Monday, February 22, 2010

Gadget love

I'm working hard on my Easter dress, McCall's 6024.  I'm making View B, which is the one with short flouncy sleeves and bias bound flounces.  I hate hemming - especially narrow hems on silky polyester, so I knew that bias bound view was the way to go for me!  And it gave me a chance to use one of my favorite gadgets - my binding foot!
Here she is in action.  Basically, the foot takes your bias tape, wraps it around your fabric and perfectly edgestitches it.  Every time.  All 6 yards (!) of it.
Isn't that nice?  It looks exactly the same on the back, which is my favorite part.  Since the foot itself folds the tape, the wrong side doesn't have that hanging over bit, but you don't have to worry about missing the edge on the wrong side either.  This was particularly critical for this project, since both wrong and right sides show on the flounces.
Here's a purty pile of freshly bound flounce.  The other big bonus of the binding foot - it only took me about 45 minutes to do all of this binding, and it seriously was about 6 1/2 yards worth.  If I had done that by hand, it would have taken days!  I love gadgets!!

22 comments:

Unknown said...

Oooh, you lucky girl! That's a great gadget. I'm hoping to find this one in the box of attachments that came with my vintage machine. Time to dig them out and play, what a huge time saver!!!

Kitschy Coo said...

I think I need one! Does it work on knits?

meli88a said...

What a cool toy!

Tawny said...

Oh Wow! I need to get me one of those things!

I just spent the weekend binding around a blanket poncho. It involved a lot of cursing let me tell you. At least I used my own fleece binding creation so it was a little more forgiving.


Wonderful job! :)

Beangirl said...

OK I have to confess that I have a deep, deep hatred of binder feet. Deep. Passionate. I really really hate those things. So I'm that much more annoyed (yes, annoyed!) that you have managed to make yours do your bidding and create perfect binding. Hmmph. Double-hmmph! How do you do that?

Suzanne said...

Wow! That is amazing! I've never heard of a binding foot...I think I need to invest into one of those!
It looks like it's going to be a fun Easter dress :)

KID, MD said...

Woo - good ?'s!
Kitschy Coo - I wish it worked on knits!! It just stretches them out. I wonder if someone out there knows a trick??
Beangirl - It takes some serious fiddling to get it set just right, and then more fiddling (and swearing) to get the tape threaded through the coil thingy. I found that if you use double fold tape, it gets grumpy, so I use single fold and let it do it's own thing. It seems to like that better.

Sam Rose said...

I'm really jealous of that foot. It looks like it did amazing work. Looks like it's going to be a gorgeous dress too.

--ginger. said...

I officially have Bias Foot Envy.

Digs said...

Wow! Perfect bias binding Every Single Time?! Holy Toledo, Batman!

Kathi said...

That is truly a work of art - I am impressed!! I would love to have one of those and the belt loop foot thing for my coverstitch machine. There is a guy on ebay who sells that at a pretty good price and I have managed to be good so far. I will not go over to ebay and look, I will not go over to ebay and look . . .

Angela said...

I was reading your post and my jaw just dropped. Oh my goodness... I NEEED one of those! :) I can't wait to see your finished Easter dress... it looks lovely so far!

Mary Nanna said...

That is one SERIOUSLY cool gadget.

julia said...

Wow! That's amazing!!!!

Karin said...

Wow, that looks very practical. I think I could use a foot like that. Come to think of it...I suddenly realize I got some foots with my machine when I bought it. And one of it even might be a binder foot. Could that be? That it's in my drawer and I never even used it? Really, I am going to check it out NOW!

That fabric looks great, by the way!

Aminat said...

Wow, that is one cool gadget, I hope I can find one like thatfor my janome and kenmore machines.....Really neat

gwensews said...

Oh, I do so love sewing machine feet. I have a serious foot fetish problem! Your binding looks perfect! I wonder how you got binding that matches so well. I assume you did not make your own. Although, there is a really cool gadet for making binding too!

Pam said...

Wow!!! I am totally RUNNING out to get one of these feet - I've never heard of it!!

Karen said...

I'm so happy I found your posting on this foot! I've been wondering whether it would be worth the $$, and now I've decided to pick one up, too. Thanks for a great review!
I've placed your site on my blogroll and plan to link back to you in the future if you don't mind.

kbenco said...

Extremely cool gadget.

Sarah C said...

Ooh! I am jealous of your cool new toy! It seams like it was definitly a timesaver. Way to go!

amber said...

Okay, that is AWESOME!! What a huge timesaver!