Lessons

Lesson Info

Adding Binding Tape to a Skirt

So now finding tapes neat I'm going to keep my iron clothes at hands of parts of it unfold themselves for more recent press you can give them a little encouragement to stay where we wanted them and know I'll take my simple tube of fabric soon to be skirt and essentially I'm going to pin this pining tape around the raw edge at the bottom remember if your skirt has a directional fabric you want to make sure that you cut it and so it right side up but so for this one worth the bottom of the rainbow when you're using a fabric like this with the rainbow zonda dot et cetera is it important to match the pattern to make this seem invisible? You know what I didn't with this one I just left it pretty casual because it's a little girl's skirt and also the way that the skirt falls is very structured and layered I mean excuse me is very it's very gathered and so it just sort of kind of has becomes part of the design and isn't quite as clear but if you make for example the barcelona skirt I make so ...

many of when you stitch it in the salvage is aligned in the back which is the same way for the women's card you'll end up with a really cool mirror effects from the fabric manufacturer so that it's lined up in a very tangible way yeah so we can put the binding to make her away for now. Yeah. Did you say the narrow side out or the minute this case? It's not as important because we'll be sick, sagging butt when you are sowing and you're using commercially made by his tape or doing a single straight such instead of success, I would recommend something like theme narrower when the side that you're sewing and the wider one underneath on the underside of your work so that you have a better chance of catching it neatly and you'll just see. And when you unwrap a package of commercial bias tape, that's just made that way intentionally for home source. So I'm going to start right here with my pink binding tape, and I'm gonna pennant over the raw edge of the fabric. I'm going to be stitching on the right side of the skirt so you'll see everything that we're doing and take your pens, and I've chosen to start penning mine to the side of the center seem I'm going to leave the first few inches open like this and pen around, shaking my finding tape our if it's wrapped around itself and just continue pending every couple inches, and I'll tell you why I'm orienting it that way in a minute only reach all the way around. So essentially what you're going to want to do is talk this ross straight edge of the bottom of the skirt right into the bite binding tape almost like it's hugging it and you'll use your pens every few inches just to keep it neat and straight so rooty or skirt another few inches take your binding tape press with the iron or fingers and smooth it down so it's really grabbing that raw edge another thing that's nice with this win this one heading method is that this is a very, very lightweight skirt and which is great it's very it's very summer appropriate you could wear it in the winter with leggings or another layer tights but this biting tape gives the him just a little weight and happiness so it hangs nicely it looks great without it but that is sort of a nice side effect is going to keep stitching the same way I mean excuse me pending the same way I'm leaping ahead two a couple minutes in the future how's this working holly you look a little bit confused. I was too busy site did you fold it in half and now you're yes let me show you I will be happy to show you again that's I was ironing yeah no, I know totally I know and with ironing and cutting it can take a few extra minutes so basically once you put go through the machine you're gonna have this need flat one inch wide to call it that tape then you fold it so that the raw edges air both tucked inside and a half inch is essentially showing s so it's a double folded binding tape and you press that with iron the same way as you did to create initially you just press it so that it's a folded finding tape like that largest gertie making them feel sell forces for a child as well through it's the same time so it is all so many it's just my eyesight apologies it just look bigger when you held it out I don't think why is the little some almost back to where I started and here's the last thing I'll mention about this pending process as you can see you're going to end up with the binding tape here I'll put the sauce pennant and then show you the biting tape is going to need tio join and one thing you're going to run into is that your binding tape will also have a join from its first creation where you added two strips together this is essentially going toe meet right here and obviously we don't want to have to have two joints and quarter inch because it's going to be bulky and hard to so so what I'm going to do here is actually trim away some of this one my initial start point in a cut it free, and then, as you can see, I'll have ah, couple inches and between the two bindings because we joined to forty for roughly forty four inches in strips to former brining tape, and now we're binding about forty four inches around, so to join it, we just need this extra couple inches, but making sure that the two joins don't land on top of each other it's like when you bind a quote or a cloth napkin with finding tape, you just want to make sure these joints aren't rated a corner. It just makes it harder to so and so for this one, I trimmed a little of my initial edge just to give it some breathing room from that other join that's why I left it a little flexible at the back, as I said when we started. So the next step for this and this is where we are now we've got a neatly penned finding tape around the base of what's going to be our skirt there's, some extra hanging that I want to turn away, just leave some overlap of about an inch here and cut it will say this for another project that would be really huge as like, maybe just a little, even a little hair band or something to go with the skirt. I'm going to set my machine for his exact stitching again we did straight stitch for the back of our skirts so we'll just it now um I like first exactly I liked my width on ah high a wider with about five five and a half I liked my length on too so it's ah two or two and a half so it's a fairly close stitch but not like a sudden such your application and then I'm going to change it to zigzag I'm using a satin such foot for this and I'm happy to repeat those machines settings if anybody wants to hear them so leaving a tail and not sitting there I'm going to start sewing my binding on as I mentioned before I'm going to sew the right side of my finding tape and skirt fabric drop my needle in so it's fairly centered but it's closer to the top of the binding tape and I'm just going to such forward with the sig zag there's no need to back such here because we'll catch up later and I do recommend your joint on the back of the skirt just because there will be a little noticeably back stitching and it's just one of those things that's nice to keep off the very front focal point of your entire work right so stitching forward I'm going to go around the perimeter of the skirt and I'm going to stop well before the open space let's make sure that's to nuke it sounded a little clunky yeah every thread the needle and just using the automatic needle threat er it's really nice for things like that okay I still remember when my best friend taught me ana so and she went back to north carolina after visiting me I thought how am I ever going to remember how to thread this machine when she's gone with the automatic needle thread or you can pull the thread back through the needle and then easily get it instead of having to feed it through yourself expressing interest in sewing to all this you're doing for her I just started doing some hand sewing with her which was really fun I don't think she's quite at the attention span for the machine okay but she's interested good so hansen was fun we did we actually use some of my scrap fabrics from these classes and she layered on the yellow in the purple from the rainbow together so I'm gonna do a little scrap sewing on my extra by any tape it's perfect uh because that's exactly what I'll be stitching through and just see how the stitch feels now that sounds a lot happier. Okay great humanistic with that the nice thing is what this wider zigzag ahs it's going to be a good join and it's going to be catch the wider binding tape nicely but it's also very easy to get a good finding tape join and when you're stitching with a straight stitch along the top edge of the binding tape as I said, you can kind of have a jump around a little bit and and ms on the under layer and going back and mending that is fine it's not hard or anything but it's nice to kind of use a simpler approach that's easier okay, so take tio start sitting here so I'll just look at my underside that looks good and a narrower zigzag is totally fine for this I'm just doing a relatively wide one justice I like look and it's simple so what I do is just hold my project with my right hand and I use my left hand to just make sure that the multiple layers air just feeding through the machine neatly it's certainly nothing that's too complicated but it's easier than having, you know, just the fabric start pulling from the weight of the heavier part of the project slipping off the table. So now I'm coming tio this join area that I mentioned, I'm going to stitch over the join a little more carefully and slowly than I do on simple ones where there's no extra fabric folded underneath using the flywheel to click forward if something stubborn is a great way to gently go over somewhere that's a little bit more stubborn so speaking of that I want to just start advancing at this way now so you get a sense of it as you can see the feed dogs are still moving which are the under for beginning sewers underside is being moved along by feed dogs which just kind of keep your material moving but the flywheel is going one such a time and as you can see it's just navigating that join area beautifully without hitting it like a bit of a row likas if you're driving your car normal speed and go over a road bump not ideal sometimes so going to stitch for just another inch or so and then I'm going to show you how to join the two ends of the raw tape all right? We're almost there this skirt is so quick I loved that so now I'll just show you her current work as you can see for close up for me just fold this fabric second hold it a little more readily the fabric has just a really nice high contrast edge that's very cute like a little informal fund casual one if once you watched this several times if the tape is gets caught and is ah not lying flat you can add later a street stitch around the perimeter that will just flatten it neatly it's really easy to do any kind of alterations or updates to these type of garments cause they're so simple so now I'll show you how to make this easy quick him joint so press my binding tape edges the's parts of you haven't sonia down very girl, so thes already we want to overlap that you raw edges where if you can see here the server lapse, I'd say bye an inch and a half give or take that's too long for our joint, so what we'll need is for these two overlap by exactly half a niche, so what I'll do for that is holding them together like this, so they're pretty aligned I'm going to use this half inch mark and figure out where that should go here this you can use I'll use off a brick marker to make it more obvious, but essentially if you're thinking of this as how it would join together, you'll want a one half inch overlap, so using that you'll see the half inch markets a central one here, so I'm going to cut it right here and not for anyone who hasn't used one of these. This is a washable fabric marker always tested if you're using it, especially on the outside of a garment project or anything that's going to show but it's normally removed with cold water try not to press it while it's so blue before you removed with water because he can set it so now I have my two finding tape edges and this is the last join that will do for the tape being careful not to twist it you're just going to take these too simple fining tape edges and penned them together you can press some flat or you can just leave them like this just opened with your fingertips but you want the raw edges at one end aligned right sides together and right uh and wrong says of the fabric on the outside and that is just the half inch is going to be stitched together with a quarter inch seam allowance here effectively subtracting all the extra tape the tape that you don't need saw such forward reverse just to back such and hold the seam and then go straight again and this is the one thing you have to do it this entire project is so simple but you do need to switch back to a straight stretch for this and not is exact this exact that you've been using to do the hem you cans exact these together but it will be a little bit bulky and messy so switch back to a straight stretch and then go forward like that mine let's see my threat jumped out there so I will just catch it again and re so that automatic needle threat er it makes it so much easier so I've got my streets touch and my now on pen to fabric stopping them back together so same thing back statutes such foreign and backstage to hold the scene now you've been back sitting here susan on one of our guests online fb users saying when do you use the back stitch and when is it not important? The back stitch is crucial when it's a scene that needs to stand alone or the start of something you need to be strong and not unravel it is not crucial when it's going to be covered like, for example, if it's going to disappear inside binding tape, for example and in the apple case some of them weren't is important because they were gonna be covered by other layers. But yes, back stitching is crucial for garment construction and other structural things for things like patch worker applicator layering where it's going to be underneath something eventually or caught within a strong seem not as important. Ok, why would you use a six at a zigzag stitch here instead of a strength mainly a couple very simple reasons and a street stitches a great way to go a swell I knew that you know, for a beginner friendly class it's kind of nice to have something like a zig zag because it's very easy to catch all layer because the stitches wider for a straight stitch it's what I normally dio but on adding hymns but I wanted to make something that wouldn't be frustrating to ah a newer so us you might not have done as many of the binding tape joins and didn't want to spend, you know as much time necessarily correcting little mistakes on the back with this exact as you can see here this is let me find a good example without a seam near it this is the zigzag on the front and this is this exact on the back when you so a straight stretch you have to catch all of these layers near the top but not go too far up so that you don't you don't miss the bottom layer and it's just kind of nice with this exact you because it gives it sort of almost like a slightly more stuff structural join so the bottom of the skirt has a little body to it, so now I've got uh this join pressed back in it was actually kind of answering the other question why did it's all just de mystify it a bit by opening up back out and showing you the the guts of the scene? This was my join I pressed a flat and then I pressed both folds towards the center again so you can see it and now I'm going tio tuck my skirt edge right inside the same way I did before and when is exactly what all together to complete the skirt him so it's the same way I did it initially except this time speaking of your earlier question from a viewer j k o I am going to backstage because we want to make sure that this stays together through thirty machine washes and at least three or four school years so I'm going to drop my needle in set it back actually he's my order change I wanna set it zigzag keeping my same stitch setting says before which were with pretty wide on five, five and a half lengths to in the street for its exact stitch on a drop my needle and now that my zigzag a set back stitch a couple stitches and then go forward until I meet my original place where the seam started and then back such again to hold it now I'm coming to my one last joins I'm going to do the same thing where I walk walk my machine through it by advancing the fly we all rather than stitching full speed ahead just so it doesn't skip this is a great heavy duty machine but sometimes if you're not his experience was sewing it can be disconcerting to serve or something that suddenly thicker than the rest of the project. Great well there's my ham and now before I get up so I don't start sewing in a few minutes the other way I want to switch it back to a straight stitch so that isn't forgotten in a minute salt trump's and threads and one thing to mention is with the smith, and you're not losing any of the length of a skirt to the him. The other one. I'll show you in a few minutes at the end of this segment, really does lose a bit of length to the him, because you're folding it twice. So this is a great skirt for, you know, a slightly longer length or slightly older child. And one thing I should mention is the eighteen inch half yard measurement is perfect for a younger child, like a early elementary school kid. But you could easily make this a longer skirt for an older, taller girl by changing that to, say, a twenty twenty two twenty four inch skirt.