Binding Tutorial

I cant believe its been almost a month since my last post. WOW! Well I finally got my quilt done and I have the tutorial for the binding. Before I begin I have to thank the wonderful lady who taught me how to do this. Her name is Aunt Marion, at least that is what we called her. She was an AMAZING quilter who had shows with the local quilt guild. She is who I credit with my love of sewing, she gave me my first sewing machine. It was one her best friend (they were both in their 70's) had used as a child. It smoked when it ran, if it did run. But the love of creating started there and for that I will always thank her. Sadly she passed away a few years ago and I often wonder what else she could have taught me. So here is her binding technique.....for when you just want to be lazy and not hand sew one on.

Take the material that you are going to use for your binding and open it up. Take one edge and line it up with the edge of your quilt and start sewing with a 3/4 seem allowance. When you get to the corners here is a neat trick for mitered looking corners. Take your material and pull it up at an angle....

then bring the material straight down

then start sewing at the top and sew all the way down the side to the next corner and repeat

when all the edges are sewn get out some good ole steam a seam. Can I tell you how magical this stuff is. I use it on almost EVERYTHING!!!!

now flip your quilt over to the back and pull the binding up and over to the back of your quilt. Iron on the steam-a-seam to the back inside of the binding and press down on the back of the quilt going over the sew line you just created.

when you get to the corners pull the material out

and fold over onto the back of the quilt. Your back corners should look like this.

with the binding firmly ironed on the the back of the quilt you can now turn it over again and sew "in the ditch" on the front of the quilt. If you go slow and stay in the ditch your stitches will be invisible.

and voila.....a bound and finished quilt. I absolutely love how mine came out. It goes perfect in my front living room.