My new venture ~ Im Sew Biased

Ive been making bias binding for over 8 years now, and I still love how each fabric turns out once it is make into bias.

Soooooo......Ive started up a new little business called Im Sew Biased selling my handmade 100% cotton bias binding.

My bindings are available for purchase in 4 meter lots on my felt shop.  I know, its under littlekiwis, but I cant be bothered starting up a new email and new felt store just for this....I would end up forgetting to check the emails and then missing orders...so its better that they are all in one. Dont you think?

This is my gorgeous logo, done by the very talented Janelle from Inkee Press pop on over to her facebook page and say hi..she does the most faboulous work ever.

She also runs Early Buds which provides boxes of products/information to parents of premmie babies.

Anyways, I digress...I've been pinning tonight, trying to find some really cute little uses for bias binding... and here are some of my favourites.

We all know kids make holes in their jeans, well this is a perfect way to make sure they get more wear out of them...and they get some cute little shorts/capris at the same time.

And here's another one for pants.

A simple tutorial on how to sew bias binding.

when making a dress or top, you can use bias instead of a facing, this blog has a great tutorial on how to do this.

This gorgeous dress just jumped out at me...I would LOVE to try one one day.  Hmmm may have to stop Brylie from stealing all my scraps of fabric.

There are so many other great uses for bias binding, and as I find more ideas I will be sure to post them on my facebook page  and if you make anything using my binding I would LOVE to see a photo of it.

Elijah's Birthday

I'm finally getting around to posting about Elijah's 3rd birthday.  

I was very impressed with myself with how his cake turned out.  Although it was more green and pink than Blue and Red...lol He loved it anyway and thats all that matters.

Blue Velvet cupcakes

Left over icing piped onto krispie biscuits.

Very proud of his cake.

Opening presents, he was a very spoilt little boy.

 

The CARNAGE afterwards.

Now I have to start planning little miss almost 1s party in 3 weeks.

Here she is practicing to eat her cake.

Skirt Week 2013 'take 2'

Well I finished my ruffle pop skirt, and I must say, its GORGEOUS, I love the tie dye diva patterns, so easy to follow and you end up with great results.

This little set is going to be part of a showcase at Sew you say handmade markets in June.

This one is a size 5 and my oldest daughter has all but claimed it, though it is for a showcase so I have to make her one...I made her a bolero today, skirt is next on the list.

Isn't it just gorgeous.  it is made using a HeidiandFinn pattern.

Skirt Week 2013

Thanks to Petitbebe I found out that its Skirt week over at Crafterhours. So I decided that I would like to enter a skirt in aswell.  

I have a Layered ruffle skirt by Tie Dye Diva all cut out and ready to sew tonight so I will enter that when its done, but to start with I'm going to enter the watermellon skirt I made Brylie.

And here it is in the flickr group.

I would love some votes when voting is opened.

Elijahs Birthday Preparation

My little boy turns 3 on Sunday...wow where did the time go.

They start off so small...8lbs

get bigger ...

and cheekier 

He's my clown

Tomorrow is his party and so today I have been busy cooking the cake and other treats.  

Mini blue velvet cupcakes using this recipe from Amybites.  They are more a green though, I wasnt prepared to pour in ALL my blue colouring to make them bright blue.

I promise I will post some photos of the afternoon tea.

How to make BIAS BINDING

 

For a while now I have had people asking me how to make bias binding.  I make all my own for all my kiwiana bibs, and like to think that I have developed an easy (well easier) way of making bias binding.

 

I usually use a 112x112cm piece of fabric and this will give me 20ish metres of perfect binding.

 

For this tutorial I used a piece that measured 50x50cm and I ended up with just over 4meters of binding.

 

 Binding is an amazing little invention, it allows you to cover up raw edges with a decorative piece of fabric and the nifty thing about it is that it is cut on the bias (diagonal to the grain of the fabric) so that it goes around curves really well.  Making it good for binding arm holes and hems.

 

WHAT YOU NEED:

A square of fabric

Ruler

rotary cutter

scissors

iron

ironing board

cutting board

CLOVER bias maker

 

Yay you have all your bits and pieces, now we can start.

 

1 ~ Lay your square wrong side up.

2 ~ Fold in half DIAGAONALLY as picture.



3 ~ Unfold.
 

4 ~ Flip the bottom triangle so that the straight edge is at the top instead of the bottom.



5 ~ Now put right sides together, keeping the same formation as the photo.  SEW along the top edge using a 1cm seam.



6 ~ Unfold and your piece should look like this.

 

7 ~ Flip over and it should look like this.

 

8 ~ Now comes the tricky part.  Turning into a tube, The two short, non stretchy sides need to be sewn together and they also need to be offset by 5cm (if you are using the same size bias maker that I used) I have a video to try explain this, so click here to see it.

 

9 ~ When sewing the second seam make sure you open out the 1st seam and sew over it.

 

10 ~ Your tube should look like this!  Are you still with me? Great, now you can iron the seams open and we can get on with the cutting.

11 ~ With the bias maker I used you need to have a 5cm stripe so put your tube on your pointy end of your ironing board and using your ruler, measure 5cm in from the raw edge. Do this as far as you can go then cut along the marks.

 

 

OR

You can use your ruler and a rotary cutter... I have a special ruler with 5cms market on it, you can use any ruler that is 5cm wide. this one is made of Perspex.

 

This is what you will end up with after all the cutting.

Now to iron it into folded binding.

 

Lay your strip along your ironing board wrong side up, and thread into your bias maker...

 

Iron the folded part of your binding as you pull the bias maker along your strip.  Keep relatively close to the point where the bias binding comes out so that the two raw edges are as close to each other as possible.

 

When you get to joins, slow down and make sure they go through the bias maker ironed open. They are sometimes a little thick so you need to do a bit of a wiggle and pull to get them through.

 

Now this is what you have got.   You can now roll it up for storage.

 

 

Thank you for using my tutorial, if there were any parts that you didn't understand PLEASE let me know and I will clarify.