How to bind a quilt

Good morning! I sincerely apologize for not posting sooner. I have no excuses, except laziness. I have good news though. I finally finished the quilt I was working on so I can post about quilt binding.

First - We need to sew all the 2 1/2" binding strips together to make one REALLY long strip. Now there are two ways to do this. I sew the strips together at a diagonal so the binding is smoother. If you sew the strips with a vertical seam then there is a bump in the binding where the seams are. I will show you are picture of what I mean a little further down. After sewing your strips together, trim your excess fabric leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.

Before you trim your seams, open up your strips and make sure you sewed in the right direction. You should have a straight strip. Now you get to press.

Press your seams open and your strip in half lengthwise.

Now that I have pressed my strip in half I can show your how the diagonal seam is better. If I had of sewn a vertical seam then it would have made two seams on top of each other. When I sew the binding to the quilt then that would have left a bump for my machine to sew through. Just trust me - this is better.

Now that our binding is finished (or before, it really doesn't matter) you want to trim your quilt to make sure it is "square". I measured 3 1/2" from my blocks and trimmed all the way around. Next you start pinning your binding to your quilt. Match up the unfinished edges and pin until just before the corner. Make sure you leave a long tail. This will be used at the end. Mine is about 12" long. Mark 1/4" before the corner. You will sew the binding to the quilt up to this point.

You stop sewing 1/4" from the corner like shown. After you have stopped at the corner pull your quilt out of the machine a little so you have some working room.

Now, I got a little ahead of myself when I was sewing the corners so don't let my pictures confuse you. Fold your binding strip straight up like shown. Be careful to keep the raw edge line straight. Finger press the fold and hold it. Then fold the flap down, again keeping your raw edges straight.

Put it back into your machine and turn the corner, then measure 1/4" from the edge and start sewing. This will leave you with a flap at the corner. Keep going all the way around the quilt until you come close to the "tail" you have left. Make sure your leave about 12" between your starting stitch and your ending stitch. You can leave a little more if you like. You want to make sure you have enough room to pull the binding away so you can sew the ends closed.

Once you have neared the end lay out your "tail" and fold the end up like shown. If your tail is too close to your ending stitch or it overlaps then you can trim it shorter. Just make sure you have enough of your binding to finish the quilt. Lay the ending binding across your folded end and pin into place. You will be sewing a diagonal stitch here to secure your ends.

Stitch your binding ends together like so. After they are stitched lay everything flat to make sure your don't have any excess binding and to make sure your seam was sewn in the correct direction. When everything lays properly you can trim your excess fabric leaving 1/4" seam allowance. Finger press the seam open and finish sewing the binding to the quilt.

Now that your binding is attached you don't need your machine any more. The rest is hand sewn while sitting on the sofa watching some good T.V. Fold the binding around to the back of the quilt covering the seam and hand stitch into place. I am not sure what this stitch is called, sorry. Just be careful that you don't go all the way through the quilt. You just want to go through the first layer of fabric.

When you get to your corner you want to fold the fabric so you have a nice, neat corner. Finger press the fabric like shown. You can pin it if necessary, but you want to make sure the fabric lines up nicely. You also want to make sure the front of the corner and the back of the corner are folded the same direction.

Hand stitch up and down both sides of the corner to hold your fabric in place and continue around the rest of your quilt. Now you have finished a whole quilt!

This was a long drawn out process and I apologize. Usually you can have a quilt finished in a few days. If you remember back to the quilt I made for my living room, that one took a day and a half. It was a very easy layout. Looking back it probably would have been a better quilting tutorial.

Quilting Tutorial Part 2

Hey everyone! Welcome to part two of my quilting tutorial. This is the part where we get to sewin'. When I left off last time we had a whole bunch of 4 1/2" strips of blue, green, and tan fabrics.

Just a small side note - I changed up the size of my quilt a little bit. I decided to do more of an over sized snuggle quilt instead of a twin sized one. That makes the quilt I am working on five squares by six squares (64" x 73") instead of five by seven. So, I will have five squares left over in the end. Who knows, maybe I will make a matching tote.

P2 Step 1 - Match up the green strips with the blue and tan strips until they are all matched. Then sew them together on the long side. Make sure you are using 1/4" seam allowance. Once you have them all sewn together press them open to the blue/tan side. This means you iron them with the blue/tan side up then press the fabrics open.

Now that you have the seams pressed open cut your 4 1/2" rectangles. You should be able to cut nine rectangles from each sewn strip of fabric. I cut 52 blue/green rectangles and 30 brown/green ones. If you are sticking with the original size quilt then you will need 59 blue/green rectangles and 35 brown/green ones. You should still have your two extra blue squares and two extra green squares. We aren't ready to use those yet.

Match up the rctangles as shown and sew together (remember your 1/4" seam allowance). You will have more blue/green rectangles than brown/green ones. Just set those aside. DO NOT sew them together.

Once you have all your squares sewn together you will need to press them open. It doesn't matter which way you press them. I like to be consistent and press them all the same way. Once you have them all pressed open then you need to square them up. Thankfully this quilt isn't really complicated so it won't make a huge difference if your squares aren't exactly 8 1/2" square. Just make sure that they are all equal and square. For example, if you smallest square ends up being 8 1/4" then make them all 8 1/4" square.

If you remember from last time I haven't cut my background fabric yet. I laid out a few pieces to get an idea of what my quilt is looking like so far. I decided to make my strips a little wider than the inch thick I thought originally.

I am going to go 1 1/2" wide instead so I need to cut 2" strips from my background fabric after cutting my 4" border fabric. One small problem? I don't have enough background fabric. I should have purchased 1 3/4 yards instead of 1 1/2 yards. I guess I would have had enough if I would quit changing my mind. Oh well, I cut what I had. I cut 6 - 4" strips (or 7 if you stick with the twin size), and I need 17 - 2" strips (or 21) cut into 8 1/2" rectangles.

I will start sewing with what I have and go back to Joann's sometime this week to pick up the remaining background fabric.

Next up we start piecing our quilt top together and sewing.

Four Square Quilt

Good Friday everyone! I know it has been awhile and I apologize. I am putting the baby stuff to the side for a moment (don't worry I haven't given up on it, just postponing it for now) and working on a new project. A little back story -

I was looking through my weekly Better Homes & Gardens email when I spotted this picture:

Now, the picture was advertising for the headboard, but the quilt is what caught my eye. I love that quilt. It doesn't look too hard to make and it is one of those quilts that are very simple to make larger or smaller depending on what you need. I guesstimated that the squares are probably 4" and the background strips are probably 1" with a 4" band (or frame) around the whole thing. Easy right? Well, I am going to make this quilt and I am also going to take pictures and write a tutorial as I go. I will work on this a little at a time (as I am able) so the tutorial will be in steps spread across several days. I hope you guys don't mind.

First - We need to pick out our fabrics. I looked through Joann's website and picked out a few that I liked. Then went to the store and picked them up. I liked the aqua and lime together but I wasn't digging on the red so I decided to replace it with brown.

And since I was using those colors then I thought this would make a nice backing fabric.

Now, while I was at Joann's I found a light tan fabric that matched my backing fabric nicely and picked it up too. I am making a twin sized quilt and my four squares will consist of one aqua, two lime, and one brown.

I picked up 1 yard of aqua, 1 1/2 yards of lime, 1 yard of brown (1/2 yard for the squares and 1/2 yard for the binding in case you want different colors like I did), 4 yards of backing, and 1 1/2 yards of background fabric (mine is white).

Second - We cut our fabrics. I am incredibly lazy and if there is a way to cut corners then I will do it. Since we are working with a four block square then I can cut out a lot of cutting and sewing by cutting 4 1/2" strips (4" square plus our seam allowance) instead of 4 1/2" squares out of my block fabric. I cut 11 - 4 1/2" strips out of the green and 7 - 4 1/2" strips out of the blue. Then cut two 4 1/2" squares from one of the blue strips and two 4 1/2" squares from one of the green strips. These are our four single square corners. Will will just leave the remaining strips alone for now and I will show you more about this shortcut in the second tutorial.

After I cut my main fabric I started looking at my browns and couldn't decide which I wanted as binding and which I wanted as my fourth block so I laid them out and decided I wanted the darker as my binding and the lighter as my block. The white fabric is my background fabric, but I will be cutting that one later.

The brown fabrics were a lighter weight than the other fabrics so I ironed and starched them to make them stiffer and easier to work with before I cut them. Now, a lot of fabrics aren't put on the bolt straight so when you iron and refold them then they are off by a little, but dang! One and a quarter inch on either side that I couldn't use. It's a good thing that this is my binding so I won't need as much. I wouldn't have had enough if this was my fourth square.

Any who - I cut the 2 1/2" strips for my binding and had just enough. I ended up with 7 - 2 1/2" strips. Then I cut 4 - 4 1/2" strips from the tan fabric.

I guessed my yardage pretty accurately. I didn't have any extra of my browns and only a very small amount of lime and aqua. I will cut my background fabric later so I don't know how I did guessing that one. I HATE cutting so I try to break it up a bit. I will sew my squares before I cut my background fabric.

In our next installment we will start sewing. Then I will explain why we cut 4 1/2" strips instead of 4 1/2" squares.

Have a good weekend and I hope to have some more for you next week.