Technicos: Cutting Bias Strips

I often buy packaged bias tape, but it's useful to be comfortable making our own. You never know when you're going to want a coordinated color on a sewing project, or maybe a really nifty contrasting color or pattern. When sewing samples for class we made our own bias strips. 

Here I folded a piece of fabric on the diagonal and then drew a set of nice straight lines. I was actually making bias strips of varying widths for different samples projects. If I were making strips for the same task, then I would cut them all the same width. For a garment I would want the strips as long as possible. So I'd take a pice of fabric as wide as it is long (such as a 44 by 44 piece of quilting cotton, since that fabric is typically 44 inches wide), then I would fold it into a big diamond and draw lines like those in this illustration.