Binding vs Facing - Different Ways to Finish Quilts - Watch and Learn

welcome to watch and learn i'm christina whitney a handy quilter studio educator and with me i've got kimberly sandberg another studio educator today we're going to be talking about bindings different types of bindings the right and wrong way which there isn't there isn't no there's a huge variety of ways that we can do binding yeah so kim let's talk about this pile we're just going to jump right in we we we got stacks today don't you we've got lots to cover today we started talking about binding and we both have a lot of memories don't we and we were like oh you remember the way that so-and-so did it and so and so did it so we brought in we went home went through all of our stuff we found quilts that show all different ways of binding yep so we'll start with this is actually my like this was my blinky when i was little but this is this is one and the quilt is tied and it's done in like an envelope method so it was all sewn together think of like a pillowcase sewn together then turned right side out then um plopped on a frame and and tied and then my grandma and i remember her always talking about this she had a sewing machine and she had some nice fancy stitches and it's a little bit hard to see these stitches because she used a thread that blends really well but she did a fun she would always do a fun decorative stitch and i remember she had a big um card that came with her sewing machine and we would get to pick the stitch that we wanted to go around the outside of the quilt so yeah so let me just make sure that everything is clear on this one so you're going to take all of your layers that you normally use for a quilt yeah um you're going to put your [Music] batting yeah your quilt top and then put your backing right side together with your quilt top right right stitch around the whole outside leaving an opening area yes then you'll flip it inside out and finish off that opening that that little opening there yeah and my because we always tied our quilts and growing up that's my family nobody hand quilting took too much time we could tie a quilt in an afternoon with all the ants as a matter of fact we could do quite a few and we would just thumb tack this in the envelope turned right side out together right on the frame would your family do similar yes and i would actually use this method also when i was quilting on my domestic machine yeah i didn't really know how to finish quilts yeah that was the way that i had been taught and so i thought that's what we did yeah yeah well and it was i mean this was this was the way that we did it this is the way that we did it so i'm sure a lot of you are familiar with this method too especially if you have you know tying quilts in your history so that's kind of the first method that we both knew about and we did mention at the beginning that there's no right or wrong way to any of these methods yeah so whatever way works for you is the right way to do it it's finishing the quilt getting it done exactly exactly finishing it so this next one this is one of the quilts that you have right yes this is one of my grandmother's quilt tops and this is the roll the backing to the front method yes so i just left enough extra backing and we did a really thick binding on this one because we wanted it just a little bit bigger yeah and um and i just zigzagged over it right along the edge there no fancy stitches for you not on this one not on this one and this you know i i have done a lot of baby quilts like this and i feel like um this method is really great for i guess what you'd kind of call utility quilts quilts that are going to get used and washed a lot they are durable it works really well and i remember growing up like when these would start getting a little worn out we just cut it off cut out a new one and roll it again and stitch it down i didn't do the roll again oh yeah yeah i remember i remember my grandma like going in i think she actually like um she'd she'd like cut off the edge here that afraid a little bit and then she would just roll it twice so maybe that's why i started with such a thick one yeah so that you could you could trim and roll down the road and then once again grandma would get out her awesome decorative stitches and do around the edges but it's great for utility quilts and it's a really fast way to finish a quilt too one one tip for this i didn't leave a whole lot of extra batting in there so it's kind of flimsy so if i were doing this one again i would make sure i had enough batting to keep that binding nice and firm yeah not really firm but yeah well just filled out as much as the rest of the quilt quilters but you know what it still works it's not wrong it still works it's great it gets used exactly so let's take a look at this next one so this is one of christina's favorites this is this is doing just regular binding yep but now in the you know the quilting world you do your strip you press it in half stitch it roll it stitch it down right but you did this one all on the machine it looks like i did do it all on the machine but do you notice anything kind of funky about this one this is this is christina's hallmark it is scrappy because she just i'm sure used whatever was left right and actually this is all a flannel so i just went through i take all my binding tails yeah and i throw them in a bag oh i have a drawer that i keep them in yeah and so i went through and i found all of my binding tails that kind of coordinated with this color scheme stitched them together and then i just did my binding so i've got like one two three four at least five just four fabrics right there so great it's a great way to use up those binding tails and you don't have to make another one exactly exactly and you must have stitched this so when you're doing this one did you stitch to the back and then roll to the front and stitch it down or do you remember generally when i am doing machine stitching i will stitch it onto the back and then flip it over this one actually i stitched onto the front and rolled it oh yeah that's right you can see that edge a little bit there but that's it's good and it's a good tough binding you're able to miter the corners well it looks great yeah and i i love my scrappy binding too i actually will it adds character i know i will do it on quilts because i like the just the character it gives it it makes it gives it a little bit of a fun touch so and with it being a really crazy scrappy quilt to begin with it goes with the theme i wouldn't necessarily do a scrappy binding if i was doing a really formal quilt oh yeah or one that had all matching fabrics but any scrappy quilt add a scrappy binding absolutely yeah so i know we're going to get questions yes definitely what size strips do you cut for your bindings okay that is a really good question so i can i can bring this one over here so on a quilt like this where i'm binding and i'm using fabric that's the same as my backing for my binding and you can see that i'm i'm just getting started on this one i haven't even stitched anything down but um on something like this where i want a very narrow binding you can see that on the front it's really just that quarter inch that i see i'm gonna hand stitch the back i will actually cut these strips at like two inches maybe two and an eighth it depends on if whether i use a double layer of batting or not because if i use a double layer of batting i've got to make it a little sometimes i'll even go two and a quarter because to be able to get it around but the trick is i want to have only as much binding showing on the back as on the front i want it to be even on both sides not be bigger on one side than the other what about you well i have had some where the front is smaller than the back again it works i i like to make sure that my binding is going to cover up the basting stitch that i do when i long arm yes i don't want to have to go back and pick that up so a lot of times i will do my binding strips at maybe two and a quarter if i want a little bit bigger one two and a half yeah but that's about my average it depends yeah and now i should caveat there i do that narrower strip when i'm going to be hand stitching the back if i'm going to be machine stitching it down i usually do at least two and a quarter or two and a half because i want to have a little extra fabric to be sure to catch because i what i like to do is actually stitch it down on the front flip it over and then i will do a stitch right along that edge right there essentially a stitch in the ditch okay i was going to ask if it was in the ditch or on the yeah yeah essentially essentially a stitch in the ditch and i will match my thread color to the front of the quilt so like on this one i would use white and it just melts in there and you don't even see it and often unless if people flip it over and look on the back they think that it's hand-stitched biting so so you're probably a lot better at it than i am i struggle with the machine binding to get it to catch everywhere yeah well and that's and that's the reason why i do the wider so on the back i'll have a little bit a little bit of a little bit of that extra and you know i've actually seen too where people will do have this narrow on the front and then they actually have maybe an inch or an inch or so showing on the back and i think that looks great too yeah it's whatever you want to do so yeah this is just regular french fold binding and the real trick with this is making sure that you get your corners mitered right yes and i heard i can't remember the exact term but it's not supposed to look like nostrils oh okay i heard that one so it's great if you look at this i'm going to turn it this way go for it so if you look at the front you've got nostril number one right here right okay you don't want to have that same piece right there okay you want the nostril coming from this direction i love that that's the word you're using that's fantastic so in other words you're telling me here that the correct way to fold this would be to be sure and do it this way so that they're going in the two opposite directions yes okay why i don't know exactly i don't know is anybody going to ever say anything unless you're in a show probably not and even then although i have to admit the one quilt i put in a show the only comment i got was i did a really good job on my binding so apparently yeah please don't judge but um one thing i i do always make sure and do when i'm hand stitching is i will do a little stitch right there in that as christina called it the nostril the little that little loop right there and then i will actually go all the way through and catch it just a little bit on the front and then come back so that those miters lay nice and flat and you don't accidentally catch him on something the nostril and not strong i don't want to catch it on anything so so yeah so that's our that's the tip there on the binding i guess on doing those so i'm going to ask you another question while we've got this one out okay we're going to flip that one over and look at this one yeah so you've already stitched your binding onto the front you've got your mitered corner there do you snip or trim your corner or do you leave it there that is a really good question and it once again it depends on the quilt so if i if i'm going to snip anything i'm going to actually get rid of a little bit of the batting and usually the only time i will snip any of that is if i'm using a double layer of batting because sometimes it's just so thick when you go to flip that miter over you can't get it to lay flat on this quilt i only did one layer so i didn't do any of it i know that the very first class that i took where i learned how to do binding she told us to sniff the backing right there and i i didn't like doing that because i felt like my corners weren't as full you know how you talked about with the other one where you rolled from the back you want you want to have a batting inside that binding evenly so that it's nice and plump for like a a better word you want it to be equally equally filled um but i didn't i didn't like doing that but i will every once in a while i'll just kind of use my fingers and just grab a little bit of the fluff i won't actually cut it but i'll just kind of pull a little bit out how about you have you ever done that with a double batting i haven't done that a lot of times if i can't get it to fold and lay flat i will just snip a little bit off of like the whole layer okay but i'm going to try that yeah trick with just snipping some of the batting or just pulling a little bit of the batting off and see how that works just to remove a little bit of that fullness it seems to work pretty well so so this is our batting not our batting journey our bindings binding there's so many good heavens binding yes so i think that it's great for everybody to know that there are so many tips out there and yeah things that we can learn like i i just learned something new from kim yeah and something that i want to try so don't be afraid to try new things so that's my encouragement i totally agree with you i know i remember my first quilt that i had really finished and it was i hand quilted it it took me like three years to piece it and i showed it to my aunt that was a great quilter and i didn't know how to do that corner so i kind of rounded the corners and just brought the the binding around and she looked at and she's like kim this is really great but i'm going to teach you how to miter your corners and she took me in the next room and showed me and it was so great and ever since then i always think of my aunt patrice when i miter my corners because she's the one that taught me how to do it so yeah those memories you can always learn you can always learn i remember the person that first taught me that you're supposed to put a binding on yes me too that was that that class that i took that the ladies like you that you bind quilts and i was like what you don't just envelope them i i thought you just flipped the backing over you know yeah you wanted to be fancy that's what we did yeah she's like um you're supposed to put another binding on and hand stitch it and it has to be this way i'm like oh okay little epiphany so we've made improvements big improvements over the years so speaking of fancier bindings okay so we've talked about now about just like the basic types of bindings let's talk about some fancier bindings so let's let's take a look at this pile here this one's yours so this is my quilt that i took off to college and i felt so fancy because we put a border around the fabric and then my mom put prairie points on it whoo so prairie points are another fun a fun ad that you can do at the time because i was a senior in high school i was a little like um mom that's for baby quilts but as time went on i i still i love this quilt i still have it it of course is tied you can see all the lovely ties here but um it's a fun way to fancy up a a quilt give it a little variety yeah i've never actually done this myself that might have to be one of my next challenges maybe we can have a team challenge ooh that's a good idea do carry points i'll do it on a mini because i remember watching my mom and being like that is a lot of work so prairie points so what are some other fun ways that we can finish these quilts so look at this one this one's so fun this is it doesn't really even have a binding no it's not so it is called um chenille it's right and it's just two layers of this chenille ribbon across the top and the bottom or the front and the back and if you look actually in between if you do just a little bit of digging you can see that it is searched yeah you can see a little bit here also so the edge the edges like you know stitched off it's nice and searched and then yeah the chenille and i think that is so cute and i did this for a baby blanket and it washes up so nice and it was fun to put it on and not have to deal with mitering my corners and stuff i can totally see that this would be a really quick finish really fun really really fun since we talked about that one being searched let's talk about this i know this is so cool so tell us about this this is a fun one it is let's flip it over so we can see the backing yeah it's just stitched along oh it is oh my goodness it's not a finished edge you can see all of the layers in there yeah you totally can wow wow but when you flip it back over it looks great it's just perfectly cut out i don't think i would want to add anything i think it would take away from this beautiful piece of i think this is like a vintage linen or something yeah and it's quilted beautifully and because the linen already has a finished edge on it there's really no need to add anything else to it yeah yeah so you know depending on what you're quilting if you're doing the vintage linens yeah a binding on this would definitely take away because you'd lose all your little extras for sure so i think that looks beautiful yeah i agree i totally agree okay oh this is so cool this is couching again right this is a couched piping oh look at that how fun it just it makes it look like the you you you put piping in there which my hat goes off to anybody i tried it once and i did about two inches and then picked it and just did something different so yeah so just adding a another little layer there just couching it on really makes it pop yeah i love that that's great especially with all that sparkly thread that's awesome speaking of oh so this is this is a fun one this is a little place mat that i made using um faux piped binding and it's actually this is this is the actual binding so it's just two strips of fabric you guys can see there are two strips of fabric that are sewn together the one is slightly smaller than the other one and then when you fold them in half you get that little relief right there so the trick is making sure you sew it on the right way so that when you flip that edge up on there you have that little relief and you just machine stitch right inside you can see that i just stitched right along that edge right there right just right there in that turquoise i just stitched right in that turquoise and so it really makes it feel like it's actually piped because you've still got a little bit of a a flange is that what they call that a little flange right there so it's quite fancy but actually it's quite simple have you ever done that on a quilt yes [Laughter] here comes the story a story come on so how did it how did it go um i learned a lot oh good me too i did doing this too i did mine but i did it with purple and white oh but the purple was the underneath layer so it showed through so it showed through the white oh darn and i didn't do a really good job of joining the ends oh right and so they were off center kind of uh-huh just guess what i did to fix it oh no didn't you just overlap them or something no sharpie marker of course she did i gotta remember christina and her sharpies which honestly it's a great way to fix those little teeny tiny mistakes on a quilt actually it was a fabric marker not a sharpie i just got to clarify that yeah yeah so i was able to since it was white i just took a purple pen and i just kind of drew a little line to kind of blend it in a little and it was perfect that was perfect and nobody knew so so that is a fun a fun way to do this and this i remember i actually did this for a little mini class that i taught at houston a few years ago so fun very very fun what's another type of mining that we've got here the dreaded the angles yes the angles and points so this one's a little more work because you've essentially got to do some extra miters along there you gotta miter your points you got a miter on the inside here this is one that i would definitely do and you know this is something we haven't talked about yet but um do you um cut your binding straight of grain or do you do it on the bias something like this you want to be sure and do on the bias definitely so i like to utilize my fabric as well as i can so i generally cut them just in straight strips me too me too unless if there's one time that i have actually done it on the bias and that was for this quilt okay let's take a look at this let's pull this one out because you had to for this because look at the curves you guys this is so amazing so tell them what this quilt is for because it is just amazing this is for my daughter's wedding yes so two more months soon i am so proud of myself i am too i got it done in time that i don't have to stress out oh it's wonderful you're awesome you're awesome my hat goes off to you i had another deadline for it yeah no this is this is so great but you had definitely have to cut on the bias when you're doing these curves and then when you do that it lays perfectly yeah i was really really dreading doing the binding on this one and originally i was going to do a piping with it oh wow and i said baby steps maybe not but maybe on the next one if i do another one like this i'm a lot more confident now that i can do these curved bindings and these points on the inside there so how did you deal with these points on the inside um i just kind of folded it and mitered it a little bit and yeah did the best that i could they're not they're not perfect they wouldn't be winning a show i think i think they look great everything lays flat i think that's the important part everything lays flat they look great yeah i'm happy with it yeah it was it was a lot of fun i'd like to push myself and try new things yeah me too me too i know i'm making um one of these double wedding rings too and i'm thinking about what i'm going to do in the past the only um bias cut stuff that i've done has always been if it was because i wanted a stripe to like be in a certain direction that's that's another great thing to point out if you want your stripes or in a certain i don't really want to say plaids but yeah well even plaids i've i've seen people do that so that so that lines move in particular directions so now this this whole episode was actually prompted by a comment we got in one of our earlier watch and learned somebody said how did like what is facing a quill and what is it how do i do it so we're going to talk about that a little more in depth here so we've got two quilts this is actually kind of fun this these are two um dream big panels they're the same panel this one kelly quilted this one i quilted and kelly faced hers so this one is faced should we open these up so they can see the full effect well i wanted to i wanted to kind of have them side by side so you could just see how this one has a binding on it so it's got the binding on the edge if you want to hold up that corner right there um it's got the binding on the edge and then where kelly's doesn't have a binding on it the design just falls off the edge you can kind of see the difference between the two so do you think that's you need to hold it up a little bit more with the binding it kind of creates a frame so i'm going to open this go ahead and open it up so you can see how it frames the entire quilt all the way around these edges yeah whereas when you open that one up it doesn't have that frame it allows the eye to keep on going just falls it wraps the edge it falls off the edge and that's facing and so facing is when you just take a strip of fabric and you connect it along here along and then you fold it back and stitch it so that it's just rolling back that edge of the quilt i actually it's it's almost like envelope and well the you know look at the old the old way of doing it where we would take the backing and just wrap it around the front it's just attaching another piece of fabric and rolling it so that we get that and this is we see this a lot on modern quilts um it tends to be a popular and then and you know i i i was my my dream big panel when i made it i didn't i hadn't done facing before and so i just found it and then i looked at everybody else's and i was like oh i did that wrong but that's it it's not actually wrong it's just a design choice that i made so so let's show you a couple of different ways um to do the facing so the big thing on facings is these corners so you can do these like kelly did hers where it comes and it's just straight but what's really important on these is to be sure and do this little top stitching it's probably kind of hard for you guys to see i've actually got another stamper where it will be easier to see that and we've got there's lots of different ways to face a quilt there's no right way so christina did this one here and she actually mitered the corners so i used the same fabric as my backing for my facing so it almost looks like it blends but this is a completely separate piece of fabric here this strip here and she mitered the corners here which looks really nice that was my first and only facing and i have maybe another one in the future i know i have a couple that i did so this one this one here here and i can flip we'll flip these ones over let's see this one here okay so i wanted to kind of show these side by side showing the different ways so we've got the um mitered corner here so we've got the minor mitered corner here yeah and and kim told me to do the mitered corner and that it would be easy and then i find out that she's doing the easier way and making me do the hard way then i did this one where i just folded it in a little bit this was after i learned some different ways and then i did some more research and i actually found this way of doing it where you do a little triangle that you sew on the front and then flip to the back and you get really nice perfect corners so there's there's there's no one right or wrong way to do this just like with binding there's lots of different ways to do it so let me show you though so i've got a little sample here with with a couple of things um so the basics of facing is you take your strips and you sew them down and i did this with a white thread so you can see okay and what kind of strip are you using so this is a two and a half inch wide strip okay and i got to tell you that um into i looked at a lot of different tutorials for you know because i've tried a lot of different ways i've seen everything from a one inch strip to a four inch strip so honestly i think it's however much fabric you want to use do you think it matters what size the full quilt is um maybe a little but it um i think i think i think a little bit of a bigger strip helps you have a little more control as you pull it because because okay here's the here's the basics of facing you so you stitch it down like this and then if we look at this piece right here so what we do next is we fold it and press it so that it's just pressed under a little bit on this edge there okay so unlike the binding you don't have that fabric folded in half already no you just fold like a quarter inch down on this edge then you actually lay another strip over the top of it for the corner so you stitch down sorry i keep flipping this thing around so you stitch down here and then you trim now this is where we talked about before do you trim the corner or not on this one you do you definitely do you trim that little corner there i'm actually going to trim that thread and then you want to turn it so you turn it i'll pull my pins out and then you want to use a good turning tool and i learned the hard way don't use like a seam ripper because you'll poke a hole through it so i have i have a nice turner that i use that you can just kind of poke that corner out and remember you're not going to get you've got a lot of layers here you're not going to get a perfectly nice and sharp corner but you want to get that good enough and then you can press that and steam that really well so that it will be nice and flat and and the final thing you want to be sure and do and this i was trying to show you guys this on kelly's you guys can see that i just did a little stitch right along this edge a little top stitch here and you can't do it clear to the corner because you have to do it after the fact but this is like you just do that little seam right there and you make sure and catch your seam on the back that seam allowance and that way when you press everything it rolls all the way to the back and then you don't see any of that facing coming through on the front that's the really important thing and then at this point you would lay it flat and get that out of the way and then i would pin it in place and you know normally i use my wonder clips when i'm doing binding like regular binding on this one you have to pin it though would you press it before you no actually i i found that what i do is i pin it in place like this and you can see that i'm actually using glass head pins so i can press over these okay and i pin it so that i'm getting just that little bit of a of the front showing on the back so that i know that none of this black which i wouldn't actually use black on this quilt but just so you guys could see i do it so that that none of that will show from the front and i pin it in place and then i press it with a lot of steam because that's a lot of layers right along there that you're going through that is a lot of layers and then when i flip it to the front i have that nice flat faced seam that is just perfect so for a first time facer use the same color fabric for the facing as the front of your quilt or as close to it as you can and actually i always do that when i face and the quilt in the background here is one of mine that's actually faced i think this is the biggest quilt that i faced and i wanted the design to just fall off of the edge these lines here you guys can see the lines just fall off of the edge so that's why we chose i chose to do the facing and my facing actually matches my backing but you can see the stitching right along here that holds it in place and you can see that i've got that just a little bit of a relief from the front to the back so that you don't see any of my backing unless you're kind of at the side so i didn't actually match that one but it worked out okay so this is a great example of facing on modern clothes yeah exactly and this this pattern is from a paper sack sten and it's called the paper round quilt and i love this because it reminds me of books and i'm a big reader so this is this is a fun quilt that i did pretty simple quilting but i think the facing makes this quilt it just has that nice modern clean look so hopefully we've answered your questions about binding and facing now caveat we didn't go through all the steps of how to do this if you want to know how to do this i recommend that you do a search on google or whatever yeah and and find a good tutorial that will walk you through a step a process that you'll be comfortable with because there's lots of ways to do this as well a lot of people that have do this all of the time it's something that they're really really good at yeah and they've got lots of great information exactly exactly so i think that's pretty much what we've got yep i think the overall feel for this thing is finish those quilts yeah however you want some people say i've got all these quilt tops and then they say oh i've got all these quilts that are quilted but they're not done until you get them bound or faced yup so get those quilts done so thank you for joining us and make sure that you subscribe and watch our youtube channel and facebook and have fun quilting

Channel: Handi Quilter

Views: 5,568

Rating: 4.8963733 out of 5

Keywords: Handi Quilter, Longarm, Sewing, Quilting, Quilts, Free-motion Quilting, Finishing Quilts, quilter, longarm quilt, quilting tips

Id: MWG6hGxKCXM

Length: 32min 39sec (1959 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021