Sally bibs: part 2

My house has been languishing in disarray since I got over my nasty cold, and I finally jolted myself into the necessity of cleaning it by inviting friends over for dinner. Sad but true, the thought of company is what always gets me motivated to deal with dirt and clutter. But I'm finally learning to go with what works for me, so I foresee a lot of dinner parties in my future. Probably for the rest of my natural life.

Now that my dining room table is all cleared off, I had room to spread out my unfinished Sally bib project. In part 1, I prepped all the materials, and now it's time to fire up ole Gertie and get down to sewing.

Sewing and Finishing

Step 1: To make a strip of seam binding long enough to go around the outside of the bib, you will need to take two shorter strips and sew them together. Find two strips with slanted edges that fit together. Then line them up, right sides together, as shown above. Note how the points are not matched up but instead overlap and extend about a half inch. This is so that when you sew them together with a 1/2" allowance, the seam will lie exactly where the edges intersect.

Lay the pinned sections of binding on the throat plate of the sewing machine and line up the needle in the point of the "V" where the sections intersect. Set the sewing machine to about seven or eight stitches per inch (this amount of stitches per inch is referred to as "basting"). Baste in a straight line to the point of the inverted "V" on the opposite edge of the binding.

After the sections are basted together, clip the seam allowance down to 1/8", then fold the seam binding back into its creases and press the area where it was joined.

Step 2: Pin the seam binding (wrong side out) to the outside edge of the bib except for the curve around the neck hole. Gently stretch the binding to curve around the curved edges of the bib. Trim the ends of the binding so they are flush with the edges of the neck hole.

Using the first ironed crease in from the edge as a guide (approximately 1/2" seam allowance), baste the seam binding to the bib.

Now, fold the seam binding over the raw edge of the bib and on the unsewn side, tuck the raw edge of the binding under along the fold and match up the edge with the stitches of the seam where the binding was sewn to the bib. Pin in place, stretching to ease the binding around curved edges.

Stitch the binding down as close to the edge as possible, about 1/16" to 1/8".

Step 3: Pin binding to the neck hole of the bib, leaving 9"-long tails at the end on each side, as shown above. Depending on how long your binding is, you may have to sew two more sections together, as shown above in Step 1.

Trim off the ends of the tails so they are square.

Laying open the middle crease in the seam binding, fold over a small allowance (about 1/4"), as shown above on the right. Then pin shut, as shown on the left.

Position the needle in the middle of the tail section, about 1/8" from the edge, as shown above. Reverse stitch to the top (folded) edge. Shift to forward stitching and baste to about 1/8" from the bottom (open) edge.

Making sure that the needle is in the downward position, completely piercing the fabric, lift the presser foot, and rotate the fabric 45 degrees, so that the bottom edge is now lined up to be sewn closed.

Baste the bottom edged closed, and continue basting along the edge of the binding where it is pinned to the bib, approximately 1/8" seam allowance. At the end of the other tail, reverse stitch to reinforce the edge.

Voilà! a finished Sally bib.

And a happy baby, ready to dig into dinner!

Update: The reason this post is dated Wednesday the second but appeared on Monday the seventh is I was having issues with Blogger downloading my pictures sideways. Finally figured it out this morning (whew!)