While getting ready for moving house and packing away my sewing things I was watching Bernadette Banner's Videos. They reminded me of my liking of handsewing and inspired me to pick up a project. Since my sewing machine was already packed up and I had no energy or space for sewing big projects, picking up a handsewing project I could work on while sitting on the couch was very fitting for those exact circumstances.
Last summer I wore one of my early memade items, my first Kalle Shirt, a lot. Since finishing this project more than four years ago, I have actively been ignoring the hem. It was my first attempt at bias binding and since I couldn't get the premade binding to stretch round the corners, I simply clipped them!
While the shirt is made from a very lightweight cotton, the store-bought binding I used was quite stiff. Since ideally the binding is the same weight or lighter than the main fabric, for my next attempt I wanted to use the same fabric as the body.
Luckily, I tend to keep fabric scraps and found some leftovers of the very same fabric in my scrap bin. One afternoon, during the little one's nap, I pieced some scraps together and I made some continuous bias tape by hand using a backstitch.
After removing the old binding and pressing the hem, I attached the new binding with a running stitch.
With another running stitch I understitched the binding.
Finally, I attached the binding by slip stitching the tape down. Originally, I had sewn this shirt with a needle too thick for the fabric, which is why the original stitching holes can still be seen. But overall, the result with the new binding looks far neater than before!
After spending a few hours hand sewing on the couch and attaching the new binding, my shirt looks so much better! So don't be intimidated by hand-sewing, it's actually relatively quick and you have so much control! Now I'll get so much more wear out of this shirt, since (in my head) it doesn't look too scruffy for work anymore :)
Comments