How to Make Binding Strip Piping

Make your own custom piping with bias tape and cording.

Binding strip piping is most often found as a finishing touch on home décor items such as pillows, chair cushions and furniture. You can purchase premade piping at most sewing shops and home décor stores, but stocked fabrics and colors are limited. You can make your custom piping from store-bought or handmade bias binding and insert plain piping in it, making custom piping that perfectly matches your projects. This gives your items a professionally finished look you could not achieve with store-bought binding.

Things You'll Need

• 5/8-inch double-fold handmade or store bought bias binding
• Iron
• Spray bottle filled with water
• Scissors
• 1/8-inch cording
• Zipper foot
• Size 11 universal sewing needle
• Coordinating thread
• Sewing pins

Instructions

1. Set your iron to a steam setting, and unfold your bias binding. Lay it wrong-side up on your ironing board. Mist the binding along the fold line with the spray bottle. Iron the bias binding along the fold line, until the line disappears and the bias binding lays nice and flat.

2. Cut a piece of the cording as long as your piece of bias binding. Lie the cording in the middle of the bias binding lengthwise, and straighten down the cording along the entire center length of the bias binding. Fold the bias binding in half so that the two raw edges meet.

3. Hold the two raw edges together starting at one of the short ends of the bias binding, and press the cord as far up toward the center fold of the bias binding as it will go. Place a pin parallel to the cording through both layers of the bias binding, to keep the cording in place. Continue doing this down the entire length of the bias binding, until all of the cording has been pinned securely.

4. Install your zipper foot and your size 11 universal needle on your sewing machine. Thread your machine. Move your needle as far to the left as it will go. Arrange your piping so that the flat section of the bias tape lays under the zipper foot, and the cord lays as close to the left of the zipper foot as possible.

5. Set your machine to a straight, short stitch. Sew down the length of your bias tape, keeping your needle as close to the cording as you can without going through it, to create a piped look. Remove each pin before the zipper foot reaches it.

6. Sew a seam at the short end of the bias tape, over the piping, to secure it so it won't get pulled from its piping case. Cut off any hanging thread tails, if any.

Tips & Warnings

• If you use a heavyweight fabric, use a heavier, size 14 universal needle.

References

• Burda Style; Make Your Own Piping; August 2007