Handmade bias tape (or bias binding, as I’ve also heard it called) can really dress up your sewing. Yes, you can buy the pre-made stuff at the store but it’s expensive and very limited in terms of color. When you make your own, you can match your tape to your project exactly. Patterned bias tape pretty much always looks rad.
The good news is that it’s easy to make. Let’s do it!
1. Start with a square or rectangle of your fabric. I don’t like to use the entire width of the fabric for small projects because you end up with A LOT of bias tape that way. A small starting square means less waste for smaller projects.
2. Cut into your fabric along the diagonal using a ruler, a cutting mat and a rotary cutter. If you don’t have a rotary cutter, use a piece of tailor’s chalk to mark out your lines and then cut along them with a pair of scissors.
3. Turn all of your fabric into strips of the same width. You can make tape of any size but be aware that the smaller your tape the harder it is to deal with. Remember, your finished tape width will be one quarter the size of your starting width.
4. Now, join all the strips together to form one continuous strip. Some people like to square off the edges and join their strips together with a diagonal seam. I like to leave the edges cut on the diagonal and join them as you see below:
5. Iron your seam flat with lots of steam.
6. Fold the edges of you tape inwards towards the middle of your tape. Press.
7. Fold your tape in half lengthwise so that the unfinished edges are on the inside. Press.
8. You’re done! Now it’s time to insert your bias tape. There are several ways to do this. I’ll show you my favorite. First, I open up the tape. I start on the *back* of the item in question. With right sides facing, I sew along the first ironed fold.
9. When I get to a corner, I stop at the place in the fabric where the two seam allowances should meet. (In this case, I stopped 1/4″ short of the edge of the fabric.) Then I fold the tape back on itself as seen below:
9. I begin the intersecting seam at the same point that I left off the last one. (Again, this is the point in the fabric where the two seam allowances intersect.)
10. Once you’ve gone all the way around the piece, Fold the free edge of the tape over the exposed edge and arrange the mitered corners so that they match up correctly. Press with steam. Pin if nessessary and top stitch your binding closed.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions.
