Let's Cheat and Finish the Binding an Easy Way

I think most people find binding the quilt the hardest part of making a quilt so on today's video I'm going to take you through each of the steps and show you exactly how to do it now we're not finishing it off traditionally where we match up those in so when cut in the diagonal we've got a sneaky little trick to make that last little bit easier and I have changed up a few ways of doing The Binding compared to my previous videos but what you should do is take what you've liked from the previous videos take what you like from today's video and then work out how binding works best for you so let me show you how to do your binding so the first thing we need to do is cut our strips for our binding now I like to cut mine at two and a half inches and different people have different preferences I know some people like to cut them at two inches and a quarter so it's just a personal preference and once you've made a few quilts you'll know what your preference is but I was taught to do them at two and a half inches and that's just what I've always stuck with cut my two and a half inch strip so I can cut them like that with my regular ruler or I also have my creative Bridge ruler which I like to use so this is my extra large stratology creative grids ruler and I do like to use this when I'm cutting lots of strips it just makes it a lot easier and a lot quicker and I'll put a link down below if you're interested in checking them out foreign so now I've got my six strips that I need and if you're wondering how many strips you need I've got a really easy solution for you I've got the Robert Kaufman quilting calculator on my phone it's just an app you can download and then what you can do is pick what you need help with so we're doing binding all we're doing is put our Widow fabricas how wide we'd like to cut our strips and I'm doing them at two and a half inches and then how big your quilt is so if my quilt is 50 by 50 inches it will calculate that I need to cut six strips so it's a really easy way for you to find out how many strips you need to cut now we're going to join our binding on the diagonal now I know some people can just place it on top and sew it and it turns out perfectly that is not me it never turns out perfectly so this is my fail proof method of doing it so it always turns out great what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the lines on my mat I'm going to take my first piece and place that right sides up and line it up on a line on my mat and then I'm going to take the second piece and line it up on this line so I'm just going to make sure my salvages are past that line then I'm going to take my second piece and place it down right sides together but this time coming down on the vertical again lining it up on a line on my mat now that way I know that both my pieces are perfectly straight because if they're not perfectly straight your strip will end up wonky now we do just need to make sure we're going past the salvages and we are wasting a little bit of fabric here so I'll move that one down a bit and I could also move this one across then what we're going to do is we're going to take a ruler and we're going to draw a line from this corner to this corner so just starting in the corner and drawing a line and that's the line we're going to sew along then I do just pop a couple of pins in to hold it in place so that when I sew it nothing has moved and I know that it's going to be really nice and straight so what I'll do now is carry on and I'll join all my pieces so I'll move this piece over but I'll flip this over so again it's the right sides facing up I'll come to the very end and then I'll just do exactly the same thing until I've joined all my pieces so now I'm just going to sew along the line I just drew I'm not going to worry about a back stitch and I'm going to stitch a stitching for two [Applause] count my thread and what we can do is pull out those pins and check it and that looks perfect then I'll just carry on and do this for all my joins now let's find all our joins and cut off this excess fabric here one thing I forgot to mention is if you are using directional fabric just make sure it is sitting in the direction you want it to before sewing together now you've got two options you can take your ruler find your quarter inch line on your ruler and pop that line right on top of your stitches and cut with your rotary cutter which is usually what I do or you could use scissors and just cut it by eye and then so if I cut it like this you can see we end up with dog ears so I'm just doing my best guess at about quarter of an inch seam allowance I've got this funny little dog ears so I do like to cut them off as well so just use whatever method you find easiest and now let's press now finding all of our joins let's open up those seams and give them a finger press open and then press and the reason why we do that while we press them open and while we do the diagonal join is so that when it's folded those seams are distributed across this whole width here if we're just doing them straight across we'd end up with lots of layers of fabric that we have to sew across when we do our binding we're finishing off our binding a little bit differently than usual we're not going to meet up those ends perfectly and cut and sew on a diagonal we're going to be making a folded over flap and popping the end into it but we still need to cut this on a diagonal so I've got one end of my binding here and then I'm going to take my ruler and find the diagonal line and we want to cut a 45 degree angle starting at the top right coming down to the bottom left so I'll just place the edge of my binding on the line there and just cut that side off just like that now let's press on the end here I'm just going to fold it over a little bit more than quarter of an inch I want it to be quite generous I don't want it to come undone and then we can cut this edge off here just with a pair of scissors just by eye then what I'm going to do and I don't normally do this but I am going to fold my binding in half so the wrong sides are facing each other and I'm going to line up those edges and we're going to press now I don't think this step is necessary usually however I do see the advantage in it that it's one less thing to wrestle with when we come to attaching our binding to our quilt so let's press our binding in half so we've got the wrong sides facing each other and then let's attach our binding so I've quilted my quilt I've squared it up and I have videos on this I'll put the link down in the description below and now I'm going to attach my binding now I just want to decide how I'm going to finish off my binding before I attach it so I could attach it to the front and then fold it over to the back and then I could hand Stitch it to finish it off or I could bring it back over to the front and then stitch in the ditch which would then catch the back but today we're going to do something a bit different we're going to attach it from the back and then sew it down from the front so now I'm working from the back of my quilt the first thing I want to do is get my binding and line up the edges of The Binding to the edges of my quilt and we're just going to open this up and we're going to sew this down just a couple of inches so I will pop a few pins in just to keep it in place [Music] so I've got my quarter inch foot on with my guide this is what I really like to use now when I'm doing my binding you could use whatever foot you're most comfortable with but we do need to sew it at a quarter inch seam allowance and you might also even want to use your walking foot just whatever you prefer so I'm just going to start at the very beginning there of our fold and I just want to stitch that down I'm stitching at Stitch length two so I just want to stitch well past where that fold ends I'm not going to worry about a back stitch I'm cutting my thread then I'm going to fold this over and I'm going to start maybe an inch and an inch and a half down from where that fold begins now if you'd like to you could pin your binding or you could use Clips to attach your binding but what I like to do is just line it up as I come to it so we're not pulling at it we don't want it all loose we just want it sitting on top nicely smoothed out and as I'm sewing I'll just constantly be checking it and fixing it up as I go so now I'm just going to sew [Music] I'm coming up to my corner now and actually my three layers aren't secure here so what I could have done is I could have popped in a few pins just to make sure it was but what I'm going to do is just make sure it's all smoothed out nicely before I sew this binding on and remembering I'm just making sure it's smoothed out really nicely I'm not pulling it tight and I'm making sure that it's smoothed out and there aren't any wrinkles foreign [Applause] and then when I come down to the corner what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop when I'm about quarter of an inch away from the edge now if you're uncomfortable with that what we could have done is we could have just popped a pin in to show us where that quarter inch Edge is to let us know when to stop but I'm just going to do my best guess and then when I get to it I've got two options I could either do a back stitch or I could lift up my foot with my needle down turn and then sew down towards the corner I think both work well so just sewing off the edge and cutting my thread so you can see there what I've done I've stopped when I've got to about quarter of an inch away from my Edge I could have backstitched or turn and sew off towards the corner of the quilt Edge now what we're going to do is take our binding and fold it up and over and so our binding is creating a nice straight continuous line there and we've got this fold here on a 45 degree angle then what we're going to do is fold this down to bring this back down towards you again lining up these edges so The Binding edges and the quilt edges and then at the top it should be even so that's not even there that fold is coming over too far so I'll just bring that down a bit and now that's correct so my fold meets up with the edges of the top of the quilt it also meets up with the edges of this side of the quilt then I will just sew until I get down to the next corner I will do a back stitch and then I'm going to carry on and please if you would prefer do pop some pins in or some clips to help you as you attach your binding [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so now I'm just coming up to where I started I'm just going to sew up to that point where I did start a little back stitch cut my thread and then what we're going to do is we want this binding to come past where we've left our opening so we can tuck it in inside so I can see my stitches finished there so all I'm going to do is cut my binding and I'm just going to cut it on and diagonal again just like that so we've got our opening here of sewn right up to where we started now what I'm going to do is just open this up where we left our opening and Tuck this in and so it's sitting all nice and flat now this is a little bit fiddly but nowhere near as fiddly as joining it on the diagonal like we traditionally do just push it in until you're sure that it's sitting really nice and flat and we will just pop a few pins in okay and then we'll just sew along to close up that opening [Music] so I've just finished off sewing on the binding and I did do a back stitch at the beginning and the end okay now for the fun part where we get to turn it over so you can see I'll join there isn't that looking great now what you could do if you'd like to you could just sew along that edge if you'd like to make it extra secure either with your machine or by hand but for now what we're going to do is take our binding we've got the wrong side of well we've got the backing facing us I'm just going to fold this over finger press it and just give it a press which is just going to help us when we're folding it over to sew our binding on so just go around the entire Edge and when you get to the corners skip the corners we're not going to press the corners now we're going to sew our binding on from the front so we're just going to flip this binding towards the front then I'm going to fold it down at the top here so it's sitting really nicely then I'll take the side and then fold that over and just like that we've created a really nice mudded corner now I will pop a few pins in just to keep it in place because we want it to stay just like that when we come to sewing it and then what I'll do is I'll just start wherever I would like to maybe I'll start here and you could either use pins or Clips just to keep it exactly how you'd like to sew it down just like so and then we can come around and if you'd like to you could just do this to the whole quilt if you'd like you could do a side at a time a corner at a time just whatever you're most comfortable with so then I'm going to just start where I've popped some clips in now I'm using a lift compensating foot now if you're a jukey owner this left compensating foot is a game changer what it does is this left part of the foot sort of sits down below the edge here meaning you're going to get really nice perfect stitches if you don't have this foot just just use whatever foot you've got and just Stitch at about 1 8 of an inch away from the edge so I'll just start stitching I'm not going to worry about a back stitch because I'm going to come right back past here and Stitch over the top and at all times I just want to make sure everything's sitting really nicely I don't want things all bunched up and not sitting how I want them to be sewn together so you can see that's all just looking really nice and tidy and removing it moving it and because I'm using this lift compensating foot I'm just making sure this Edge is sitting right up against that ledge there now I'm coming up to my corner I'm just going to remove that PIN and I'm going to stitch up to where I can see it joints and then I'm going to make sure my needle's down lift my foot up and turn and then carry on again just readjusting so everything's sitting really nicely and then I'm going to carry on [Music] and I'll continue all the way around until I've attached my binding to my quilt and when I get back to where I started I'll just do a back stitch there [Music] so I've finished off my binding and I'm really happy with how it turned out I really like this new way for me of turning it over and sewing it down on the top now if you found this video helpful please hit the like button it really helps me out now don't forget I have other videos on binding including how to join those ends traditionally I'll put the link up above if you'd like to check it out thanks so much for joining me and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Stacey Lee Creative

Views: 522,323

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Id: 4Fkf-nfRbUM

Length: 18min 45sec (1125 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023