Transcript
Hi. I’m Jennifer from Workroom Social and today I’m going to show you how to apply bias tape. So, we have our bias tape made. You can either make this at home or you can buy pre-made bias tape at any Notions or sewing store.
The first thing you’re going to want to do is take your bias tape, this would be the right side of the bias tape and this would be the wrong side, and you’re going to lay your bias tape right-side down. Then, what you’re going to do is you’re going to go to the raw edge on the right, which is folded in, and you’re going to unfold it. Then, you’re going to line up the raw edge with the raw edge of your fabric. You can pin your bias tape in place to help you control all this fabric before you start sewing.
The bias tape is quite stretchy, so pins are a good idea when you’re doing bias tape. Okay, so I have my bias tape pinned in place and now I’m going to sew the bias tape on and I’m going to sew just to the right of the fold in the bias tape. So the fold is going to be on the left and my stitching is going to be on the right. We’re just doing a straight stitch. I’m using a 2.5 mm stitch length, and we’re just going to go all the way down.
Okay, now when you come to the end, you can just stop. If you’re using pre-made bias tape, you’ll get it on a roll. You might get a couple yards at once so I don’t usually pre-cut my bias tape. I will apply it, then when I get to the end I will cut off the ends so I’m using exactly what I need.
Okay, so now you can see our stitching is just to the right of the fold so that when we fold this back over, it’s right on that line. Okay, now the next step: we’re going to take this whole thing, the bias tape, and we’re going to fold everything over. From here, we’re going to pin this in place and then sew it down.
Now, there’s two ways that you can think of bias tape. Bias tape can be used on the inside of a garment, so if you pretend this yellow is a neckline for example, the pink bias tape could be on the inside of the neckline so you don’t see it at all. It’s just to clean finish your raw edge. But, you can also sew it so that the pink or the bias tape is on the outside and so it’s a little bit more decorative. Either way is fine. It’s totally up to you, but we’re just going to stitch this down just like this right now, and of course you can use pins. We’ll use pins to hold everything in place since this is pretty stretchy.
Okay, and then we’re just going to stitch right on the edge here. Okay, so this is folded now and stitched down. You take this to the iron and give it a good press. When you did that, if this were the right side of your garment, you would have no bias tape showing. It would just be on the inside. Or, if you wanted to use the bias tape on the outside of your garment then you have a really fun, nice, contrasting edge to your garment. So, that’s how you sew bias tape.
