Continuous Bias and HK Hem Finishes
Bias tape can be a pain to make, but there’s a few ways that are easier than others.
Bias strips are very useful for a lot of things. The make good seam finishes, hem finishes, add cute detailing, and are pretty cheap in terms of things we do. Here, I stuck some on this netting, which would stop the raw edges of the net from snagging delicate fabrics like chiffons.
Bias tape comes in a few colors and widths, and it can get expensive if you want to us it to bind a petticoat hem or something similar.
Bias strips are strips of fabric cut on the bias of the fabric.
I made a graphic on the importance of bias a while ago but it turns out it’s faster to make a new one, so here you go.
The green lines are the threads in your woven fabric. Since our woven fabric here isn’t made out of a stretchy fiber like spandex or elastic, the individual threads in the fabric will not get longer or shorter if you pull directly on the fibers. This is why we line a lot of what we’re cutting up on the grainline, which is the line the threads run in. Most of the time, when we’re not using a stretch fabric, we don’t want our fabric to stretch.
But magical things happen on the bias of the fabric. The bias is a line that runs 45 degrees to the grainline. When you pull on the bias of a fabric, it stretches. This is because you’re not pulling on any one thread, so the whole fabric can compress and rebound. Because of this bias stretch, you can use bias strips to band or bind or face curves.
You can also cut fabric on the bias to get a woven to act more like a knit. Fabrics cut on the bias drape and shift a little bit more, which is great when you’re looking for that, and can be a problem if you forgot to cut on the grain and now have a shifty piece to work with. (Bias cut full-body gowns were more or less invented by Madeleine Vionnet and this specific image is from Edith Head)
One of the other cool things about bias strips is that they don’t fray. They can get a little rough at the edge, but they will never reach the point where long, ugly threads are releasing themselves from your hem and making a desperate break for freedom.
There’s nothing really sneaky tricky about making bias strips. You just set your fabric down, draw strips at a 45 degree angle, cut them, sew them, and repeat until you’re bored to tears.
...
or you can use the Magical Continuous Spiral Bias Strip Method and avoid almost all of that.
(Warning: I’m still moving, and most importantly, I have not yet got an area run to cover up this gross, stained carpet. You will just have to look at this gross, stained carpet. My apologies)
So the first thing you want to do is to get yourself a rectangle of fabric. This one’s about 13.5″x44″ (3/8ths of a yard of a regular quilting fabric). Start by ripping a little bit off each cut side, so that you know you’ll have an on-grain rectangle.
Then, fold both short sides into little triangles like the one I have here, and cut the triangles off to use for later.
Now, take a marking tool of some kind and a ruler, and mark lines every 2″ apart.
2″ is a good measure for this, because that makes you a 1/2″ bias tape, or gives you some extra with the HK finish.
If you’re not sure which direction to go, look at the grain in the fabric. If you can follow a thread from the fabric down the length of a strip, you cut the strips in the wrong direction. These are bias strips, so your lines you’re drawing should go along the bias.
(I should really have cropped these pictures. I’m just not feelin’ it today, folks. That’s what my cell phone looks like, sorry)
So now you’re going to fold your parallelogram into a tube, matching each line to another line.
The trick is that you don’t want to line each piece up with the other end of that line. You need to offset your loop, so that each line connects with the line under it. Basically, you’re making a giant spiral.
Take care when you’re pinning this to make sure your lines actually match, and then sew it down.
Once you’ve got it sewn, you’ll see the end you should start at. It’ll be hanging down at one end, because of the way you offset your pinning.
Now you can start cutting along that line, and it’ll carry you all the way down to the very bottom of the strip.
Now you have a long bias strip, and only had to sew one seam.
But wait, there’s more. Take those two triangles you cut off the end of your fabric. Sew them like this, so they unfold into their own parallelogram.
Now grab your ruler, mark 2″ lines along the bias like you did for the first one, and use those too.
I like to wash my marks out of my tape in hot water, and then give it a really good press before making it into tape or binding.
You can use your iron and form it all into tape, if you want.
However, if you’re doing a super long, bound hem, like for a petticoat, you can save yourself some time and do a different kind of hem finish.
Here’s my petticoat netting, and here’s my bias strip. Since I’m using a bias strip for this, I don’t really need pins. Line the edge of the bias strip and the edge of the netting. Sew the two of them together at whatever width you want your binding to be. I wanted 1/2″, so I sewed a line 1/2″ away from the edge of the netting and the edge of the bias strip.
I took it over to my iron and gave it a quick press open.
Then I folded it back behind the netting, covering the hem edge of the netting.
Sew it down in the ditch. This means your needle should be very close to the front of your binding, but shouldn’t actually be sewing on the front of your binding.
Now you just go through it with your scissors or some pinking shears, and cut away that excess binding. I cut it pretty close here, and it might have been better to have 1/16th of an inch more as wiggle room. Since it’s bias-cut, the edge won’t fray on you. Use your pinking shears if you’re really worried or if you want that vintage look.
And there you go, way faster than bias tape for huge, long things like the hems of lolita skirts.
