I am never going to staystitch again

Is it October already? What do you mean it’s nearly November? What happened to September? The Mini Wardrobe boat has well and truly sailed without me, but I did get 2 out of my 4 items finished, which considering that I had a lot of chore sewing to do (summer PJ’s for the kids, some mending and alterations and new curtains for the nursery, ugh why are curtains so awful to sew, I always vow never again!).But 2 out of 4 aint bad. They just need to be photographed, blogged and reviewed.

But back to the title of the post. I have always hated staystitching. Friends in the trade swear it isn’t done in production, and I suspect that the very act of passing the fabric through the machine in order to stabilise it probably creates some distortion anyway, which defeats the purpose. Vilene frames are a good alternative and something I would do if I was making something special or using very expensive fabric.

And then I found a little pack of iron on bias tape that I had bought ages ago, stashed away and promptly forgot about! Which inspired me to make up some tops to try it out.

This here T-shirt has a very low neckline, which I didn’t want to stretch any lower, and as it is large enough to fit over the head, I thought that the bias tape would be a good way to make sure the neckline didn’t distort or stretch during handling.

I cut the fabric, left the pattern pinned to the fabric, went straight to the iron board and applied the tape to the wrong side of the neckline and hey presto, a nice stable edge that was in no danger of stretching out of shape, and best of all no staytitching! Hooray!

I don’t have much of the tape left, but I think that I will make my own using skinny strips of iron on fusing when this stash runs out. That’s unless of course anyone has any tips on where to get it wholesale!