This idea has been rolling around my head for awhile and I hope you feel inspired to whip one up for your mother (or yourself, your daughter, a friend, your sister, etc).
Recently I got hooked on making circle scarves – a quick, easy and very satisfying project that can be completed in under an hour. My own mother will be getting one – which she’ll only find out about when she reads this (mom, which one do you like best?!) and will now be arriving to her late because this whole tutorial process has taken waaaay more time than I imagined. (But she’s that great kind of mom who will totally understand!).
Just a quick note about the instructions. I want this tutorial to be easy and accessible to sewists of all levels. I’ve put all the vital information in bold so the more advanced sewists can just whizz through it. The writing in normal text gives a bit more information and explanation about what we’re doing and why. I hope this all makes sense!
Materials
Lawn or other light-weight cotton. One piece measuring 180cm X 46cm. This will make a scarf that goes over your head three times and will be quite snug. Adjust accordingly if you want something tighter or looser. **Scroll to the bottom for notes on making a child version**
Double-fold bias binding – 190cm. If you increase the length of the fabric make sure you increase length of bias as well (bias should be 10cm longer than fabric).
Coordinating thread, pins, scissors, sewing machine, etc – all the usual sewing suspects.
Cutting
Cut your piece of fabric to 180cm x 46cm.
Cutting your fabric accurately is the most important part of this project. Please spend the time to get your fabric squared-up and cut correctly. This will make your job of pinning and sewing so much easier later on.
If you don’t have/don’t want to buy a piece of fabric 180cm long then you can always cut two pieces 91cm X 46cm and join them together with a 1cm seam allowance before you start.
Construction of scarf
Fold fabric in half along the short edge, right-sides together (RST), and pin in place. Make sure the fabric lies nice and flat along the rest of the length of the rectangle.
Shown here is right-sides together (even though it doesn’t look like it!). Also, you can see my cutting wasn’t all that even on the first one – learn from my mistakes and try to get those edges nice and even.
Stitch with a 1cm seam allowance. Press seam open.
You’ll now have a great big circle of fabric. Next, fold in half, wrong-sides together (WST), along the long circle edge, matching up the seam and raw edges. This is where your accurate cutting will be a great help. Assuming you’re not perfect, pin first at the seam you just sewed and then again at the opposite side of the circle. Because we’re using light-weight and, in some cases, slippery fabric, it’s a good idea to pin like this so you can ease in any extra fabric.
Once those pins are in place then pin all the way around, matching the raw edges and making sure your rectangle lies nice and flat.
Some of the pins are hard to see, but here I have the whole open side of my scarf pinned ready for basting together.
Sew a basting stitch at about 0.6 cm (1/4 in) seam allowance all the way around.
Trim seam allowance to about 0.3 cm (1/8 in). This will ensure that your basting stitches won’t be visible after sewing on the bias binding.
It’s already starting to look like a scarf, right!?
Scarf before adding bias
Now we just need to add the bias binding.
Adding bias binding
Gently open the bias binding along the centre fold.
Starting anywhere (except for on the seam attaching the two short lengths), pin the first fold of the bias onto the edge of the fabric, RST, matching up raw edges. There should be a 5cm overlap where the two ends of the bias binding meet.
When you get all the way around it will look something like this (you’ll notice that I don’t have exactly 5cm on either side – as long as they over lap a bit you’ll be ok!).
Now we need to finish the bias ends so that we don’t have any overlap in the finished scarf. What we’re going to do is stich a line so it ends up looking like this:
To do this, fold your scarf in half along the short edge at the point where the two ends of the bias meet and pin the bias in place, matching up the four folds.
Now, stich across both layers of bias, parallel and just above the fold in the fabric. Be careful not to catch any of the fabric in your stitching.
Now, unfold scarf so bias ends can lie flat. Trim excess fabric and pin in place.
You now have one continuous piece of bias to attach to your scarf. This requires two lines of stitching. First, stitch all the way around along the first fold (the one closest to the raw edge). I usually sew a teeny tiny bit closer to the raw edge from the fold – this will make sure that your stitching is covered on the other side.
Next, fold your bias up and over, enclosing the raw edge. Pin in place and stitch with the open side on top, making sure to cover your basting and first line of bias stitching AND catch the other side of the bias as you sew. It will be slightly bulkier where the two ends of the bias join – just go slowly here. Backstitch a few stitches when you complete the circle in order to secure the stitches.
And that’s it! You’re done! You have a light, lovely, scarf – perfect for Spring and Mother’s Day! If there are an imperfections – don’t worry! Try the scarf on, move around a bit and I bet you’ll never notice them!
What started out as this:
has turned into this:
Here I added a contrasting thread color.
And here is what it looks like on
You can also easily make these for children (matching mother-daughter anyone?! Blah!). To do this, follow the exact instructions but cut your fabric 134cm x 30cm and your bias 144cm long. This will easily fit a girl (or fish!?) of 5 years old.
For this one I made my own bias binding. This is a great way to give your scarf an even more personal touch.
Whew, I think that’s it. Was it clear? Do you feel inspired to make one?
As always, thanks for reading!
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