You need to cut your fabric on the bias. You’re going to be cutting the fabric strips the same with that we just measured around your welt cord. Cutting on the bias means to cut your fabric on a 45 degree angle. To do this, I’m going to use a cutting knot with a grid that also has your lines for 45 degrees over the outline for you. And I like to use an omnigrid ruler, which is clear and it helps me align things especially if I have to do a 45 degrees.
So, what I’ll do is align my straight edge to my fabric along of one of the straight lines on this grid. Now, take the omnigrid and turn it so it’s out of 45 degree angle, a diamond shape, and there was a horizontal line that runs across the corner, you may not be able see in the video but it is here. And it’s perfect for aligning along one of the horizontal lines on the grid. And this creates for me a nice 45 degree angle on the fabric.
Cutting your fabric on the bias allows you to create welt cording that will bend easily. This is very important if you’re creating pillows, scalped edges, anything that’s going to have nice curved edge, you’ve really to cut your fabric on the bias. This does take a little bit more work and a little bit more time because you are going to end up a short pieces at first that you create a piece to get the knife of that strip you need.
So my first step is to draw by first line at a 45 degree angle on the back of my fabric.
Then I want to slide this down and find 2 ½ inches which is the width of the fabric that I need to cut and align that with the line I just drew. So you may not be able to tell but 1 inch, 2 inches, 2 ½ and I've aligned it with the line that I just drew. And then I can draw another 45 degree line created 2 ½ inch white fabric strip. And I’ll continue this process down my fabric until I think that I've got enough strips drawn out to cut out and then piece together.
So I'm going to continue doing this down drawing 45 degree lines all way down my fabric. Now, I’ll cut those out and then, we’ll piece some and then I’ll show you how to create your welt cording.
And then I'm going to cut out this fabric strips along the drawn lines using a pair of sharp fabric scissors. You can also use a rotary cutter which would probably be faster and a cleaner. I actually have a rotary cutter but my blades are pretty dull and it’s going to cost to me other problems. So I'm just going to go ahead and use my sharp scissors here.
Here are my fabric strips, cut out to 2 ½ inches wide. Your measurement maybe different based on the width of your welt cord. And now, I'm going to show you how to piece this together so that you can have one long fabric strip for your project.
To piece your bias strips, layer strips right sides up would be raw edges face each other looking like this. You don’t want the two edges that look like this facing each other. You want it to look more like that. Then, what I’d like to do, this is my personal technique, is I fold under one side with about quarter of an inch. And just you can kind just finger press this to hold it in place, it doesn’t have to be exactly a corder edge to see if it’s an even press, okay?
Then I’ll fold the back over, and I lay this on top of the second strip aligning the underside raw edge as best I can, but more importantly aligning the top edge and bottom edge. So I’ll position this so that it looks like this. You’ll have a little triangle hanging off here and may even have a triangle hanging off on this side as well.
Once you’ve got the top edge and bottom edge going in a straight line, just carefully lift this up and you may see this. This means that you haven’t cut your fabric at an exactly 45 degree angle. I actually made a mistake and this is not a big deal. I’m just going to trim off the excess here after I've sew these two pieces together. But, holing your finger on the folded edge here, lift this up and then put your finger down here on this raw edge just to hold this little strip in place, and lay it flat for just a moment. It’s going to look something like this for you as well.
I'm going to take a couple of pins and secure these two pieces together, so I’ll take it to the sewing machine. I can sew along this folded crease right here. Now you may not be able to see the crease in the video, but I see it. And then when you’re doing it for yourself you’ll see it as well. And you just need that little visual crease as your sewing guide, so straight line right here. And when you’re done, you just trim off these excess in this fabric and then you’ll fold it back over, and you’ll have a piece by a strip. So I'm going to pin this in a couple of pleat so it doesn’t really turn on me. And then sew it on my machine, and then I’ll show you how all that looks.
Okay, I've now stitched the strip stitch across these two pieces, and I'm going to take my scissors and cut off all this junk here. And then when I fold it over, then I kind of can just press it with your fingers. You’ll see that this edge here is nice and aligned and closed. It’s actually little off here and you’ll enjoy a very creative job here pretty honestly but once everything is sewn around the welt cord, you’ll probably see this.
So, I'm not going to make a big deal about it. I might have missed sewn that if it was something that was going to make a difference, but in this case, I don’t think so. And you see this little triangle right here, we can go ahead and cut that off too. So, it looks like that. So these two strips are pieced, if you have more go ahead and piece them in the same way and then, we will wrap this around—
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