Binding: A Finished Goal and a Bonus Tutorial

It was the easiest of my quilting goals for the year, so I finished it off.  All 5 finished quilts have been bound!  They are now ready for loving homes and one goal is checked off.

Now, it doesn’t seem fair to have a whole blog post to announce I finished a relatively easy task. But it does seem like the perfect opportunity for a quick binding tutorial.

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 a couple of inches to this number, just to be on the safe side).

Instructions:

1. 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.

• 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.

2. 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.  Your binding is made and is ready to be sewn onto your quilt!  
3. Starting on any side of your quilt, place your strip of binding so that the raw edges of binding are flush with the raw edge of the quilt. Start about 8-12 inches from the top of the side, and leave a “tail” of binding about 4-6 inches.

4. Stitch binding to quilt, using a ¼ inch seam, all the way down the side of the quilt until ¼ of an inch from the bottom.
5. Trim threads, and turn quilt 90 degrees, so the binding is now sewn to the top edge, and there is a new side to work with. Fold the strip of binding up, so it’s above the quilt, the fold will be on the diagonal, which will cause the raw edge of the binding strip to be in line with the raw edge of the next side of the quilt.

6. Create a second fold that is in line with the quilt top, which brings the binding into place to sew along this second side of the quilt. Start sewing right from the corner, and continue all the way down the side to ¼ inch from the bottom.

7. Repeat until all 4 sides are done, and you are back to the tail of binding you left at the beginning.
8. Nestle the starting and ending pieces of binding together by folding one piece on an angle and tucking the other piece into the fold (you may have to trim a bit, binding that is a few inches too long rather than too short is the goal) and finish sewing the binding to the quilt.

It’s okay that this seam isn’t stitched, we’ll tack it down while hand stitching the back side of the binding.

9. Now you’re done with machine stitching and ready to hand stitch! For this you’ll need several straight pins, a needle and the thread.  This is a good time to move to the couch and, since the Seahawks didn’t make the playoffs, pop in a movie.

• Thread the needle, and tie both edges together into a knot. You’ll be working with a double thickness of thread.
• Start in the corner (any of the 4 will do) and bring the thread up through all 3 layers of the quilt, hiding the knot in the rough edges.

• Fold the binding over, and secure the starting point with a knot. Pin as much of the binding into place as you can with the number of pins used. I usually work with about 6-8 inches at a time, moving pins down the line as needed.

13. Sew stitches as close to equal length as possible, catching a little bit of the backing and the binding in each stitch.

14. Continue until ¼ inch from the edge, knot the thread to secure the edge, turn the corner, fold the binding up, knot in place and start again.

• When you reach the spot where the binding begins and ends, secure with a couple of knots, after bringing the needle through the backing, and both pieces of the binding.

• Continue around all 4 sides of the quilt, knotting each corner, at the spot the two pieces of binding are nestled together, and every time you are running low on thread and need to replace. Always start a new length of thread through all 3 layers of the quilt, and hide the first knot in the rough edges.