Quilting: How to make piping

Lately I have been into making bags and purses. One thing a lot of them require is piping. You can easily purchase pre made piping or you can make it yourself and choose whatever fabric you want! It's super easy!!

What you'll need:

1. Fabric, I use a yard and that makes more than enough for two bags with lots of piping plus you will have yardage left over. A half a yard would probably be more than you need for one bag.

2. Cording, I use 6/32 cording from Joanns. You can find it in the home decorating section. For a bag like the Weekender by Amy Butler you need 5 yards (I make 6 yards just to be sure I have enough). For a bag like the Vivian by Swoon you only need 2.5 yards. 

3. Steam a Seam, you can purchase this at Joanns as well in the notions section. It makes things really easy. 

To begin lay you fabric open on your table with the selvage edge running on the sides. 

Fold the selvage edge on your left side down to meet the bottom edge, forming a triangle. 

 I like to then rotate my fabric so that the folded edge is now lined up parallel on my cutting board, it makes cutting easier. 

 Because I'm using an entire yard, a lot of the fabric is hanging off my cutting mat. I want to be able to cut as much as possible per cut, so I take the folded point that is now at the bottom of my cutting mat and fold it up, keeping the original fold in line with each other. 

Since I have so much extra fabric now, off to my right (which will not be caught in my cuts, I am only cutting the double folded section). I cut that piece off to save for later use. 

Now you want to get rid of the folded edge on your left side, cut about 1/8" off, being sure the fabric is nice and straight with the bottom edge lined up with one of the horizontal lines on your mat. 

Now cut 1.5" strips until you run out of fabric. 

Join all of your strips together (you can measure as you go and stop at the yardage you require). Lay your strips right sides together perpendicular to each other. Sew a diagonal line from the top left corner to the bottom right corner. Cut off the excess fabric and press seams open. 

Lay your strip out, right side down. Lay the cord in the center of the strip. Above the cord, close to the top edge of the strip lay your STEAM A SEAM down. You will have to peel off the paper and lay it down slowly, it will not really stick to your fabric so just use your fingers to hold down a few inches infront of you as you slowly peel it off. Do about 24" at a time, you should be able to keep the steam a seam all one piece but if it rips just layer it over the piece ahead by 1/4".

 Now roll the bottom edge of the fabric up over the top of the cord to meet the top edge of the fabric. You want to kind of keep the steam a seam close to the edge of the fabric. Press the iron down on the joined edges, pushing against the cord. Go slowly and adjust the steam a seam as you go, it moves around a lot. 

That's it!