Celtic Bars

I have a set of Celtic Bars and I've used them a few times, they work pretty good but it's a lot of trouble to do them... sewing, putting the bars in, trimming, turning the seam to the back, pressing, etc.

I was working on making some of the stems for the My Tweets BOM using Sharon Schamber's technique with the disolvable foundation paper and a glue stick but I found that the bias stem didn't want to curve very well with the paper in it.  I got out the bars to just do them that way and thought... why not combine the two techniques?

I cut 5/8" wide bias strips for the smallest bar and put a thin line of glue stick along one edge. 

Fold the bias strip over the bar, line up the two raw edges, and squeeze them together all along the bar, keeping the edges even. 

Press gently with a very hot iron to dry the glue.

There's no seam but turn the strip (it may stick a little bit but a gentle tug will loosen it) so that the two layers are on one side of the bar, fold over and press.

Pull the bar out and press again.

It lays a lot flatter than a sewn seam and no messing with all the steps of getting the sewn bias onto the bar or getting the seam sewn exactly the right width.

Been thinking about this and maybe it could be done without a double thickness in the back at all.  Cut the bias strip a little less than 3x the width of the bar,  Put glue on one edge, fold the unglued edge over the bar and then fold the glued edge over on top of the first fold and press down.  The Elmer's glue stick is surprisingly sticky and it holds very well while working with it.  Will try this next time.