Tips & Techniques 239 - How to self-bind coasters & placemats

hi so I thought I'd show you today how to do a self binding I think that's how we call it with something like a placement or a coaster today we're going to do a coaster because it's small and achievable today and so I've you've got the same fabric on the back as I've got for my binding and I can alter the width of my binding or what looks like a binding here so I'm just going to show you how to do that it's not quite the same as just having the backing and bringing it to the front we are effectively doing that but we're going to do it so a little mitered corners in so that they're already in place for us so probably you wouldn't want to use this on a large quilts because it would be quite tricky to get all that working with a nice quilt but smaller items like coasters placemats magnets things like that it works really nicely on so you can alter the size of this binding as I mentioned today this one is approximately an inch wide so that's what I'm going to show you today but if you wanted it wider there's ways to do that so I'll talk about that as we go so I've started out with a five inch square and betting so this is a great way to use up some leftover squares some leftover bits and pieces of betting you don't want anything too bouncy for betting if it's going to be a coaster and I'm using a cotton or sometimes I use a lot of cotton blend betting so it's nice and sort of firm and not too thick and bouncy so it works really well for this sort of thing and I was going to make some placemats and you can make nice since post mattes and coasters or magnets what wonderful gifts they'd be so I've got my five inch square of betting I've got my five inch square of fabric that's going to be where I've got the light color here that's my Center and then I've cut to make the binding I've cut my backing fabric which is this green I've cut that two inches larger or round than my Center so that I end up with a one-inch binding so it's double the width of the binding to do it this way so this was five-inch so this makes this nine inch so it's it's two inches here and two inches here all the way around now we just need to mark the corners so that we can do a little Foley thing on the corner so if you because I've got a five inch we're template I could just place that mic my finger press my centers and place that to draw around it but it may not be something you already have a template for so I thought I'd just show you how to mark to get the corners in place so I'm just going to mark in two inches in because that will end up giving me a five inch square in the middle which is exactly what I want so on my ruler here I'm just going to line up my two inch line with the edge of my fabric and I'm just going to draw a line I've got a mechanical pencil here and what I'm really looking for is an intersect line I don't really need that line although it will be helpful when we're pressing the edges in it's more that I need the corners marked to help us with making those nice mitered corners so I'm on the wrong side of the fabric and I'm just again I'm just lining up that two-inch with the edge of my square so I'm going all four sides and so what that now gives me is a nice five inch square I can check that I'm right I can pop my five inch square on there and it sits very nicely in there which is exactly what we're looking for so I wanted this line here now on a square I want the diagonal line that will help me we're going to trim the corners off what we're trying to achieve is something that looks like this so I've already marked Y square and I've trimmed my corners but to make sure that these cuts are at the right angle and that we haven't skewed them it helps to have a diagonal line so that's fine on the square we could finger press that what about if it's on a rectangle or something that's something else and it's a little bit harder to do so I would suggest that you could just draw a line through so that you've got something to line up with and I'm just going to come all the way through on this one because it's only small but on a longer like a placement or something like that you would need to do it at the ends and you wouldn't be able to go all the way through the corners because this corner would be over here somewhere so I've got my diagonal line mark now that's just to help me with cutting because I want to trim those corners off now so that we do a little might've seen so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to line up one of my lines on the ruler with my diagonal and like this where we intersect here we want to cut quarter of an inch away so my quarter inch on my ruler line wants to come right over that point so hopefully you're going to be able to see this so I've got my money use that dotted line it's easier to see through so I've got a line here going right the way through on the diagonal and my quarter inch line is just just slightly to one side to the outside of that point and that's going to give me it basically a half square cut but if I don't if I didn't line it up with my diagonal it would be very easy to have it slightly skewed and then you'll get a very wonky little miter and we don't want these minors to be wonky we have enough trouble with - we don't need wonky motors so line your line up with that diagonal line line your quarter inch up so that it's just slightly on the outside edge of that and then we can cut that corner off and we're going to do that to all four corners so line up your line line up your point and trim that off the line it's good thing we've only got four corners so line up the line line up that quarter inch and then we don't need those triangles so now I've got this wonderful shape so this is going to sit around here and we're going to be folding these in and we're going to be sewing them down and things like that so right now I'm going to do that pressing to get that edge in so I'll bring the iron over so what I want to do here is I want to press this edge to just just on the outside of the drawn line that I've put in there well we did that two inches in I don't want it right on the line I want it to be just a little bit outside that that's because when I put my five inch square as it happens to be in there it's got to come up and around that you don't necessarily want it so tight that it bubbles the square inside you could trim the square down a touch there's another option but just not quite even an eighth of an inch just a little bit less than that line press those down do them the same keep it nice and even all the way around this would be just the same on a rectangle for a placemat if you wanted a smaller more like a regular half inch binding that we often see on things then that's possible it's just a little bit more fiddly because everything is just smaller so I I've done that now so hopefully you can see that this edge is sitting just on the outside a little bit from the line so what we're going to do now is turn it so that we're putting right sides together and line up these nice pressed edges and we're going to stitch along this edge here this line here so quarter of an inch along so not you're not stitching you're stitching just through the little fold but it's on this little understand unfolded edge that we're stitching along there so go for the sewing machine now so regular quarter inch seam allowance start from this point here and come along and it should come right through that point where we drew or ever so slightly to the right of it and I would suggest that you back stitch far but back stitch that little edge because that's going to be your corner and then do it a little back stitch before you actually it off for better as well because your back stitch that's locked it in and then we're going to do the same thing on all four of those corners so I'm just going to go through and do that so because starting here finishing here little backstitch when you come on to the fabric back stitch before you come off this is kind of fun it's not as hard as it looks once you get started here's the last one so you could be chained these thing if you were making a set you could do several at a time so that's the last corner done so exciting doesn't take long trim off any thread snail because we've locked stitched everything in and so what we're going to do now we've got this very funny shape that we'll think very cute so what we need to do is turn those out there oh no first of all we want to just trim off apart from the threads we want to trim just in the middle corner so not not into your stitching but just so that that little bowl could corner fabric isn't going to be there when we push these little points out there's just a tiny little trim on the corners and now we want to turn those out the right way so you want to push that corner out you may want a little point turner to help you with that they want to come out nicely and nice and sharp so if you need something to help push those corners out although these have come out pretty well just something a little bit pointy not too sharp it scissors are probably a touch sharp for this you can get little point Turner's they work very nicely and now I'm going to I'm going to press that so that everything is sitting just where we want it to those bits that we've pressed in before should be sitting in we should have some nice mitered corners here so just make sure things are sitting nicely and give that a bit of a press so that the next stage is made a bit easier by doing this pressing now so now I've got a nice little okay here and I want to insert this so just make sure that it hasn't come up too small so that this isn't going to bubble up inside I have a feeling that this is going to be a touch tight so I'm just going to trim my square down just a little bit maybe an eighth of an inch on two sides and it just helps it fit in just that little bit better we could have made that edge is slightly different but I've done it this way I I would rather trim it down now and know that it's going to fit okay so now we're going to now if this was already quilted of course it would be a little bit more solid than it is with just the batting you could also do a little applique you could get lots of things going on here but we want to put this inside those corners now so pop your little corner into the corner all the way around have it sitting nice and flat we're actually nearly done so that's sitting pretty well make sure that everything's sitting nice and flat in there's under those edges I'm just going to iron it again so that everything is sitting nicely and as I said on the coaster this size everything is kind of nice and easy on something a little bit larger like a placemat some of these edges might be wanting to burn out a little bit so this is where you can make sure that they're pressed the way you want them to sit before we go and stitch it so that's done so if you were having something a little bit larger and you wanted to do some applique you can actually do the applique through it so that it was quilting it at the same time you could quilt it through as well I'm just going to stitch this now so what we're trying to do now um is stitch just very close to the edge like you would peps with a binding and and I think that that's going to work really nicely for us so I'm coming in here and I'm not necessarily starting right at the corner I just want to come in a little bit so my foots got a little edge on it that I'm going to line up with that and start sewing just going to do a little Peck stitch right up to the corner and then I'm going to leave the needle down lift the foot and pivot us around into the next corner lift the foot pivot in start so by doing all the pressing and things as we go it makes this step much much easier than if it was just a little bit wonky time to keep it all straight you could put some bins in particular on a larger project if it was watching to wonder out a little bit just to keep the edges in nice and firm for you and then just a little bit stitch to finish those ends off and as you can see that's pretty much it done I'm just going to give it one final press and no good reason other than I just like things that are nicely pressed it's sitting nicely my toes are looking pretty good here I've got some nice straight lines going on the corners are sitting well it's sitting nice and flat what more could you want you could have done a little applique there you could make it larger you could make the binding narrow I've made a little set here what a wonderful little gift for people these are little magnets and I've done it this one with a half inch binding and so I've got the same I've done exactly the same technique is on here except that I've pre quilted my fabric first I had a fat quarter and I quilted the whole fat quarter then I cut it up into pieces already quilted and this one here I've just used I've just added one inch all the way around because I only wanted a half inch binding on those ones that was a little bit fiddly to sew the corners but really it was exactly the same technique and I did need a couple of Clips just to hold that on to keep that nice and straight when I was ready to sew it other than that what a great little gift you could just tie things up with a little ribbon or you might want to give yourself a gift you might need some coasters for wherever you're going in your RV we've just got a nice big camper bus we go to needs and things like that we might need to give ourselves some little gifts but a great way to do this sort of buying this sort of binding where you're bringing the fabric to the front but you're already pre mitering your corners so I hope that's another idea for you and thank you Oh you

Channel: GourmetQuilter

Views: 22,493

Rating: 4.9559231 out of 5

Keywords: quilt, quilting, patchwork, sewing, craft, gourmetquilter, self binding, coasters, placemats, mitred corners, mug mats

Id: MFuXPUNMYpY

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019