How To Make Binding

Binding is the edging that finishes the quilt by sealing all the loose edges inside. I’ve split my binding tutorial into two posts: this is how to make binding, the next will be how to attach binding to your finished quilt.

Materials: Fabric strips that are 2½ inches wide. How many? That depends, what’s the perimeter of your quilt? To find the perimeter, add up the edges. Length + length + height + height = perimeter = the number of inches of binding you need (add 10-12 inches to this number, just to be on the safe side).

Instructions:

Sew your binding strips together.
To reduce bulky seams, sew your binding strips together on the diagonal. This spreads each seam out over a couple of inches, which makes the hand stitching (the last step of binding) much easier.
To make binding with diagonal seams, take one strip and place it horizontal, place a second strip and place it vertical, over the first strip, right sides together, with a ¼ to ½ inch tail on each side. Use a fabric pen to draw a straight line, from corner to corner, along the 45 degree mark.

Sew right on the line you drew and trim thread.

Open to make sure the pieces are lined up well, both the top and bottom edges should be straight, with no discernible jump at the seam. I check every single time I do this, as sometimes it looks like it has sewn together perfectly, but then I open it up and it’s all wonky.
Now, I don’t mean have the zigzags line up. That’s more perfection than I am interested in. I mean the top and bottom edges of the binding.

Fold back into place as if you had just sewn it, and trim to ¼ inch seam allowance. These triangles are waste, or for your scrap bin. They are no longer needed for this project.

Iron the seam. Continue until your fabric strip is the desired length.

Now you are going to iron your 2½ inch wide by many, many inches long piece of binding in half, along its length, so it measures 1¼ inches wide by many, many inches long. Fold your binding in half, wrong sides together, so that the raw edges are together, and iron.