Fun Things to do with Bias Tape

PLUS: I made a birthday dress, and the art of wasting time.

Jul 13, 2023

Welcome to Summer, Issue #3 of Making Time. Each week, I share a seasonal perspective on the creative process. If you’d like to follow along on this year-long experiment, you can subscribe for free.

I’d like to talk to you for a moment about bias tape.

If you sew or quilt, you’re probably pretty familiar with the stuff. Put simply, it’s a long strip of fabric cut on the bias (diagonal) so that it stretches, thus allowing it to form curves easily. Most often, we use it to bind raw edges.

But there is so much more you can do with the stuff, especially if you make it yourself:

You can cover a piece of cording to make your own matching piping.
You can simply fold it in half and insert it in a seam to create flat piping.
You can create interesting embellishments on edges, like loops.
You can create interesting insertions and yokes.
You can create buttons and loops.
You can do all kinds of surface details, like you see on this Valentino dress.

I could go on.

This week, I pulled this gingham I bought on my trip to M&L Fabric to make a dress for my birthday and decided to play around with bias.

I made a vintage Laura Ashley pattern (McCall’s 5098 if you’re curious, here’s one on ebay) and used this pile of bias tape in two ways:

To create flat piping around the straps and bodice. That means just folding the tape in half lengthwise and sandwiching it into the seams.
To make a tiny ruffle insertion in the skirt (see above).

I also hand stitched the hem, which was laborious, but somehow relaxing at the same time. The trick with hand sewing, as anything, is getting in the right headspace for it.

They’re subtle details, but the sort of thing that makes me happy.

I wore it to brunch with the family at Navarre, then spent the afternoon lounging on the lawn with a book and a bowl of cherries, followed by a long walk.

Anyway, bias tape is a great way to use up small pieces of scrap fabric, either to add matching details like I did here, or to save and use as a contrast on future projects. Small prints like these checks, stripes, or ditsy florals work especially well.

Another Clever Detail

Here’s another fun use of bias tape that I came across recently. This tweed Sandro dress uses a contrasting tape in blue denim to trim the lapels and sleeve cuffs. With the matching buttons, it’s a fun way to add both color and texture to a tailored shape.

Head, Heart, Hands

Things to make us think, feel, and do.

Small rhythms are everything.
The differentiation between being lazy and undisciplined really got me thinking. No one I know would call me lazy, but I wonder if it isn’t just covered up with a lot of discipline. Personally, I think a certain amount of laziness is a good thing, since it’s hard to be creative without the mental space afforded by doing absolutely nothing.
In that spirit, I just finished reading In Praise of Wasting Time by physicist and writer Alan Lightman, a short little treatise that makes the case for letting the mind wander.