Bands and Piping

Construction of the bands and piping come upon you pretty quickly in this pattern. I don't know about you, but I love to make piping.

It's not difficult, it just takes a wee bit of extra time. But like most things, you get back what you put in. When you make your own, you can use any fabric you want to give the desired effect.

For this dress, I'm using black lightweight wool, the same as the red wool. To cut the strips, I use my handy dandy quilting ruler which has angles marked right onto it. I line up the bias angle to the selvage edge and cut the strips along the edge to the desired length.

To make the bias, you don't need a special bias foot. I use a zipper foot and then move/adjust my needle position over up to the edge of the foot. Then the stitching is right up against the cording.

So that's the simple part. I knew that assembling the bands with the piping and points would be challenging... I did one band and I have to go back and restitch some wobbly edges and redo the point at the top... which isn't really a point. My band came out more curved, which I actually like and prefer. The issue will be keeping ALL of the bands consistent in shape: two dress bands and the two jacket sleeves and two lower jacket bands.

So tomorrow will begin with me fiddling with the band to get the point shape the way that I want. I anticipated exactly this, but felt up to the challenge rather than taking the easy, dull option out.