess cording inside. It’s a smart idea to put a piece of tape around the cording before trimming, but I didn’t do that here. The cording can fray, and become a little unwieldy, so I’d suggest taping first.
See how I sort of ‘peeled’ the fabric away from the cording in order to trim it inside (above)? Now it’ll join, and I have some extra fabric to turn under and finish off the seam (below).
I turn under the raw edge (above) and rewrap the fabric over the cording. Now I can sew it into place (below).
You can see the turned under edge above. There are of course, lots of ways of joining and finishing this seam. This is what I’ve found easiest to show and explain. Once you do it a few hundred times, you can do it even fancier where you actually join your bias strips together at this seam, thus eliminating that little fold detail.
Next you can apply your backing fabric, insert your zipper, stuff it with your pillow insert and you’re done!
December 30, 2009
There were two things that intimidated me to death when I first starting sewing: bias & zippers.
Bias: I’d heard the term when someone would describe why a skirt flowed so nicely and flattered so well. They’d say That’s because it’s cut on the bias. Aaahhh, of course…on the bias. What the heck does that mean?
If you want to take your DIY sewing projects to the next level in finish and design, you really do need to know about bias. With bias, you can create beautiful trimmed edges and *corded* edges, which is what we’ll do on the shams we’ll create. Yes, you can buy some beautiful premade corded trims out there. But it’s not always easy to find the exact color you need, and they can be very pricey. By creating custom bias trim yourself, you can really create that ‘pulled together’ look we all love.
Here are a couple illlustrations that show the basic anatomy of a bolt of fabric and how bias lays out on it.
To get started, we’ll need a piece of fabric to cut up into strips which we’ll join together end-to-end to cover our cording. The amount of fabric to cut up depends on 1) the size of your finished pillows and 2) the size of the cording you’re covering. Here we’re making (3) 26″ pillows, and the cording is chunky, 3/4″ diameter, so we’ll be cutting 3″ strips to cover it. I’ll need approximately 30″ of 54″ wide fabric for the cording.
I’m sure there’s a mathematical equation to figure out exctly how much fabric you’ll need base upon the total linear feet you’ll use, and the size of the cording you’re covering. If that equation exists, I’m sure I wouldn’t understand it myself, let alone be able to explain it in terms everyone else could understand. As with everything else in learning, trial and error is the best teacher.
First thing we’ll do it cut a 30″ piece of the fabric we’ll use for the cording. We’re aiming for nice square edges here. Accuracy counts in sewing, unfortunately.
Now we’ll cut along our nice straight gridded board lines and get a 30″ swath of fabric. We’re removing the selvages here too. (below)
Next begins the series of origami-like folding that will result in nice bias cut strips (below). For this first step, it’s not necessary to align on to cutting board’s grid. You’re going to fold and turn coming up.
This is sort of like the magician who starts his trick by telling you to watch his hands closely. The lower right corner starts the folding here (below).
Keep pulling the corner up diagonally up to the left until it begins to align with the top edge. It’ll happen, you’ll see (below).
Now we’re going to turn the whole piece so that the 45 degree edge (above) is aligned on the vertical lines of your board (below).
Now we’re going to tidy everything up a bit and align it on your board’s gridded line (below).
Finally, we can start cutting (below)
This is what you’ll end up – now the fun can start! (below)
Coming up next — Joining Your Bias Strips and Covering Cording!
December 29, 2009
In this DIY series, I’m going to attempt to clearly show and describe how to make a zippered and envelope sham. We’ll see how it goes! You can use these techniques to make beautiful pillows of any shape and size. I’ll be showing a 26″ square pillow sham here, with a custom corded edge detailing.
There are several assumptions made here: 1) you have a sewing machine with a few feet: a standard foot, and a zipper foot. 2) You have some tools for cutting into accurate, square sizes. If you’d like to get into making the most of your machine and DIY ability, you should invest in a large cutting board, ruler & a rotary cutter. They’re all used in these descriptions.
You can take a look at what you’ll be able to make with these instructions…a beautiful, reversible large pillow sham with a super chunky custom corded edge. It looks good enough to eat.
Coming up next, Creating Custom Bias Trim…
December 28, 2009
Tomorrow I’ll be showing step-by-step directions for making your own pillow shams. It’ll include king size shams & 27″ square pillows.
Here’s a sneak peek at the fabric used…
