Cutting Bias Strips (of Consistent Width)

Buying Bias Strips
While you can buy already made bias strips, it is just too expensive, at least here in Australia, and at least for me. If you have a good income and have more money than time, you could choose to buy bias strips, but if you want the bias tape to be the same as the self fabric, you also have to do the work. I have more time than money so I always make my own.
Note: In most of my articles I use inches by default, and also add in the metric equivalent. As I don’t know the price of bias and fabric in the USA and can only speak about what I know, so in this case it makes sense to give the examples in my life, and that means metres and $Australian.
To give an idea of the prices difference, here in Australia, between cutting your own bias and purchasing a packet from somewhere like Spotlight.- Birch bias, packet of 5 metres, is $5.00 at my local Spotlight Store.
- I use voile which costs about $4.00 per metre from EM Greenfields in Sydney. One metre of fabric will make at least 27 metres of bias that is 4cm wide. This is based on fabric that is 110cm wide. If the fabric is wider, I’ll get more. If I cut the bias thinner, I’ll get more. The cost of the bias strips made with the $4 a metre voile is therefore about .14 cents a metre. (See the image; I did the math in Illustrator while creating the graphic).
- An added expense (not shown in the image) is the cost of the fabric you use to stablize the bias. In the case of the basic voile, I only use one layer of fabric. With a slippery fabric that moves all over the place, I’ll sandwich that in between two layers of fabric. I use very cheap fabric, leftover bits of fabric, old sheets etc, for this purpose. You can usually buy bits of fabric or old sheets at thrift stores very cheaply.
- After accounting for the cost of the fabric used for stabilizing, the cost per metre increases from .15 cents to .18 cents (one layer to stabilize) or .21 cents (two layers). Still much cheaper than $1.00.
Contrasting & Self Bias Strips

Cutting Your Own Bias Tape
The method I use is to draw the lines for the bias on a disposable piece of fabric . This piece of fabric needs to be the approximate size of the piece of fabric from which you want to create the bias strips. It is really useful if this scrap fabric has some selvedge on it as this makes it easy to line up with the self fabric and will be exactly on the bias. It also needs to be a stable fabric that you can draw on easily with a pen, pencil or markers.Cutting Bias Tape: Image 01
Draw the lines on the piece of fabric at right angles to the selvedge. To achieve this:- Draw a square based on the selvedge, mine is about 3 inches. (It you don’t have a piece of fabric with the selvedge attached, just make sure you start off with a right angle, as shown by the yellow arrow).
- Draw a diagonal line dissecting the square.
- This is the base line that you will use as a guide for all the other lines.
- I use a thin marker that does not bleed. I always use a marker, not just for the purposes of illustration.

Cutting Bias Tape: Image 02
It so happens that the width of my patternmaking ruler is 4cm, and this makes it very easy for me to draw parallel lines to the original line.
Cutting Bias Tape: Image 03
If you don’t have a ruler the desired width of your bias tape, make sure you measure out at 3 places before drawing the lines.
Cutting Bias Tape: Image 04
Continue drawing the parallel lines until most of the fabric is covered. (Your decision on how short the shortest pieces will be at the edges. Remember you can sew bias strips together).
Cutting Bias Tape: Image 05
Put the self fabric underneath the cutting guide fabric, making sure the selvedges line up. (For the purposes of this photo I left a bit of the self fabric peeking out).
Cutting Bias Tape: Image 06
Do not pin the fabrics together, just hold down and cut. Using a pattern weight is helpful. (Note that in this image the top fabric has moved a little; this was becaused I moved the whole ensenble in order to take this photo.)
Cutting Bias Tape: Image 07
If making bias from a large piece of fabric (e.g. 1 metre), it is essential you have enough space for the whole piece to lay flat all the time you are cutting it. If you don’t have enough desk space, you will need to do it on the floor.
Cutting Bias Tape: Image 08
When making bias from a large piece of fabric, draw the original square a number of times to ensure the bias line is correct. Dissect the corners through two or three squares.
Cutting Bias Tape: Image 09
Using a pattern weight as you cut helps make sure the fabric layers don’t move.
Cutting Bias Tape: Image 10
The resultant bias strips are a consistent width.
Cutting Bias Tape: Final Note
Important!: If you are cutting bias from fabrics that are very drapey and/or slippery, putting an additional (throw away) layer of fabric underneath the self, i.e. sandwiching the self fabric between 2 layers, will ensure that the fabric doesn’t move and you end up with perfect width bias. This can be any cheap fabric as long as it has some stability.
4 Responses
This was very helpful!
This was helpful, thank you.
But do you have any table that will tell me how much bias I will get out of a metre in different widths ? And in metric !! – everything online is in imperial.
Have you tried using a rotary cutter? I think the way scissors disturb the lay of the fabric creates unnecessary grief. I use washers to weigh the fabric down.
Hello Ennis
I wrote this article a very long time ago. Nowadays I use a rotary cutter for cutting everything, including bias tape.
The rotary cutter is brilliant for many reasons, including every on hands which have arthritis – I find using scissors for cutting fabric difficult and even painful nowadays.