Pie Potholders

If you were wondering what prompted my bias tape making obsession here it is....

Pie! Well a potholder that looks like a pie. I saw this online from another blogger and was really excited to make my own. I fell in love with this blackberry/marionberry fabric and this was the perfect idea. Also a great gift idea for the upcoming holidays, I was planning on pairing these with a jar of my jam.

Now that we all know how to make bias tape from my previous post the rest will be easy.
First off I want to share this really awesome cutting mat that I would highly recommend for this project.

 It swivels which is perfect for cutting out circles.

Below: I got this acrylic circle from a friend whose husband made them. It's a 9" circle just the right size for a pie. You can use anything round and trace it but with the acrylic I can use my rotary cutter which I love since I'm making quite a few.

 With this mat I'm able to keep turning it to cut without disturbing the work in the center. Love it!

I used this template to cut out my berries and my crust back. I got easily 16 circles per yard of fabric.

Next I cut out the circles from the batting and insul-fleece. Since batting and fleece stick to your mat when using a rotary cutter I cut these out but hand but used the already cut pie fabrics as my templates.

I was able to get exactly 15 circles out of the package of insul-fleece which measures 27" x 45"

Naturally I saved my scraps since this stuff seemed kinda pricey. For the batting I used leftovers from a quilt I'm working on. Since the back of the insul-fleece suggested for potholders using a layer batting my little quilt sandwich has four layers: back, insul-fleece, batting and pie top.

Next to add the pie lattice! That is after all what all the bias tape making was for... I used these clips at first because I was having trouble getting pins to pierce through the layers ( I suspect the insul-fleece to be the issue)

Then I tried some fine .45 pins for sheer or lightweight fabrics,  but were actually the only pins I had that worked and would go through the layers smoothly without distorting my potholder.

Here's the package.

Next to sew down the woven lattice of bias tape. I like to use a foot with some kind of guide to sew along and set my needle to sew just inside that edge ( or here just to the right of center)

 I back-stitched and skipped the parts were the bias tape overlapped and then clipped these threads with my embroidery scissors.

Here's our pie so far, it's almost done!

 Now to pin on the binding, for this project I used the bias tape I made (since I made way too much) and here's how I attached it. I opened one side and pinned all the way around.

 Where the tape began to overlap I clipped it at ¼" ( this I just eyeballed) 

 Then I used my ruler to cut the rest of the way on the 45° angle.

 Join the two pieces just like the tutorial on how to join bias strips together.

 Re-pin all the way around.

 Next I like to sew just to the right of the fold line.

 Make sure to attach your tab now if you want to add one. Mine is again made of the same bias strip just folded in half and stitched down the open side. I used a 4" piece for my tab.

 I like to sew over it several times to make sure it's secure (even though I know it's not a load bearing tab.)

 Flip your  bias tape over to the back and stitch down. ( I like to do this step by hand)

And you're done!

I hope you all enjoyed this I plan on making lots of these for gifts this year and I'm even thinking maybe next year I'll do a different flavor (berry or fruit) so someday there will be a whole collection.

 I decided to try adding regular bias binding that I would put on my quilts so that these would have the strength of double layers of fabric folded over the edge. It worked perfectly!

Thanks for reading♥

how to make bias tape

My previous posts have covered cutting and sewing for bias strips and today I'm going to cover how to make bias tape. This is where you essentially fold over the edges on either side of your bias strip to encase the raw edges.

This is single fold bias tape

 and this is double fold bias tape

For the double fold bias tape you simply iron in half the single fold. It's that easy. The hard part is making the single fold bias tape to begin with. Your dealing with stretchy bias cut fabric and no it does not play nice with the iron. Which brings me to the first method which is to iron the old fashioned way by hand. Yes that's right by hand which if your anything like me will drive you nuts because the results are so inconsistent and it would take for-ever.

The second method involves a metal tool which I'm guessing has been around for ages but has perhaps had some improvements. I had one such tool lying around and mine looks like this.

 The newer bias tape makers look quite different from the back and seem to have a flat tip on both the top and bottom of the unit. If you search these tools you'll see the difference. 

Nancy Zieman has a video on how to use this tool, and for her it works perfectly (hers being the newer version perhaps). Anyways I could not get this to work for me and to top it off this was not the right size. Also these cost anywhere from $6 to $15 depending on the size you get, if the new ones work and you make a lot of bias this would be worth it. I'm curious if the newer styles work better.

So that Idea scrapped I found online another method promising an easy no cost method. Place pin in ironing surface making a gap the size of desired tape and simply pull through. WRONG! This takes the old fashioned ironing by hand method and basically gives you a helping hand but you still end up with sloppy inconsistent work. Is it too much to ask for prefect results.

Then lastly I wandering onto this blog scientific seamstress science + sewing = perfection. This lady is just awesome she created this wonderful device that I would buy in a heartbeat and she is offering it to her readers for free. Here's the link to her bias tape maker. It worked wonderfully with perfect results and was worth the effort of assembly and as I said I would buy it in a heartbeat.

Here's how it worked for me.

Honestly I was a little doubtful and thought it would be super complicated but really it was super easy 4 pieces and I used "terrifically tacky tape" for paper crafting instead of glue (since I can be inpatient) and it worked wonderfully. If you are looking to make bias tape try this you won't be disappointed.

What methods have you tried and which do you prefer?

Thanks for reading♥

How to sew your Bias cut strips together

In my last post I covered how to cut bias strips which can be used for bias binding or bias tape. Here's how I joined those strips together.

Each end of my bias strips is at a 45° angle if you refer back to my previous post (below) you can see the second strip from the left does not have a 45° angle. This was only with the fat quarter, when I cut my 44 x 44" fabric square into strips all my ends were 45°. This is were I would recommend always working with a square.

Matching right sides together I join my strips with ¼" seams at the valleys.

If you check with a ruler your stitching should be on the ¼" mark.

Now when you open your strip it should look like this.

I ended up with a pile like this

Then it's off to the ironing board were you can either iron it in half for quilt binding

 or you can make bias tape.

My 44" square of fabric made 22½ yards of bias binding.

The fat quarter made just a little shy 4½ yards. 

Which if you do the math is nearly the same per ¼ yard of fabric

Thanks for reading♥

How to cut bias binding or bias tape

I've always bound my quilts with regular strips of fabric which honestly has worked great but with seeing rounded corners and curves on quilt edges I knew I'd would have to change my methods. Here's how to fold your fabric to cut bias strips with your rotary cutter.
I'm going to demonstrate the following with a fat quarter which is 18 x 22 working with a square would be best but to satisfy even my own curiosity I'm going to use the whole fat quarter to see how much it makes.

First I like to lay my fabric face down.

Then fold the top left corner down to the bottom. with a square you would just match corner to corner.

Next take the upper right and bring it down to the lower left.

 Make sure to match up the bottom edges as shown below. 

when folded it will look like this. If you were working with a square you would now have a triangle shape.

Now we are going to take the bottom left and fold it up to the upper right. This makes more sense when your working with a larger piece of fabric because you need to fold it up to a manageable piece to cut.

And finally turn to face you. 

Onto the cutting. The small triangles on the right are all that's left for waste.

The next photos are of the large 44 x 44" piece of fabric I cut. I wanted to work with a square this time.

I folded my fabric exactly the same as above for the fat quarter.

Then I marked my ruler with glow line tape.

First I cut off the folded edge to my left.

and then proceeded to cut strips all the way to the end, the last little triangle cut at the end was my waste.

That was a lot to cover in one post. Lots of pictures. I hope all the instructions are clear, please let me know if anything doesn't make sense. In my next post I'll cover how I sew these strips together.

Thanks for reading♥