Piping skills

Piping gives you style lines where you need it.

Posted by Maria T

Sometimes, piping gives a sharper finish to any garment that needs to draw your eyes to your best feature.

1

This post shows how to add piping to a lined cap sleeve. You can use this technique any where you want.
2

What you can see here is the outer cap sleeve with the piping sewn on.
Notice the piping does not go all the way across the sleeve.
This reduces bulk as the seams and in reality, this is the area you'll actually see the piping on this sleeve.
3

For those of you with an eagle eye, you'll notice that I'm stitching the sleeve lining on this sleeve however the stitching line is between the piping stitching line and the piping ridge.
This gives the piping an even finish.
4

Then I've topstitched the finished seams so the sleeve will have a sharper finish once it's sewn into the dress armhole.
5

Here's how it now looks with the piping and lining sewn on this cap sleeve.
6

As you can see here, I'm sewing the sleeve cap closed and as the piping doesn't end here, the seam join is flat.
And that's a good thing.
7

These are the finished sleeve caps.
8

To be safe, I sew the sleeve pieces together at the armhole edge before I begin to sew them into the final dress.
9

Here's the finished sleeve in the dress.