Binding Basics | National Quilters Circle

when you want all the work of making a quilt and you pour yourself into all the little decisions that go with it along the way sometimes when you near the end it's a temptation to just finish quickly and be done with it but a beautifully executed binding is a really nice way to finish off your quilt with a flourish a binding application is not a difficult thing to learn but there are a few little tips and tricks that will help you to be successful and help your binding to look as beautiful as the rest of your quilt so let's begin with this little quilt this is if you had finished quilting your project and you were already to trim it so that you could apply the binding you want to use a rotary mat you want to use a good ruler and the longer the ruler is the better usually and you're just going to square up the quilt usually the lines of piecing will help you line up you can line those up with the lines on the ruler and so you just want to sort of give it a good look over and make sure that everything is lining up the way you want and then you're going to trim that first side off so you're going to trim through all three layers and get that whole side trimmed off and then sometimes you have to pull back a little bit so that you have space to finish just get everything lined up again and there you go so now you have established a straight edge here by aligning the ruler lines with the piecing lines and you want to do the second edge and you're going to do that by using one of these lines that go horizontally along the edge of the quilt that will give you a straight edge over here on the left so the same thing you're going to cut through all the layers and in the same way you'll cut all the way around the little quilt so once your quilt is all trimmed up it's time to prepare your binding and when you decide on a binding fabric there are a couple of things that you want to think about one is if you want it to be a really contrasting line around the edge of the quilt or if you want to be it to be a line that sort of blends in and matches that's just an important thing to consider and also you want to think about how busy of a fabric that you're choosing a fabric like this made into a binding would be a really busy and active edge and it would be add another whole design element to the quilt so you want to think about those things just blending or contrasting those are the basic ideas and you binding can be cut either lengthwise or crosswise when you're cutting borders for a quilt if it's possible you can cut the binding lengthwise which means along the selvage the finished edge because there's a little bit less stretch to the lengthwise grain of the fabric so sometimes it's possible to do that but more often than not you'll be cutting the binding crosswise and so that's what I'll be showing you here so I want to use the selvage of the fabric and one of the lines on the ruler to establish a straight line so we'll establish that we'll make this first cut and I have the advantage of being able to cut with the rotary cutter using either hand most people have that have a little bit of trouble with that but if you can learn how to cut with both hand you will save yourself a lot of time and energy so I would i would recommend giving that a try you're going to cut binding strips our standard a quilt maker is two and a quarter inches wide so you cut your binding strips and once you have all those cut you will join them end to end with a diagonal seam and I'm going to show you how that is done I'm using two different fabrics here just so that it can be it'll be more visible for you you want to lay these two strips at their ends with right sides together and you want to lay them at a right angle just like so I usually just eyeball the right angle but if you're not comfortable with that you can use a small ruler here just to make sure that you have a right angle sometimes when you first do this it can be difficult to know if you should so from here to here or from here to here and the way to remember is that you're going to always sew from a corner that has a short end and a long end to another corner that has a short end and a long end you don't want to sew from the two shorts to the two Long's that will not get you where you want to be so you you're going to sew from this intersection down across here to this intersection and I usually use one pin and I try to use a very fine pin so it doesn't cause a big bump when I sew over it if your machine is marked appropriately you can use the marking on your machine to guide your sewing if your machine is not marked sometimes it's a good idea to mark the sewing line so you're going to go from one intersection down to the other intersection and then you'll go to the sewing machine and you'll sew on this line and after you've done that this is what you'll have the next thing you want to do you can either do it with the rotary cutter or with the scissors is you want to trim these triangles off so 1/4 of an inch is is a good guideline to leave behind as a seam allowance so I'm just going to trim those off and those get thrown away and then you can see that I have this nice diagonal seam now the next step to preparing the binding after you sew the diagonal seams to join all the strip's together is a little pressing step and you want to treat your binding a little bit carefully here because it will be better if it's not all stretched out when you get ready to apply it to the quilt so I have a cute little iron here that we'll use and I press my seam my diagonal seam to the side but I know there are some people who press these seams open and I think it's one of those things that's just a matter of personal preference pressing it open does distribute the fullness a little bit more along that edge but pressing it to the side works fine for me so you're going to do that to all the seams of the binding and then you're going to press the binding in half like so along its entire length and wrong sides together for this part and you just want to be sort of gentle with it so you don't stretch it out and you want to put a nice crease in the binding like so so then you're ready to go to the sewing machine and add this to the edges of your trimmed quilt so I've brought my trimmed quilt to the machine along with my prepared binding and at this point I'm going to sew the binding to the front of the quilt and I want to start in the middle of a side somewhere like this I really don't want to start at a corner so you want to play them to start in the middle of a side and you want to think ahead a little bit here you see that we have the diagonal seam that we made earlier and you really don't want that diagonal seam to fall on this corner so you just want to plan ahead a little bit kind of back yourself into this place it a little bit away from that corner and then go back here where you're going to start and you'll know that that won't be hitting on your corner and on a large quilt I would do this all the way around the quilt to make sure that I wasn't going to hit any corners dead-on so you want to give yourself a tail of maybe six or eight inches and you want to give yourself some space right in here to work of maybe six inches you'll need that space later when it's time to join the ends of the binding and I'm going to sew with a quarter inch seam starting here in the middle of a side all the way down to this corner but I want to stop sewing one about 1/4 of an inch before I come to the corner so I'm going to mark that with a pin because that will be covered up by the binding and I'm going to let that pin extend out like this so that I still have a visual indicator when the binding is laying there I set up the machine with a walking foot which is a specialty foot that allows the bulkiness of the quilted quilt to feed through the Machine evenly so you don't get any puckers or tucks so using a quarter of an inch seam and my walking foot I'm going to go ahead and sew this to the side if you have never invested in a walking foot it's a tool that you won't want to be without because it's useful definitely for binding but also for a lot of other tasks that you'll do so I'm going to slow down as I approach that corner and I'm going to put my needle down right on top of that pin I'm going to pull that pin out and so you can see that I've stopped sewing 1/4 of an inch away from that corner and now I'll clip those little threads and the easiest way to see this mitered corner is to turn it so that the binding runs horizontally just like so and this is the simplest little technique and yet it makes the nicest mitered corner so basically what you want to do is fold the binding up like so so that you have a 45 degree angle fold right here put your finger right there and then fold the binding back down so that you have a straight edge here and here then I'm going to start sewing again put this back under the machine and I'm going to start sewing back here off the edge of the quilt slightly and I know I'll do a couple of little back stitches there just to secure it so I want to use my quarter of an inch seam I'm going to sell along this side and once again I'm going to stop and take the time to mark a quarter of an inch from that other from the end I'm going to sew along here until I get to the pin I'm going to I usually back stitch a couple of back stitches at the pin take it out of the machine clip my little threads and I'll show you this again so you can really get it you want to turn it so that the binding lays horizontally like so in front of you so you want to fold away from you up and away from you and then you want to fold back towards yourself so that you have a straight edge here and here and when you get ready to turn the binding to the back of the quilt later that will make a perfect little mitre for you so now I'm going to sew again with a quarter inch seam and I will back stitch here and I'll go all the way around the quilt in the same way so I traveled all the way around the quilt now attaching my binding to the quilt front and I want to stop sewing when I have some room remember we talked earlier about leaving yourself some room to work so I usually leave about six or eight inches to work you'll be glad you have that space and I have a tail on each end and at this point I can go ahead and don't cut too closely but back here little ways and then you can get rid of that excess so you know you have plenty but you don't have a lot that's getting in your way and now you're going to make a little create a little place a little marker for yourself by you want to get everything nice and flat and fold this binding together so that it just meets just like that head to head fold it back and then you're going to take out a nice sharp scissor and you're going to make a little snip right inside there about an eighth of an inch in so that little snip you can see gives me a bench mark a place from which I can begin my sewing now this part is a little tricky the first couple of times you do it but it's a really good method because you sew and can test the fit before you cut the ends of the binding off and I think that's a much safer way to join the ends than it would be if you clip them off and then realize oats half an inch too short so the tail on the right gets unfolded opened up and it goes away from you upward and away from you and the tail on the left gets unfolded and it comes across toward the right and you look for those little snips here's one here's the other one and those are going to get matched up just like so and this is where you will really appreciate the fact that you left yourself some space to work so you want to get this all lined up real nice you're going to get those little snips just perfect I'm going to get this at a 45 degree angle and you're going to sew from up here down across to here and again not to panic if it seems a little if you're uncertain at the very the first time you do this because if you so even if you get it wrong the first time you haven't cut the ends off so there's no harm done you can always unser it and and try to get until you get it right so I'm going to place a pin right here perpendicular to where I'm going to sew from up here to down here and then I'll put this under my machine and you can either use your walking foot or you can switch to a different foot that part's totally up to you it's really helpful at this point if you have a line marked on your machine straight out from the needle toward yourself because that's how you can sew a perfect 45 degree angle without marking of course you can always mark it too if that's easier for you so I've sewn that 45-degree angle now before I cut anything off I'm going to test this and I so I just make sure did I do that correctly does that fit and yes it does so now I can take the plunge cut off my tails leaving about 1/4 of an inch seam allowance so now you see that we have a really nice fit and I would take this to the iron give it a nice little press kind of gently then I'm going to finish sewing the binding to the quilt front starting here and ending here so that I've attached the binding to the quilt all the way around and then I'll be ready for the next step so now you come to the really enjoyable part of binding if you like handwork and that's where you'll turn the binding to the back of the quilt and sew it down by hand so you can see we've attached the binding to the quilt front and we're going to turn the binding to the back and we'll pin it or some people use Clips so they don't poke themselves while they're working on the binding pull that around there and I usually find that I have to put the pins parallel to the binding just like so and I I would probably pin twenty or thirty inches I wouldn't pin the entire quilt but I would pin a pretty good section of it so that I didn't have to keep stopping to repin and you want to pull that binding to the back so that it just covers that line of stitching got that line of stitching right there but it's going to be covered up by that binding edge so I'm going to be all prepared to sew by hand have a thimble and have a threaded needle with a nice clean quilters knot the end and I'm going to sew by hand with a blind stitch here so I want to come up maybe inch there quarters of an inch away from the binding and I'm going to pop that knot through the backing so that it's buried in there and right here at the beginning I'll take a couple of tiny tiny stitches to make sure everything's really secure and my thread today is sort of a neutral colored thread and a neutral color that often works really well the other thing you can do is match the thread color to the binding color that works well too so a blind stitch is I've come up in the binding my thread is coming out of the binding right here now I'm going to put my needle down into the backing and batting I'm going to travel about an eighth of an inch and I'm going to come up on the very edge of the bindings just maybe two threads in so that my stitch is actually hidden deep in the batting so I came up in the binding I'm going to go down into the backing and batting about an eighth of an inch come up into the binding just a couple threads in so I'm going to do that all the way around the quilt and the one thing to pay attention to here as you go down into that backing and batting sometimes you can accidentally get a little stitch here I'll show you what happens if you're not careful you can go all the way through and then you end up with a little stitch on the back here in your border and you really don't want that so you want to kind of every so often check to make sure that you're not stitching through that that's not showing on the front of the quilt so you sew all the way around in this in that way and when you come to a corner you'll find that you've set yourself up for a really easy beautifully mitered corner I usually trim away a little bit of the bulk about like so just a little just a little dab and you're going to turn that binding around that corner you're going to sew it down all the way to this seam line and then you'll sew miter the next one over just like so and continue sewing by hand applying a binding is easy and once you've done it a few times it can be pretty quick it can be relaxing when you get to the hand sewing part and I hope that you'll try to have beautifully executed bindings on your quilts from now on

Channel: National Quilters Circle

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Keywords: quilting, quilting tips, quilt, quilt tips, sew, sew quilts, sewing, quilt patterns, quilt projects, quilting projects, quilting patterns, national quilters circle, nqc, quilter, quilting videos, quilt videos, quilting how to, stitching, learn to quilt, quilting class, quilt class

Id: gbceCdugZag

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 02 2014