How to Avoid Fabric Puckering When Sewing Decorative Piping

We have a quick sewing tip you’re really going to like. Have you ever noticed puckering and wrinkles when you sew decorative piping to fabric? This happens a lot when sewing pillows with decorative piping. The pillow fabric wrinkles beneath the piping layer, which looks unprofessional and will cause issues. We’ve got a few clever little tricks to stop this from happening. Keep reading!

The reason you experience puckering and wrinkling when sewing decorative piping onto your fabric is that one of your layers is stretching more than the other. This is a very common issue, even with walking foot sewing machines. If you own a compound walking foot machine, like the Sailrite® Fabricator® Sewing Machine, this is less of an issue. But don’t give up sewing piping onto your pillows! We’re going to share our favorite tips with you on how to avoid this common sewing problem. Our tricks will work on any sewing machine, even a regular home sewing machine without a walking foot.

Our first trick is to use basting tape, pins or staples to hold the piping to the fabric. This will prevent either layer from moving so one layer doesn’t feed faster than other other through the presser foot. Seamstick Basting Tape is one of our favorite sewing helpers here at Sailrite. We use it in almost all of our sewing projects for fast hemming and holding fabric layers together.

If you don’t want to use basting tape, pins or staples to hold the piping to your fabric, we have another trick. Line up your piping along the edge of the fabric as you would if it was basted or pinned. Grab both layers of fabric and piping from behind the machine with your thumb and index finger. Make sure the piping is flat and properly aligned, and then pinch and hold the assembly in front of the machine as well with about 6 to 8 inches of sewing space between your hands. By holding the layers together, there’s less chance of one layer feeding through the machine faster than the other.

Watch our short video to see how both methods are done: