Picture this: you’ve just made the most beautiful quilt ever. It turned out amazing, and now you have leftover binding strips or strips of matching fabric. It’s not enough to make a matching pillow cover, and way to much to throw away. What do you do?
Well, pull out your serger (I have the Janome AirThread 2000D Serger) and have no fear!!
I don’t have any extra binding strips right now, (which is sad because I’ve been sewing lots of quilt tops, just not binding them yet), so I pulled out my scrap bucket and went diving. I found the perfect fabric to try out a Pinterest pin that I had found about making continuous bias tape.
It was so easy to make a long length of bias tape, which you could use for binding around curves, or like I did today, to make ribbon to wrap a handmade gift.
I started off with a square and then cut it on the diagonal to create two triangles.
After the square was cut, I laid them out with two of the straight edges, then sewed them together to make a parallelogram. Then I marked 1.5″ lines, parallel to the bias edges.
Now it was time to offset the marking lines along the bias edge. This is so that you can have one continuous strip made from the square.
After those edges were matched and sewn, it’s time to cut the strip. This was fairly easy to do on the serger, I just lined up the marking line with the knife on the serger and serged it in one continuous line of stitching.
Voila! Serger Ribbon!
You can take this one step further. Instead of just serging the remaining raw edge, you can put decorative threads into your top looper and roll-hem the raw edge and make it pretty. You can even insert fine gauge beading wire to make it wired ribbon, to create 3-D bows on your handmade gifts.
Why not give it a try? You won’t be sorry and you may even find yourself making ribbon for all occasions to keep on hand.
If you don’t have a serger, you can still use this technique with a sewing machine, or you can check out a recent Instagram Live video about joining strips for binding!
We want to see what you create with your serger! Tag us on Instagram with @janomecanada or use #janomecanada in your description.
Thanks for reading! Until next time,
JanomeGirl
Janome Life 