Hello fashion sewers, and welcome to our Fashion Sewing Blog.
In today’s article and FREE online fashion sewing video tutorial, I’m going to demonstrate the technique of cutting your own bias strips.
A sometimes tedious exercise I admit, but, if you prepare correctly and make your own bias strips, you’ll have the ability to sew trims, bias binding, piping and a whole lot more in an instant.
A worthy chore indeed!
To note, there are a few distinct ways to cut your own bias strips. The method I’m about to demonstrate, I believe, is the most time efficient way.
Fashion sewing is not an exact science. If you prefer to cut your bias strips another way, then it’s all down to personal preference.
Cutting Bias Strips – Your Fashion Sewing Tools
The process of cutting bias strips is an easy one.
In the method I’m going to demonstrate you’ll need 3 specific tools. They are -
1 – A cutting mat
2 – A rotary cutter / scissors
3 – A ruler (again the measuring tool of choice is personal to you)
Cutting Bias Strips – Your Fashion Fabric
So we’ve got the tools and are ready to proceed. Now we need to prepare our fashion fabric correctly.
The cutting of bias strips requires that you cut your fashion fabric at a 45degree angle to the straight of grain.
The width of the strip will all depend on your individual sewing projects. Just ensure that you cut long enough strips to avoid seeing a seam join whenever possible.
The process of folding your fashion fabric, ready for cutting is an easy one. I’ll show you how in my video.
Cutting Bias Strips – Video Tutorial
sewing
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How easy was that!
Below, I’d just like to give you a few pointers to ensure that we’ve taken on board everything we need to make cutting bias strips a success.
How to Fold your Fabric
1 – Take one end of the straight grain (selvege) and fold in the corner, creating a triangular shape.
2 – Fold the triangle piece of fabric in half.
3 – Bring one point of the triangle shape, up to the axis. The fabric is now ready and prepared for cutting.
How to Cut Bias Strips Using a Rotary Cutter
1 – Important! You need to use a cutting mat so that the blade of the rotary cutter does not damage your surface.
2 – Place your ruler along the folds of the fabric triangle shape, and cut away about 3mm to create raw edges.
3 – Using either the pre-determined lines on your ruler, or at regular marked out intervals, run the blade of the rotary cutter along the edge to cut.
How to Cut Bias Strips Using Scissors
1 – Place your ruler along the folds of the fabric triangle and cut away about 3mm to create raw edges.
2 – Using a fabric marker, draw a line to indicate the width of your bias strip. Place a couple of pins into the strip to help with accurate cutting.
3 – When cutting using fabric scissors, use long cutting strokes so you don’t produce jagged edges.
I do hope you found this fashion sewing article and tutorial of some use.
If you do have any questions, then please feel free to get in touch.
Happy fashion sewing
About the Author: Colleen G Lea is the founder of Fashion Sewing Blog and co-owner of DC Media Productions. Get more from Colleen at YouTube and Google+.
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