Piping

Upholstery seams take a lot of strain, and piping them for extra strength, and to look good, is common. It isn’t difficult to make your own piping although it’s a bit more fiddly. You’ll need the piping cord in the right kind of weight, and a long length of fabric, which you stitch round the cord using a zipper foot so you can get as close to the cord as possible. Your seam allowance should be at least five eights of an inch as this is what you will stitch between the two pieces of fabric which make up the seam on the finished article. The trick is to cut the piping fabric on the bias, and although this does make it very expensive, the advantage is that you can match the main fabric perfectly. If this is too expensive, your upholstery fabric shop is likely to sell pre-made piping which comes in thousands of styles and colours.