How to Make Continuous Fabric Strips

Most crafters need to know how to make continuous fabric strips in an easier way than sitting there sewing individual strips together to create yards and yards of continuous fabric strips. Making continuous fabric is a great asset to be used in many crafts. You can crochet with fabrics, knit with fabrics, make braided rugs and baskets and to make continuous bias that can be used for quilting. There are a few methods to accomplish making continuous fabric strips.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Material
• Rotary Blade and rulers

1. The first thing is to pick the right fabric to be used for the continuous strip. Crosswise grain fabric is one where the grain is not perfectly straight. Crosswise grain strips are stretchy and that makes it perfect for creating bias. Bias strips run at an angle.
   
   The second thing is to cut a perfect square. A 40-inch square should make about 16 yards if 2 ½-inch wide strips of fabric are used.

2. The First Method--The Tube Method
   
   Next you need to mark the reverse side of the fabric. Use your rotary ruler to mark cutting lines parallel to the long edges on the reverse side of the fabric. The space between lines should be equal to the width of the fabric strip that you want.
   
   Make a tube by bringing the right sides of the fabric together, offsetting the ends to make lines match each other exactly. Sew the ends together with a 1/4-inch seam allowance and press the seam open.
   Start cutting on either side of the tube, directly on a drawn line. Continue cutting around the tube until you have one long strip of bias binding.

3. The Second Method--Assemble Long Binding Strips
   
   Sew fabric strips together until you have one long binding strip. Don't join them with straight seams across their ends. That would create a binding with periodic seam allowances that travel from the front of the quilt to the back in a straight line, resulting in way too much bulk in one spot.
   
   Use this method to assemble a binding strip with diagonal seam allowances that are distributed along the length of the finished binding.
   
   Place two fabric strips right sides together, perpendicular to each other. Secure strips with a straight pin.

4. Mark the top strip on the diagonal, beginning and ending the line at the inward corner created where the two strips intersect each other.
   
   Sew strips together on the marked line.
   
   Trim away the excess fabric, leaving about a 1/4-inch seam allowance to the right of the seam line. Press the seam allowance open.
   
   Trim off the little triangular nubs that are part of the seam allowance and extend past the sides of the strip.
   
   Join more strips until you have assembled the binding length required for your quilt.
   
   Press the strip lengthwise.