Ogden Art Group Meeting – Neat Tube Turning Technique

I’m back from spending a week of luxury in my daughter’s and SIL’s  home dogsitting.  She has a ranch home and it’s much easier for me and my knees living in a home with all the rooms on one floor.  Plus, she lives close to all sorts of stores, so instead of it taking me 30 minutes to get someplace, I arrive in 5.  What a time saver.  There is no place like home though, and I’m very happy to be sleeping in my own bed. 

I forgot to take photos of a neat technique I learned at last month’s art group meeting, so tried it out again this morning and took photos this time.  It’s an easy way of turning any size fabric tubes you’d like to make – courtesy of Norma’s demo.

Fold your fabric right sides together, and sew a 1/4″ seam – or smaller if you’d like – along the cut edge.  Then go down about a 1/4 of an inch from the top of your sewn tube, and clip a little V shape into the folded edge:

 

Insert a bobby pin – remember those?  Would you believe I still have a full bag of old school hair rollers with bobby pins in them in my house?  But back to the instructions.  The little bit of fabric at the top is caught in the bobby pin and the bobby pin is slipped inside the tube:

Now you start pushing the bobby pin through the tube, gathering the fabric and slipping it over the bobby pin:

That part was difficult for me when Norma first showed it to me.  I could not get the darn thing started.  At home, I realized I needed to gently start it by making sure the fabric was turned and starting to go inside the tube.  

Voila!!! A nicely turned fabric tube:

 

I hope you like this technique.  You can make any size fabric tube you’d like, and it saves you the money of having to buy a tube turning gadget. 

Hugs…