Binding — Where do you start? {A Tutorial}

I’ve been doing a fair amount of bind­ing lately and thought I’d share a little trick I use to make bind­ing much easi­er.   It’s some­thing I worked out a while ago and makes sure you always have lovely flat bind­ing when you fin­ish off.    You can prob­ably tell from the title of this post that the trick is all about where you start the binding!

Binding-Where-Do-You-Start-SheQuiltsAlot

Just a quick dis­claim­er, you prob­ably won’t love this trick if you are really com­mit­ted to join­ing your bind­ing strips on the diag­on­al.    I join my bind­ing strips end to end using a 14″ seam and then press the seams open.  I’ve nev­er had any prob­lems with that meth­od and some of my quilts are get­ting on a bit now but if it’s not for you that’s OK.  There are plenty of ways to bind and some great tutori­als out there too.

So here we go…

1.   Grab you fin­ished quilt and lay in on a cut­ting board.   Find a seam in the quilt that is some­where in the middle of one side and then line that seam up really well with one of the inch marks on the cut­ting mat. SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-Start

2.    Pop your bind­ing on the quilt top.  The unfin­ished edge of the bind­ing strip needs to be aligned with the edge of the quilt.   Pin the bind­ing in place exactly 12″ past the seam line you just lined up on that inch mark.   That’s the trick!   By tak­ing the time to line up in step 1 and 2  you will have a pre­cise price to cut the bind­ing when you’re fin­ished sew­ing it on (in line with that seam of the quilt).  You’ll have a per­fect 14″ seam and, most import­antly, no lumps or bumps in your binding!
SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-Step 2

If you’re com­fort­able with bind­ing you can head over to you machine and fin­ish off.  If not, the next few steps will show you how to sew your bind­ing on and mitre the corners.

3.    Leave at least 8 inches and start sew­ing the bind­ing down using a 14″ seam allow­ance.   Stop 14″ from the first corner and back stitch a little.SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-3

4.    Take the quilt and bind­ing out of your machine.   You don’t need to snip any threads at this point, just man­oeuvre it enough to flip the bind­ing strip away from the quilt.   It should have a nice 45 degree angle as shown here.SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-4

5.    Fold the bind­ing back down on top of itself and pin in place.   You don’t tech­nic­ally need the pin but I find it keeps the corners nice and neat if I do.   Start sew­ing, again with a 14 seam allow­ance, from the top corner of the quilt.   Con­tin­ue sew­ing around the quilt until you have all four corners done.SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-5

6.    Stop sew­ing and back stitch at least 4 inches from the point you star­ted sew­ing the bind­ing down.   You’ll have two tails left loose which you’ll need in step 9.SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-6

7.    Lay the bind­ing over itself and hold or pin in place.   Make sure it’s neatly aligned on both edges.SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-7

8.    Here’s where lin­ing up the quilt at the start really pays off.   Grab a pair of scis­sors and slip them care­fully into the middle of the bind­ing.  IMPORTANT: Make sure that you don’t end up with the bot­tom bind­ing strip in the scis­sors, you only want to cut the top bind­ing strip.   Line the scis­sors up with the seam you ini­tially lined up on your cut­ting mat and cut.  You’ll be left with an over­lap of exactly 12 and inch.SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-8

9.    Open up the bind­ing and pin the two ends togeth­er and then sew a 14″ seam allow­ance to join.SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-9

10.    Fin­ger press the seams open.SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Tutorial-10

11.    Close the bind­ing up again.  It will lay nice and flat on the quilt and then sew down the remainder of the bind­ing remem­ber­ing to back stitch a little at the start and end of the stitch­ing line.

SheQuiltsAlot-Binding-Finish

12.    Hand or machine sew the back of your bind­ing down and you’re all fin­ished.   Per­fect flat bind­ing every time and all it takes is mak­ing sure you start in the right place.

Happy quilt­ing!

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15 thoughts on “Binding — Where do you start? {A Tutorial}

  1. Great tutori­al. I join my seams straight too but I’ve been try­ing a meth­od that joins the final seam on the diag­on­al and it is VERY fiddly. This way looks much easi­er! Thanks!

  2. Super inter­est­ing. I mostly do my bind­ing the same way except I have nev­er lined it up with a seam. Too bad, my next fin­ish isn’t weeks/months out so I can try it!

  3. Thanks for that Peta! I always thought thought you HAD to join your bind­ing on the diag­on­al! I’m going to try your way for my next quilt — looks much easi­er, and less fiddly! I’ll prob­ably feel like a rebel the whole time I’m doing it 😉

  4. Rest bind­ing tutori­al! Would be nice if there was pic of fin­ished bind­ing. Does bind­ing seam line up with marked quilt seam?

    1. Hi DebJo, thank you so much! The bind­ing seam will actu­ally end up exactly 14″ past the seam in the quilt. I’ll see if I can find a pic­ture and add it to the tutori­al, thanks for the suggestion 🙂

  5. I just star­ted quilt­ing. Thank you for this bind­ing tip.. It’s going to make my sew­ing much easier.

  6. Excel­lent tutori­al. I have been stitch­ing bind­ing on the diag­on­al & have always had a hard time. This is much sim­pler! Thanks for shar­ing your method!!

  7. This is like what I have been doing all the time. I thought I was swim­ming up river not join­ing on the diagonal.

  8. When I star­ted quilt­ing recently I had no idea that the bind­ing would be so much harder than mak­ing and sew­ing the blocks was. Thanks for your tech­nique. I will try it next.

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