The right tool for the job

I have picked up my long-neglected Riviera dress again. Even with a very unseasonal September heatwave, it isn't going to get any wear this summer, but I do want to finish it rather than leave it languishing as a UFO over the winter.

Not really a mid-September dress

Having completed the bodice, the next stage was another new technique, the corded piping detail at the waist seam. The pattern calls for ⅛" wide cording, but none of the piping cords in my local fabric shop were anywhere close to that thick. Instead I got some soft white cotton cord - and gave it a good soak in boiling water to pre-shrink it.

⅛" is surprisingly chunky

I don't think that I've ever put piping on a garment before. The closest was the blind piping, i.e. without cord, on my 1930s wrapover pinny (which, incidentally, has proved to be a very useful garment and gets a lot of wear), which I made and applied with guesswork.

The instructions are to wrap the cord in a bias strip of fabric, sew this down with a cording foot, then baste the cord to the bodice and finally sew bodice and skirt together.

It looks so simple!

I didn't have a cording foot, so I used a narrow, hinged, adjustable zipper/cording foot, which seemed like a good substitute.

First attempt

Reader, it did not go well. Despite my careful adjusting of the foot position, the stitches came out some distance from the cord. When I tried pushing the whole thing closer to the needle, I frequently sewed through the cord itself.

Happily for me, I then found an actual cording foot on ebay. Singer clearly made cording feet to go to the left of the right of the cord, and this was a left toe model.

Second attempt

I unpicked my mangled stitching, and tried again with my new toy. Perfection! Sadly, I didn't think to take a photograph.

I basted the covered cord onto the bodice, then made up the skirt. I had followed Tasha's excellent pattern-matching tutorial when cutting out the skirt backs, and was really pleased with the end result.

Pattern matched joy!

When it came to sewing the waist seam, I had a problem. Because my cording foot is left-toed, all the fabric has to go to the right of the needle, and with a bodice and a full skirt, that's a lot of material. So I convinced myself that it was either the narrowness or the hinged nature of the zipper foot which had caused the problem, and sewed the seam with a wide, rigid, adjustable zipper/cording foot.

Third attempt

This did not go well, either. Again, the stitching was some way out from the cord, which meant that the stitching which held the fabric round the cord was visible, and the whole thing looked a mess. There was nothing for it but to try again with the cording foot. Fortunately, because I was sewing on Tilda, my 66K treadle, there was ample space for all the fabric.

Sure enough, the cording foot did the job.

Ta-dah!

I think that the secret lies in the shape of the foot. Whereas the adjustable feet have straight edges, this foot curves out towards the notch for the needle, which seems to push the cord closer to the line of sewing.

The right side has a definite curve

When I looked for the Simanco part number, I noticed that the foot was made in the USA. I wonder if they were only made in America?

Part 15429, the 'U' of 'USA' is just visible

Either way, the hunt is now on for a right toe version. This is clearly an extra foot worth having!