Monday, April 1, 2013

Binding Blunders

Excuse me for thinking that I 'intuitively' knew how to cut a bias binding.

I'm sure that I must have cut one at some in the past few years I've been quilting...or maybe not. If I did, it most certainly doesn't fall under the old 'riding a bike' analogy.

I picked up my 24" ruler, looked at my fabric, aligned the 45 degree angle line with the fold line of the fabric and realized that my ruler wasn't anywhere long enough to cut a bias strip. Okay, no problem, I'll just fold my fabric over one more time. There. Done!

Far be it for me to take that first strip, open it up and inspect it. No...waste of time. We'll just continue to rotary cut our way through that yard of fabric.

Once I was done, I picked up a strip and opened it up and found......


A lot of uppercase W's  (as in WTH!?!?).

Okay, so we've got another yard of fabric...the one that was originally earmarked for this project but that I've had a hard time wanting to use. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Now we need to bring out the big guns...the 36" ruler...because we have learned our lesson about folding our fabric twice.


So we line up our 45 degree line with the fold line, and we look at our fabric and we question whether we aren't going to do the exact same thing we've just done...no, we didn't fold our fabric again, no problem there, this time we've got it under control.

Did we learn anything from the last yard of fabric, which is now a stack of fabric W's lying on the studio floor?


APPARENTLY NOT, because we make our first cut and we do not open it to look at it. No, we just forge onward and slice and dice our way through this new yard.

And what have we now?


Yep, a pile of V's.

No problem....we'll just cut them in half and stitch them all back together. After all, it's ONLY a plaid fabric that has to be matched up. So what if we wound up with two long strips of binding that have their diagonal stripes heading off in different directions. Maybe it won't be noticed.



I probably need to scrap it all and make the 40 minute drive to the shop where I got that fabric originally and buy another yard of the first fabric. (which is what the hubs suggested).

Yep, that's probably what will happen.

And this time, I'm going to look up the instructions for making bias binding before I pick up the rotary cutter.

3 comments:

  1. You can't fool me. That was all just done to give you a good reason to go to the fabric shop!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, we have so much in common. I've done the same with bias sashing (incidentally a bad idea because it stretches). Be well and enjoy your shopping. Lane

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like the tube method, or even folding a square in a triangle. Works well for me. Still, I like your "W" and think you can still use it.

    SewCalGal
    www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete

I appreciate and look forward to your comments. Thanks for reading. Happy quilting!