Want a really professional finish to your corset making? Then make your own bias binding.

Don’t get me wrong, I use the pre-made bias binding a fair bit, but for when the shop bought plain colors just don’t sit right with your beautiful corset fabrics, go one better and make your own. It also means you can customize the width of the binding, so if you have tighter corners you can make it thinner to cope better with the harder turns. Thinner binding is also easier to handle when you’re learning how to make a corset.

Different widths of binding

‘Sounds great’, you say? Well let’s get going!

You’ll need to have bought (or go back out and buy) a bit extra fabric in your chosen corset material. A half meter, or even a quarter meter will just about do but bear in mind; the narrower it is the more joins you’ll have.

You need to grab a set square with a 45 degree angle or take a piece of paper and fold the top edge down so it meets the left edge and flatten (45 degrees is just half of a 90 degree angle like the one at the corner of a piece of paper). Now place the 45 degree triangle against the edge of your material at the top and draw along the diagonal. Use a ruler to continue the line across the material to the other side. Use the angle and ruler to draw more lines all the way down your fabric, which you will cut along to make your bias strips. You need to make sure your strips are four times the width you want your binding to be, as you will be folding the strips in half twice to make the binding. So a half inch binding will require 2inch strips. Join your strips together by lining the edges up right-sides together and sewing them together with a small seam allowance of about 5mm. Then open out and press open the seam allowance before trimming it so that no seam allowance sticks out beyond the edge on the right side.

Now for the folding! You can get a little folding tool that you push the binding through and pull out the other side folded. You just pull the binding through and iron as it comes out. But if you don’t have time to go out and get one, you can fold the binding in half and iron it, then open it again and fold each raw edge into this center crease and iron again. Once both edges are folded into the center and ironed flat, you’re done!

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