How to Make Velvet Covered Welt Cord

Upholsterers refer to it as welt cord, not piping. You can call it piping, but that generally refers to smaller, fabric covered piping used for apparel. Whatever you call it, it’s being made all the time for furniture, cushions, pillows and bedding in upholstery shops and drapery workrooms all over the world.  The welt cord I’ve always used is a 5/32 tissue wrapped in a very fine netting. It has more body than that flimsy cotton cording you buy in a small prepackaged quantity at the fabric store.

In my classes, the hardest part for beginners who are making fabric covered welt cord is getting the bias cut fabric strips sewn together correctly. Until you’ve done about a million yards of it, it can be confusing. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll never forget it.

Fabric covered welt cord done well makes furnishings look so professional. Here’s how you do it.

Gather your materials. You’ll need:

• fabric
• scissors
• ruler (I use a see through quilter’s ruler and a quilter’s rotary cutter)
• school chalk
• pins
• sewing machine
• zipper foot or welt cord foot
• welt cord

1. First of all, it helps to have at least 1/2 yard of fabric to make cording for a small open armed side chair.

Place the fabric on a flat surface and fold up the bottom right corner to form a right angle with the bottom edge of the fabric, which creates a diagonal fold. For larger pieces, you’ll need more fabric and you may end up bringing that bottom right corner all the way over to the left selvage of the fabric which will form a nice gigantic fold.

Take your scissors and cut inside the fold as straight as you can. Now you have two diagonally cut edges from which you can cut fabric strips to make your welt cord.

2. The next thing is to measure 1 3/4″ strips that you will cut and sew to form the cord.  With this size of strips for 5/32nds cord, you’ll end up with a perfect 1/2″ lip on the welt cord that will tuck nicely into pillow and furniture seams. You can either mark and chalk your lines, or just use a quilter’s ruler and and a rotary cutter to cut 1 3/4″ strips.

3. When you position the fabric strips to stitch them, make sure that after you stitch and flip the top strip over, that the nap of the velvet is going in the same direction. If you don’t pay attention to that, it will end up looking like the fabric strips are a slightly different color, or from different dye lots. You don’t want that.

4. The next step is to stitch across the two (perpendicularly placed) strips from the upper left to the bottom right. I go ahead and hit the reverse when I start and finish to lock the stitching. If you don’t lock the stitching,  you can get down to making the welt cord, or even attaching it, and the stitching can work it’s way loose. It’s a time waster to stop and hand stitch the cording pieces back together after they’re attached to your furniture.  Also, you might want to remove the pins as you get ready to stitch over them.

5. Once all of your strips are stitched together, trim off the seam allowances on each seam to 1/2″. Then, check to make sure all of the strips are uniformly stitched together so that you can easily stitch the welt cord in place with an even seam allowance left over that can be stitched in a seam (of a pillow) or attached to a piece of furniture for a professional finish.

6. The next thing to do is to tuck the cording into the very center of the fabric strip length and stitch it closed. The optimum way to sew this is with a single or double welt cord foot attached to your sewing machine. An upholstery specific upholstery sewing machine will usually have those feet available, while it’s more difficult to find those feet for home sewing machines. The zipper foot can usually work, but one caveat is that it’s difficult to get up close enough to the cording, and then subsequently, stitch the cording between two pieces of fabric nice and snug.

Here’s a little reminder: If you purchase a double welt cord foot, you can also use it to create single welt cord, but if you purchase a single welt cord foot, you cannot use it to create double welt cord.