How do you make one-piece bumpers? We have 4 individual pieces of material for each color rather than one long piece. Should we make 4 individual pieces, wrap the material, and then join them? If so, how much should we allow for material?
Can you elaborate more on your situation?
When you say you have 4 individual pieces of “material” what do you mean by that? Do you mean the wood backing?
The colored material, red and blue. We have not cut the wood yet.
You form the wood in the shape of your frame perimeter and then duct tape the noodles on, then wrap with fabric.
I assume you were wondering if you could build individual sides of the bumpers and attach them together?
Not really. I’m trying to figure out the best way to make one-piece bumpers with the colored material that came in our kit. The colored material is not long enough to wrap continuously around the frame perimeter, so I assume we will have to make 4 individual bumper sections and then join the wood together to make one piece, but what I am not sure about is how much room to allow for the material where the wood pieces would Join in the corners, or if that is even the best way to go about making the bumpers.
What I would like to do is, as you suggested, build the entire bumper frame and Join the wood pieces together, but I don’t think we can do that with the fabric materials we have so I’m at bit of a loss.
I have always seen 1 pieces bumpers made with a single piece of fabric.
There are some good bumper guides in here though that may be worth following.
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I searched the forum and did find a guide for making bumper sections, but they were not one-piece bumpers
Yes, you can sew the sections into a loop. I suggest doing the final seam after wrapping it around your noodles and wood. My bumper-cover instructions have pictures of this specific process, and the darts to shape the fabric around the noodles.
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We build 1 piece bumpers but always purchase seperate fabric. I think if you plan to use 1 piece bumpers you may need to do the same unless you sew the pieces together.
Can you post a link to your guide?
Here is a 1 piece bumper guide that 2363 made. It is not fully wrapped around but you can get the general concept.
Thank you. I found that one as well, but they are using a continuous piece of fabric. It appears we are either going to have to sew our pieces or just make 4 individual bumper segments that are not joined.
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You can use 1 long piece of bumper fabric - if you can fold/staple your corners.
rocknthehawk has a great set of pics to “miter” a corner with folds and staples here
They use sewn corners, but you don’t have to.
Make your bumpers (with noodles). take your long piece of fabric and wrap it around without stapling.
Mark where your numbers should go - apply them.
Wrap & staple.
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We don’t have 1 long piece. We have 4 individual pieces. That’s my dilemma. It seems we will just have to sew the individual pieces into a continuous loop.
Yes, sewing is the best way to do what you want to with four separate pieces of fabric. The drawing below shows how you should sew them, where the blue lines are the fabric and the black lines are stitching. Each end of each piece of fabric is laid on top of the next one and a line of stitching is applied. Once all corners have been sewn, reverse the loop so that the stitching is on the inside and the outer surface looks clean.
This process will be MUCH easier if you can get access to a sewing machine, either from a student’s family or your school’s Family and Consumer Sciences classroom.
An extra trick to make your fabric a nice tight fit around the bumpers is to start with your loop a little big, and then make new stitch lines 0.25"-0.5" further in until your desired tension around the noodles is achieved. The loop of fabric should be a little tight going onto your noodles, like the picture below.
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Can you purchase more?
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Can we? Yeah. Do we want to? Not really.
You can use iron on adhesive as long as your strips are long enough to overlap them. Might still be worthwhile to do them like the image shown above from @kitare102 but use the adhesive in place of sewing. Then flip the fabric inside out to hide the seams. A lap joint would be much stronger though and help with keeping the adhesive from sheering apart.
Could it be better to slide the sewed joint over to the faces instead of the corners to help prevent stress on the joint?
Curious, which kit did you order/receive that came with short pieces of fabric?
- AM’s kits contain large pieces 161" long x 19.5" wide
- Robopromo’s kits contain large pieces 161-200" long x 18" wide
- The donated Robopromo material that came in the gray rookie tote this year should have been 161" long
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