Black Floral Rayon, Take Two

I promised that I'd share the fate of the leftover piece of the gorgeous black floral rayon that I used for my recent Butterick 4948 and today's the day!

When I cut that dress out, I had to cut it on the cross-grain since the flowers bloomed horizontally along the length of the fabric. This meant that I had a 12" strip the full width of the fabric when I finished. It seemed obvious to fold it over and make a scarf, even if it was a little short -- very French, anyhow!

But I'd cut the skirt maxi length, and when I tried the dress on, the length and the print and my short height did not work together at all, so I cut 6" off the bottom of the skirt to bring it to knee length. So now I also had two 6" wide chunks of fabric left over as well. I cut both of them in half and stitched them together to make two shorter 12" blocks, and sewed those on  to the ends of my original long piece. The varying directions of the print didn't matter because the fabric was going to be all rolled up together anyhow in the end. And it made the scarf just long enough to wear with nice hanging tails.

The scarf went together smoothly, I turned it and hand stitched the opening and there you have it, a very soft, light and colourful spring/fall weight scarf. Or a decorative one to wear with an outfit. It feels heavenly against the neck, it is so unbelievably soft and smooth!

So what did I have left? A few oddly shaped large bits from cutting the dress. I got out my rotary cutter and mat and trimmed some one inch wide bias strips from each bit that was big enough and stitched those all together to make a long bias strip. This will be lovely to cover some seams in a future project.


So I used up almost all of this beautiful fabric in one way or another. You can stretch your sewing budget by first, trying to buy only the amount you are actually going to need for a project, or in those cases where you have excess, by using those bits for another project. There are many scrappy projects to be found online (scrunchies are apparently hot again), but I also like using mine for things like these ones -- or pocket bags -- or covered buttons -- or trims. It is earth-friendly and also budget-friendly!

Scrapbusting with Bias Tape

I found this little gadget in the sale bin at my local Fabricland this week -- at 90% off it was a no-brainer to pick it up!

I do love bias tape and have always meant to use up my random dressmaking scraps -- the ones that are too large to chuck but too small to do much else with -- in making loads of bias tape. Now that I have this handy little helper, I had to finally give it a go.

I refreshed my memory of how to do this in the round with this video:




Doing it this way is quick and easy...even easier with a handy tool! You can do it with a pin stuck into your ironing board, apparently, but I never found that very easy to manage.

In any case, I used a scrap left over from the dress I have just finished (love this fabric!) and now have a nice colourful bit of cotton bias tape. Though I must admit it did take me longer than 5 minutes.

For this 1/2"Bias tape maker, I had to cut a 1" strip. I had one that I'd trimmed -- not really bias but this fabric is quite stretchy so I thought I'd use this as my first quick experiment.

You just need a pin to pull the fabric through to start, and then a hot iron to press the fabric as it comes out of the nose of the thingy as you pull the little handle. I found that I had to use my hand to keep the curled form as I pressed it, but it really helped to have the device holding the form even if a bit loosely.

Voila -- a strip of bias(ish) tape! I found that the finished tape was quite narrow,so left it as single fold tape. Another solid press to flatten it out well, and then it was stored on an empty thread spool -- handy, that. 

But then I wanted to try it again with it all done properly, so cut a 12 x 12 square of cotton check, and then remembered that somewhere in my stash I had a 1" tape maker. After a bit of searching, I found it, and so cut the bias strips 2" wide for a finish of 1". I used a Frixion pen to draw on the bias lines. 

Then I cut the strips, ran it through the tape maker and secured it to the end of the ironing board and kept going.

I had quite a bit of bias tape when I was done. And I really like how the check looks on the bias. I think I might use up the rest of that old apron front to make more! When I had run it all through, I then pressed it again to make a double fold bias tape in the finished width I wanted, with one edge just barely meeting the other. It looks great, and will be very useful!

Let's see how much more I can get out of my scrap bag!