Recently I made my Daughter 'The Holiday Night Pajamas' By Sew A Little Seam (this was purchased via Etsy). It was a great pattern with clear instructions. I made the short version as she wanted me to recreate her Peter Alexander pair that she got for Christmas.
Obviously this meant getting out the satin piping. And here they are!
I have done a few 'Tips On Tuesday' on various piping tips, but I realised that I've never shared my favourite, very simple, but super effective piping tip! (From step 4). Here you'll find the other blogs that I've written before on piping:
Here's this week's piping tips:
1. Take your piping and the fabric pattern piece that you are attaching the piping to. I used 3mm satin piping for my daughters pjs. The image below is 3mm cotton piping in lilac. I find the 3mm size to be perfect for garments. Here you can see the collar piece on the right.
2. Pin the piping to your pattern to see how much piping you will need.
3. When pinning around curves clip into the seam allowance of the piping. This will encourage it to sit flat.
4. Measure where the piping finishes on the pattern piece and mark. This pattern has a 1cm seam allowance, also mark this on the piping. You can see these two markings in black below.
5. Unpick the stitching on the piping to reveal the cord. You only need to unpick 1cm or so past the marking that you made in step 4.
6. Trim the cord up to the seam allowance marking. Effectively you are removing the piping cord within the seam allowance. This will significantly reduce the bulk within the seam allowance when attaching to the garment.
7. Fold back the piping after trimming the cord and pin to the garment as you had it before.
8. For the collar piece shown here I then re-pinned with the two collar pieces right sides together sandwiching the piping. Stitch together. I use a zipper foot so that I can get in nice and close to the piping.
9. Flip the collar to the right side after stitching to reveal the piping. There is no reason why you can't flip it back and re-stitch it you thing there is too much of the piping exposed.
10. You will see here (where the pencil is pointing) that there is no piping cord inside the piping. Hence reducing the bulk inside the seam allowance.
One finished collar ready for attaching.
