Alexander Henry Farmdale Blossom in Teal
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Cool Cottons is just two blocks from my bank, so whenever I go to the bank I also have to visit their store. The last few times I was in, I found myself drawn to this print from Alexander Henry's Farmdale collection (available online here).
I loved the teal color, but wasn't sure what I would make with the fabric, so I held off. After about four trips to the fabric store, I finally bought a yard. One yard is my "I like it, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it" amount.
But I quickly realized it needed to be made into fabric tape:
The cutting & pressing part of sewing sort of sort of relaxing to me, so making fabric tape is something I enjoy.
Now I'm going to tell you a secret...I don't like bias tape. Bias tape can be useful for binding very sharp curves, but most of the time it just ends up being a sloppy mess when used to bind things that don't need that much give. One day not long ago I asked my neighbor--who doesn't know much about sewing--if she was familiar with bias tape. She knew what I was talking about, and what she said was something like this: "oh, that stuff you trim things with that always ends up all wrinkled along the fold?" Yep, that's bias tape!
If I want to bind something I almost always use cross grain tape. It has a good amount of stretch and doesn't tend to get as wrinkled along the fold.
