Sewing narrow fabric tubes

Projects like this baby dress use narrow fabric tubes for shoulder ties. These tubes are an easy way to add coordinating ties at shoulders, to things like potholders, pacifiers etc. They can even be used to hold buttons instead of buttonholes.
Here's how I make them.

Supplies:

1. 1.25 inch wide strips of fabric ( any length )
2. Upholstery thread ( or any strong thread)
3. Needle (long and blunt)

Construction:

1.

Cut the strips.

2.

Fold in half along the width and sew along the length with a 1/4 in sewing margin.


3.

Thread the needle with upholstery thread. tie a knot at one end.

Now sew two stitches at one end of the tube, take care of sewing through only the single layer of the fabric.

It was very difficult to take a picture of this step with the narrow tube, so I made this fat tube to just illustrate the point. You need to do the same thing with your narrow tube, just make the stitches smaller, ok?











4.

Now push the needle with its eye first into the tube, keep pushing it until it comes out of the other end along with the thread.

5.

Now tug and pull the thread until the tube starts to slide inside itself. You may need to nudge the end inside the tube a bit to get it started. Use a screwdriver or a hair-pin or some pointed thing  to do it. In the pic above I have shown the tube which is sliding into itself. I have placed another tube alongside for comparison.

6.

Keep pulling the thread until one end starts to show up at the other end. Now just slide the inverted part off the turned out tube with your hand.

7.

Here's your tube turned out. It will be likely be a little longer than the original strip because of all the pulling and tugging.

8.

Pick out the stitches that you sew at the end.


9.

Yay! fabric tubes!

Now sew something pretty with them.

Of course! I'll be bringing a tutorial on that soon.