Piping in stretch fabrics

[Guest mdb]

Piping is designed to strengthen a seam, as well as add a decorative element. In this vein here is a quickie guide to piping in stretch fabrics, especially PVC where mistakes can ruin an entire garment very quickly due to stitch marks leaving irrepairable holes.

Stretch PVC lives up to its name and so can make piping particularly difficult as you are sewing through four layers of fabric all of which are trying to move away from each other and from the foot and the platform of the machine. This method helps prevent that and prevents weakening of the fabric.

 

 

Firstly when patterning your pieces decide on how wide to leave your seam allowances. I recommend at least as wide as half the regular foot of your machine. This is because the pressure between foot and feed dogs will make the fabric shift (usually to the left if the fabric isn't perfectly lined up with the feed dogs) which will then cause fabric to tend to bunch up under the foot. If you leave a few mm extra (or say 1/8") then this is much less likely to happen.

 

Next you need to choose the cording. Naturally with a stretch fabric you want a stretch cording. You can buy it by the metre/yard or prepackaged. I prefer by the metre as I get a wider variety of thicknesses to choose from. I recently found an ideal elastic in gold of all colours...

 

You then need to cut your piping strips and this will be twice as wide as your seam allowance plus the circumference of your piping. You could go mad with maths but generally guesstimating will work. Fabric is not paper and will stretch more around 3D objects.

 

So next up set your sewing machine to a wide and deep zig zag. about 3/4 of your seam allowance will be fine, or the widest setting if it is a regular machine.

 

Align the top of your first piece with the top of one strip right sides together. Overlap the strip by about half an inch or 1.5cm. You will want this later on. and zig zag right on the very edge to secure the two fabrics together. You will not need pins for this just a little patience as you feed the fabrics under the foot.

No need for securing the stitches either at start and finish just cut the strip with half an inch or 1.5cm extra.

 

Once you have sewn one side then match up the other side of the seam with the matching panel:

This is the side back seam of a bodysuit similar to that of Mara's.

 

As this seam is rather curvy it is extra prone to the fabrics stretching unevenly under the foot so a few pins as close to the edge as possible are used to make sure the strip and both side pieces are matched up with no extra stretch anywhere.

 

Next you repeat the zig zag stitching along the other side:

 

 

It is possible to skip the above steps, but it really does make the following infinitely easier and more importantly neater than if you didn't.

 

Next you need to set your machine to the simplest stretch stitch. This is seen here as stitch "14". Essentially it is two or three forward stitches with one or two back stitches.

You also will need a piping foot.

 

Now you take your cording and place one end at the top of the strip and match edges of the pieces and place under the foot of the machine.

You will need to to a little tweaking of where the needle sits (as far left as possible without going through the cording) and where the fabric sits under the foot.

 

Sew along the seam. Again you do not need to secure the ends, the stitch is already set to go back and forth.

 

E voila, a piped seam:

 

To get that corner (this is the top of the V in the front of Mara's suit) you do the cut off seam first. It is tricky to do, but the uninterrupted seam is seam from top to intersection, then bottom to intersection and then very carefully sewn at the point to neaten.

[Guest Anonymous]

Excellent tutorial! Thanx!

[Guest mdb]

Thank you I wish I had thought of the zig zag before I did both my Mara suits... Que sera sera, mine are fine they just drove me a little mad is all

[Guest Daritha]

When it droves you a little mad then you will change it somedays. I know this. It's like a splinter in your brain. You know it wouldn't do any harm, but you can feel, that there is something.

[ghostred7]

How well will this technique work for Lycra type stuff like Under Armor material? I've gotta do a tank top w/ some piping/furniture cord on it.

[Guest mdb]

It should do fine It depends though on a few things such as the thickness of your lycra and on the "stickiness" of the foot and plate. My all metal beast of a machine for instance tends to get a bit dewy due to how cold the metal can get in the workshop. It is not good for thin fabrics. A nice plastic shelled machine should be fine in that regard. You may also need to use a teflon foot of the fabric is soft enough to be gripped by the metal feet in the same manner. A plastic foot may work as well (though my only plastic foot is for invisible zips and as such it pushes unevenly on the fabric below it).

 

if you find that none of the above fixes it then you may wind up pinning all layers together and go carefully. This way the bulk of the fabric can help work to your advantage.

 

Or depending on just what you are doing you may find cording in channels or cording a welt will work better. Generally cording is better for multiple rows close together and welting for multiple rows a little further apart.

 

For cording in channels you use two layers together and thread the cording between the layers.

http://www.festiveattyre.com/research/cording/cord.html

In this methos you sew the channels first and then thread the cord through- this makes the cord lie evenly front and reverse.

Or you could sew the cord in place at the same time by using a piping foot. This generally makes the cords sit on the bottom fabric while the top wraps around it, giving a much more raised effect.

You would still use elastic and a stretch stitch.

 

For welting it's essentially wrapping the cord in one layer of fabric:

http://www.historicallydressed.com/rese ... icoat.html

in this case follow the instructions but use elastic for the cording the the stretch stitch above to keep it all stretchy.