Coverstitch Binding in the Round

I have an amazing tutorial for you today.  Well, nearly amazing.  Not quite perfect, but I haven't seen another tutorial like this out there.

And, like many improvements, born out of necessity.

I forgot to bind the neckline of my sports bra before sewing the shoulder seams together.  It was a new pattern and I was having lots of issues with it, so I just forgot.

So this is what I did.

I stay-stitched a short line the width of the binding and made a clip.

The I went to the cover-stitch machine and started binding at the clip.  In the photo below, you can see that I am holding the section above the clip out of the way.

Continue binding all the way around.  Fold the start binding out of the way as you finish.

Here it is off the machine.  This is the less than amazing bit.  You can see that my start is not perfect.

Trim the ends of the binding.  Fold garment right sides together so that you can sew the ends of the binding together.  Using a hump jumper will help the ends stay aligned as you sew this together. Here is my bonus tip for the day.  I have a hump jumper, but you can also use the plastic case that sewing needles come in, as it is a good height for this (and usually on hand!)

This is what is looks like now.

Trim the ends, press open (well, I didn't actually press, but it conveys the action required) and stitch down (again using a hump jumper) .

From the wrong side.

And the right side.  You can see that it is not quite perfect because of my start, but this was my first time and I will get better :).

The completed neckline.

It is actually neater than when I bind before sewing the shoulder seams because it all lines up better.  I can see myself using this technique a lot in the future. especially on leotards and swimmers for my daughter.

Binding Lycra

Recently I had to make 2 little boys t-shirts in shiny lycra for a jazz exam.  This was my first lycra project on the coverstitch machine and it looked as though it was going to be an epic fail.  See all the twisting on the neckline?  The smaller shirt was even worse

I redid it a number of times, and could not improve much.  I turned to the internet and found this great link (http://sewing.patternreview.com/SewingDiscussions/topic/51298) where Belinda offers the following advice

The twisting you are encountering is most likely due to one of three things.
a) Binding strips cut off-grain. Pay very close attention to both grains when cutting your strips, and be very accurate. Many stretch and knit fabrics can be off-grain. Some are even knitted off-grain making them totally useless for binding. Off-grain strips will always twist and turn binding into a frustrating nightmare.
b) Poor quality fabric. Even if the fabric is on-grain it can still be of a poor quality and cause issues.
c) The wrong differential feed settings on your machine.

I was using good quality lycra. I checked that I was cutting on grain.  I tried changing both the width of the binding strips and the amount of differential feed.  Still no joy.

Up until this point I was using the binder that came with my machine, which makes 1/2" binding.  I have also bought a number of industrial binders to make bindings in other widths.  I was tearing my hair out at this point and decided to switch to one of the industrial binders....and woo hoo, look what a fabulous job it did.

Admittedly, the binding fabric was a different lycra (because I was rapidly running out of blue lycra on my samples).  Time to try again on the real thing.

Here is the smaller shirt.  Not perfect, but much improved.

Here is the larger shirt.

I thought it was interesting that the same binder, using the same width strips, made binding of a slightly different width in the 2 different lycra fabrics.

I'm guessing, but can't be sure, that the success was not due to using an industrial binder instead of the binder that came with my machine, but rather due to making a narrower binding.    I have had trouble with another project that I am yet to show you, but I am thinking that width of binding is important for some fabrics.

For those interested, I bought my binders from ngosew on ebay.  This is a different supplier to the one mentioned in many of the PR discussions.  They are a bit cheaper, the supplier has answered my email queries, and I have had no problems with delivery.  I attach the binders to my machine with blu-tack.