Binding Tutorail - Part 3

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• Click Here to take you to Binding Tutorial PART 2

When I left you last we had just changed presser feet, putting on our "Mr. Git'er DONE" Walking Foot. This really is a must have foot - especially for attaching binding!! I'm so glad I insisted that we buy it at the same time as my machine when we got the 6 months zero interest... as the Bernina walking foot is over $100!! Ouch! but really a foot you just gotta have!

In the past I've had some of my readers comment and tell me that they are like me and use pins - while others have said they never use them at all for their binding.

Below I'm just going to share with you what works for me and how I do it. Everyone has their own way and I've learned a lot reading others blogs and just hope that maybe sharing with you will help someone else out.

So that being said, I've already sewn together my starter and stopper and I know it fits this quilt... I'm gonna stick to what I know works for me and pin my binding onto my quilt first.

at first when I sat down I couldn't remember where I usually place my binding under the foot - if it's to the left or do I line it up to the right???... didn't take me but a few inches to see I was off just a hair and not enough seam to fill the binding after folded over.

That is the great part of keeping a blog - now if I'm ever in doubt I can come back and look it up and see form the above photo that - this is how I need to line up my binding under my walking foot!

*Note To Self* = NEEDLE to the farthest RIGHT position & fabric lined up with right side of foot. Needle down & GO! ;)

Thankfully I had only sewn about 12-15" or so and found out and could restart again. I like my bindings to be completely filled up with quilt in them. ;)

OK, so the rest of this step is pretty simple. You'll remember that I have all of mine pinned onto the quilt... which means - that when you approach a corner you MUST remove a couple pins and unfold some of the fabric.... You do not want to sew over your folded mitered corners like this. :P ask me how I know. LOL but I only made that error once!

It's nothing hard - Just remove the corner pin and the first 1 or 2 after the corner so you can bring down the binding past the quilt's edge.

NOTICE the diagonal crease, I finger pressed earlier when pinning, in my blue binding? That is what I'll be looking at as I sew into this corner. I'll go slow and STOP WHEN my NEEDLE LANDS in the CREASE. - stop with needle down.

Then raise presser foot and pivot the quilt so that you are now going to sew directly in that crease - diagonally off of the quilt.

if you had a pin there - remove it before sewing ;) and below you will notice that when I cut my thread and pick it up - it almost is read to fold its self back b/c of my fingered pressed mitered corner. ;)

I use my thumb to hold it down and snip that thread there...

then I put it back down under the needle about 1/4" into the quilt b/c I like to back stitch off of the quilt when I begin and then forward...

and there you go - repeat all the way around the quilt... ;)

and here I am - back to where I got started! :) and no one is going to be able to tell where my binding start and stop was b/c I connected those two loose ends before I began!

Now that you have your binding attached to the front of your quilt - it's time to grab your pins!! Mine are the 1.75" long, glass head pins made by Clover. I love them!

I know you know how to pin... but here are a few tips I've found useful. After all, you don't want to go to all that work and then get done to find that while sewing you didn't catch the binding in your stitch!

I fold over the binding to the back side just slightly below my stitching that was made while sewing the binding onto the front.

I pin from the table side (front of the quilt) up and then stick the pin down just before that edge of binding. Hope this photo show it like I'm talking about.

It's impotrant that when you are sticking the pin the 2nd time that you don't go beyond the binding into the quilt - if so then the pin is not doing it's job holding that binding just where you want it.

another tip - pin close so there are no gaps.. I place one pin then the 2nd about a hand with apart and form there place my 3rd in the middle of those first two and then I pin in the middle of those spots again.

That's how I work my way down each side of the quilt.

When I come to a corner - it's rather easy b/c I sewed my mitered fold as I was attaching the binding to the quilt. I stop about here and the press it down like this. Then place pins up to that fold.

then the right side I simply fold it over and look - a perfect miter! Aaah - seeing that pretty corner almost makes me totally forget about the week long frog stitching I did with that disastrous free motion Life Saver ring design I tried. :P

Looks good doesn't it. I have to tell you my corners didn't always look this neat - I've made some UGLY corners over the years before I started pinning my corners before sewing onto the top.

while those above would work OK, I still add one more diagonal pin - just to hold it down good. I don't want to chance this pretty thing coming loose! ;)

and here is what it looks like on the front... and YES, I do sew over all of my pins - with my walking foot on, it just simply goes right over with no hesitation at all and of course I'm going slow.

Above photo - the pin with sharp point up - to far right closest to corner - my finger is on the blue glass head - yeah, that one ;) I like to go ahead and poke that sharp point thru to the back side so that my walking foot doesn't catch on it.

Lastly it's time to stitch in the ditch on the front side - and rather than bore you to death with more photos... I will share with you JudyL's video - this is what I watched to learn how and she does a wonderful job 'splaining things ;) I love hearing her talk don't you!?

Thanks to all of you who've read along as I shared "what works for me" binding tutorial and tips... I hope that this will help you to finish up some of your quilts! I have to confess, I once left a binding that I paid Bonnie Hunter to sew on after quilting my quilt UNFINISHED for over a year b/c I just didn't feel I had time to sit and hand stitch... and didn't know about machine finishing.

I'm so glad that I do now - and for me this will be the only way I finish my quilts! After all they are machine pieced & machine quilted - why not machine finish too? ;)

Love from Texas!

Binding Tutorial - Part 2

in this part you will learn how to make your binding strips attach at the beginning and end so that no one looking at your quilt later - even you - will know where it was started or stopped.

Remember last post when I shared a photo of how I had to use a strip with the selvage?? and I promised that even though the white was wider than 1/4" that it wouldn't show??

well since this is called a double fold binding technique... just be sure and place that selvage face up when pinning on the binding to attach to the quilt... then when it's finished you will be folding over it ;)

Did any of you guess that was what I was going to do? ;) See below how I pinned it onto the quilt. You want to make sure that the fold is pointed towards the quilt body and the cut sides lined up with the cut part of your quilt sandwich.

when you get to the corners - I take a few moments to really press it hard along the fold of the 45* crease - make sure that your binding is even across as your quilt's next side... if it's too high or too low then you've folded in the wrong spot.

Putting a crease in that binding now will help you later when you are sewing.

whew - I had just enough binding - had I not made the strip with the selvage work I'd been in trouble for sure! What you don't see in this next photo is that to the left side of the photo that is right at the corner... this is where I like to start and stop on a quilt. to the photo's left is a short side and to the photos top is the longest side of a quilt... you'll see later.

OK, time again to round up my little binding buddy I made... Just a quick look at him and I know just what I need to do next.

Not too often do I see the pretty green floral side -b/c most of the time I'm working with the wrong side of the fabric - and that is where i have written my notes! ;) I think you can click on the next pic to see closer what I've written on mine. I highly suggest you keeping a scrap piece of a binding and making yourself a "binding buddy" it really has helped me!!!

so are you ready to make our no show start/stop attached binding?

that piece on the right I just made a straight cut with my scissors near the middle of my unpinned part of my binding.... the left binding piece is still uncut -I placed my ruler over top of it and an showing you how I have it folded back over the ruler...

slide your ruler over to where it exactly butts up with that cut piece on the right

my binding buddy note said to subtract 1/4" from the width of your binding. My binding is 2.5" so that would mean I need to look for the 2.25" mark and make my cut on that line. Done.

and now so that these two pieces will line up perfectly when I go to sew them together, I'm going to agian use my F&P red triangle trimmer! ;) THIS TIME, it's important that the bottom right is lined up against the very edge of my piece...

Repeat for the right side too - and you'll notice that this time I've flipped the red triangle trimmer upside down... I'm not sure if it is showing up - but I drew diagrams of how the red triangle is pointed onto my binding buddy fabric piece as a reminder too ;)

and this is what makes my binding buddy fabric piece so awesome - If in doubt on which piece is right side up or pretty fabric down.. all I need to do is fold my helper to SHOW me! see in the photo below?

(*When taking photos, I forgot to mention or show after cutting stirps how I joined them - but this is the same way - from photo below line up edges and reffer to your binding buddy strip so you don't get confused on which piece is right side up or down)

So above you'll notice that I fold over the quilt so I'll have some slack in the binding that I'm working with and can join them to look like my "binding buddy" and I use one pin to hold it until I can walk it to the sewing machine...

and here it is at the machine being sewn together - this is why I prefer to start and stop where I did - nothing to wrestle with under the needle... works for me. (boy I hope I'm not confusing people by now)

and b/c I'm too lazy to get up and go to the iron... I simply FINGER PRESS this one seam that I just sewed.... and then I hold it up to make sure everything is A-OK... and Wa-La! It's perfect!

and because that was about an 20" unpinned space I was working with - I now add a few pins about a hand's width apart like I have all around the quilt already.

Now that you have attached your "No show start/stop binding" it's time to sew all of it onto the front of your quilt top. Before joining stirps I had already pinned all of the other sides of my binding.

So now it's off with Mr. Perfect (foot #57) and on with Mr. Git'er DONE Walking Foot ;)

Meet back here for Part 3 post soon!

• Click Here to take you to Binding Tutorial Part 3
  

Love from Texas!

Binding Tutorial - Part 1

Guess what I was doing on the driveway when the mail lady delivered this box?

I was almost finished trimming off the excess batting and backing off the 4th side of my Quilt for Kids quilt today when the mail lady pulled up and delivered me a bingo package. ;) At least now she saw me doing something quilty - so that's PROOF that I really am a quilter to her LOL :P

They don't included binding in the Quilt for Kids KITS - but the backing piece is large enough so you can fold over from the front as they suggest in their directions... but I measured and found that I could cut 2.5" strips from left and right sides and there were 5" widths that I cut from the top and bottom and then split into two 2.5" from each top and bottom for binding.

However on 1 of the strips wasn't quite 2.5 UNLESS I included the selvage. But I had to have it - or there would not be enough to go around my quilt...

This is THE ONLY TIME EVER that I have purposely included the selvage in anything... but don't think bad of me just yet - even though you see that the white is more than 1/4" - you will have to trust me that it will never show... just wait - I promise! k?

Maybe this next photo will help you to see where I'm going with this...

Oh, and haven't I showed you my binding buddy before... it's not really called that - I've just nicknamed the Fons & Porter Triangle Trimmers that - I picked them up 40% off at Joann's sometime last year and have just recently realized they are actually so very handy for more than what they were designed for!

that little strip of fabric is my buddy too - sorta like a cheat sheet! ;) I wrote on the fabric some tips and reminders. But see that red F&P Triangle trimmer - I lay all of the 2.5" cut binding strips together - all right side down... and line up my tri

then pick them all up turn the uncut ends to where I just picked up the cut ones from - and again laying them all together - all right side down.. like my fabric above is - use the red trimmer the same position and make another cut.

done. ready to take them all inside and sew them together... stay tuned for part 2!

EDITED TO ADD - here is another photo showing you just exactly how to place your strips to sew them together into a very long binding strip... after you get them all joined together, take it to your pressing station and fold in half and press wrong sides together.

• Click Here to take you to Binding Tutorial PART 2

Love from Texas!