How to Make Scrappy Quilt Binding

This is not the first quilt binding tutorial that I’ve written, but this time I’m going to focus on how to make scrappy quilt binding.

I get asked about this all the time!  Darcy, how do you make your scrappy quilt bindings? 

This is how.  This is how to make scrappy quilt binding.

Before I go through the directions for how to make scrappy quilt binding, here are several previous quilts that have scrappy binding.

This baby Carillon Quilt has several yellow fabrics in the binding.

The Quiltville Mystery Grassy Creek has a blue scrappy binding.

Hexie in a Hexie Quilt Pattern actually has a scrappy quilt binding built into the fabric requirements for the quilt pattern.

Extra jelly roll strips made for a quick scrappy binding on this National Sew a Jelly Roll Day quilt project.

And finally, this Baby Herringbone Quilt, where the scrappy is much more visible against the flannel backing of the quilt.

Christmas Quilting

The quilt I’m using for this tutorial is my recent Quarter Square Triangle quilt, which was made with a layer cake of Christmas Fabric.  I was also able to scoop up fat quarters of three of the fabrics and that’s what I’ll be using as I teach you how to make scrappy quilt binding.

These three fabrics all have the same print, but a variety of red, green and white backgrounds.

How to Make Scrappy Quilt Binding

Start by cutting 2½” strips.  A scrappier scrappy quilt binding will have more strips that are shorter lengths, a less scrappy quilt binding will have less strips overall but each strip will be longer.

Place one strip printed side up in a horizontal placement.  Then, place a second strip face down, in a vertical placement along the right edge of the first strip.  Overlap the ends of the strips by ¼” or so.

Draw a diagonal line on the back side of the vertical strip, matching the points right where the two strips overlap.  My pencil line does not show up in photographs, so I’ve added a thicker red line to the photo.  You do not need a think or dark line that will bleed through, just enough that you can see it while sewing.

Pin in place, sew directly on the line, and then trip ¼” outside of the line.  Those little triangles are scraps to toss.

Continue with another pair of fabrics.

Once you’ve sewn you fabrics into pairs, sew the pairs into groups of four, and so on, until your binding strip is long enough for all four sides of your quilt, plus a little bit of overlap.

I realized after taking these photos, they don’t show the background color differences as well as I imagined they would, so here are all the same steps with graphics.

How Scrappy is Too Scrappy?

For a scrappier binding, use shorter strips.  I wouldn’t recommend going shorter than 5” for this type of binding, but I think about 10”-12” is just perfect!

Once the binding is the desired length, fold in half and press.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a tutorial for how to machine stitch binding, but for now, here is a binding tutorial from my younger days when hand stitching binding didn’t leave pain in my hands and fingers.