Use a Stitch in the Ditch foot to Machine Bind your quilt! The Tattooed Quilter | Fat Quarter Shop

[Music] hi everyone its Christopher aka the tattooed Walter and I'm so excited to be here at fat quarter shop to bring you a machine binding tutorial it's super easy super fun so the supplies you're gonna need for machine binding are pretty basic you need some thread but I'm using our fill 50 weight and white here because it matches my project a lot of times I like to match the project especially after you've quilted it and so use the thread that you've done your quilting with because you're gonna it'll disappear but you might still see it a little bit and we'll you'll see what I'm saying when we get toward that step you're gonna need your binding of course you're gonna need some wonder clips and you're also gonna need a couple of different presser feet for your machine so you're gonna need your quarter inch seam allowance presser foot and you're also gonna need this handy dandy what I like to call the zipper foot I'm sure there's a technical term for it and each machine I'm sure it's different but basically it's it's a foot that has a little guide it's sort of in the middle there and you can see it right there and that's gonna help us attach the binding to the top of our quilt and we get to that step but first we need to attach the quilt we need to attach the quilt binding to the top and what I like to do is with my binding is start with a nice tail like six to eight inches and I just kind of gauge sort of where my binding is gonna go on my quilt and this helps me make sure that there's no binding seam in a corner because if you have a binding seam in a corner it makes pulling out those corners really tough and so far this looks pretty good I'm just kind of gauge it here make sure I have enough of a tail at the end again six to eight inches that way you have enough space to work with when you go to attach it at the very end okay so let's take this to our machine and start to sew down our binding on the top I like to start toward a corner when I start to attach the binding to the top and all you're doing and there's no fancy stitch length or anything like that this we're using our quarter-inch guide or presser foot as our guide and you're just going to sew your binding down and then I kind of slowed down when I get to this corner because you want to stop about a quarter of an inch before you get to the corner you can always mark it if you're not really comfortable and then we're gonna lift this up and then you're just gonna pivot and put an stitch off at an angle so you're just really going from where you stopped stitching that quarter of an inch all the way down and then so you can see there and then what you're going to do is you're going to fold your binding back to get that 90 degree angle and then you're just going to pull it back over I do a little double check to make sure that it's lined up and you want it to be flush with the edge of your quilt okay and then you're just going to keep going so you're going to start in that little corner there and there's a lot of layers that you have to go through here so it might take a little like coerced thing in there but you'll get it again we're just following that guide or quarter-inch guide lining up our our quilt and our binding on the edge there [Music] [Music] and we're about to come up on another corner so we're going to repeat the same process we're going to get to our corner and stop a quarter of an inch off keep our needle down pivot just so off that corner okay fold back fold it over so we get that nice little 90-degree pocket in there so we can turn our binding around make sure that's all lined up there again we're just following the edge of the quilt with the binding we ATAR a corner hand keep our needle down lift our foot up pivot off that corner flip that's our third our fourth and final corner because we're about to oh no we got one more so line everything up okay we got another corner process all right now we're on to our last corner and this is where we're going to stop after we stitch this down a couple of stitches because we need to join our tails together okay so we want to make sure that we have enough tail space and we're not sewing too far down I do a couple of inches do a little backstage number okay and then take this to our cutting mat so we have our two tails here and you can see they overlap a lot and really you're going to overlap this two and a quarter inches I see here I have a seam so I might want to trim this off and cut this seam out let's see two and a quarter inches so lay your ruler up against the edge of your binding then take your other tail and come over two and a quarter inches and just cut it okay then you're going to pin this in place so your right tail and your left tail have to meet and there's a million different ways you can do this this is the option that I found worked best for me so right tails laying over top of left tail lift it up open it up left tail open up overlap right sides together so it's sort of like a little dance I'll go through it one more time so left tails laying down right tails on top of left tail open up open up right sides together and this is why it's important to have the tails because you need that room to be able to pull it and then you're going to line them up pin them in place and I like to use a lot of pins for this that way it doesn't really move on me and I keep the head of the pin away from my body because that will help me know where I'm gonna start sewing at when I sew these two together and again there's a million different methods of how to do this this I found works best for me again we're just keeping the tails lined up together there one more pin to do the trick okay and because I have the pin heads facing away from me I know that I'm gonna start stitching here and end down here on my machine so let's take this to our machine and this is the tricky part because sometimes it depending on the quilt size it can get a little bulky under here but this actually looks pretty good and then you're just going to sew from one point to the other point and the nice thing is your machine has a guide that will kind of help help you go along and as I'm going I just like to remove the pins you can sew over your pens if you want I just find this is easier for me you're just sewing to get from one corner to the other corner now what you're going to do is are going to trim this quarter inch away you're going to trim the seam allowance away and you can do that with scissors you can do it with your rotary cutter I often times use my scissors just because it's such a small little thing to trim away and you're just gonna follow along closing up that scene there's your lining up the binding with the quilt top and then once you get to the end give it a couple of back stitches now that you've sewn your binding down to the top I like to just give it a good press some people say don't press it back because it'll stretch the binding out where this fold is that but if you're gentle enough it shouldn't stretch it out and if you don't mind this stretched out binding on the back that's totally fine I I love how flat and crisp my bindings are I love how that looks so that's why I iron mine okay so once you have that done now we're gonna use our binding clips and you're gonna laugh but I love to use a lot of binding clips when I do a machine binding now this technique I will say probably works better with mini quilts I'm not sure about large quilts I haven't done a large quilt this way but I find for mini quilts this works really well for me so I'm just taking my binding clip and I'm just clipping I'm pulling my binding over from the front to the back and about every inch or so again I'm using a lot call me crazy of our little wonder Clips here or I like to call them binding clips because that's usually what I use them for again I like my binding to be nice and flat and I love it to be right on the edge of the quilt so that's why I pull and I sort of make sure everything is nice and flat and a good gauge if you're if you if you want it to be very consistent a good gauge is once you lay down your your wonder Clips you'll see that they end all at the same point that's a good gauge to see if your if everything is pretty accurate okay and I keep going until I get to the corner here and then what I do is I've turned the quilt to face me get that little thread in there I usually tuck all my threads in so I place my thumb here in the corner making sure everything is nice and smooth and tight up against the edge of the quilt and then I flip that binding over to create that 90 degree angle and sometimes you have to futz with it until you get it just right and I should mention this binding is 2 and a half inches before I fold it over sometimes you can do a two and a quarter inch binding but I love a good two and a half it gives me a little bit more room when I go to machine bind on the top so we're just gonna keep going here and again I'm using a binding a wonder clip a binding clip whatever you want to call it about every inch and I do the whole quilt this way ok so I've placed my wonder clips or as I like to call them binding clips around the whole mini quilt and you can see that I use a lot but I like it because it holds everything down and nothing's really going to shift I'm not sure again that you could use this for a larger quilt but definitely for many quilts this is the way to go so we're going to go to our sewing machine and I already have on here the little zipper foot as I was calling it attached to my machine and what you're going to do is you're just going to remove one binding clip and you're going to place the foot down so that you can see basically the edge of the binding that stitch down already lines up with the edge of the zipper foot or stitch in the ditch foot however you want to call it and then I've adjusted the stitch link to be a larger stitch length similar to how my quilting is done so that all matches and we're using matching thread so if you stitch if you quilt it with white thread you might want to use white thread to attach the binding or you can use something else if you want and then I'm just going to drop my needle down just to make sure and I'm a little off there so that mean let me pull that you want to make sure you don't pull that stitch out there we go so you want to make sure that you're right on the money because if not you're gonna stitch on to your binding and I'm gonna just go super slow on this because I don't want to stitch on top of my binding okay and then once you get started again you're just using this guide of the zipper foot or the stitch in the ditch foot to follow along okay and removing the Wonder clips as you go and once you get the hang of this you can you can go a little faster and you want to make sure that you're not catching the binding or else that's a big no-no okay now we're getting to a corner what I like to do is just kind of hold it with my finger and make sure that the there we go it goes over the binding and then I like to guide this with my hand because I want to make sure that I get right in that corner perfect and sometimes you might have to wiggle it a little bit and then what you're gonna do is you're just gonna move this you're gonna keep your machine needle down and you're just gonna pivot the quilt put your presser foot back down and I'm just gonna go ahead again you want to make sure you're not catching your binding there we go pretty good and you just keep going removing your wonder clips as you go and we're getting to another corner here I'm just gonna use my finger to hold that down until we get down here and then I'm gonna use my hand to crank the Machine the needle up and down so that I get right in that corner keep your needle down lift your presser foot pivot the quote and sometimes I'll go back and give myself a little check to make sure that everything looks good on the back and that looks pretty good see I caught that binding that angle is pretty good and you'll see there's a little bit of a lip here with the binding and that's okay it's on the back side and I like this way because it I catch it when I'm stitching the binding down if you you know think you can get it with a two and a quarter inch binding you can totally do that I don't feel confident enough that I could catch that and so that's why I use the two and a half and I actually don't mind the excess of the binding there especially if this is a quilt that's going to be used okay and then we just keep going making sure we're not catching our binding again we're getting to our corner we want to hold this down with our finger and then start to use the hand crank till you really get in that corner there okay lift our presser foot pivot and once you get the hang of it you can go pretty quick you know I love how hand binding looks but machine binding is super fast and its really durable too especially if you're going to use this project over and over again and we're almost done let's say capture that corner give it our quilt now once you get to the end you might have a few excess threads hanging off here from height when you start it I just go ahead and cut those and then as I get toward the end there what I'll do is I'll give it a couple little back stitches and you're all done how easy is that for machine finding and I love that you don't see how you attach the binding on the top of the quilt it completely disappears with using that stitch in the ditch or zipper fit so there we have it machine binding using the stitch in the ditch for your zipper foot I hope you enjoyed this tutorial you can follow me at the tattooed quilter on instagram or check out my website you can also get the supplies for this project over at back corner shop we'll see you again soon [Music]

Channel: Fat Quarter Shop

Views: 113,001

Keywords: tattooed quilter, stitch in the ditch foot, machine binding quilts, easy machine binding for beginners, how to machine bind a quilt, christopher thompson the tattooed quilter, tattooed quilter tutorials, tattooed quilter tips, tattooed quilter tips and tricks, tattooed quilter diy

Id: VIrseaVKOCA

Length: 24min 8sec (1448 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2019