Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Preparing My Binding

The best way to learn how to prepare a binding is to watch the three part video called, "Binding The Angel" by Sharon Schambers, in my humble opinion. Here is a ten photograph tutorial on how I use her methods to get my binding ready to machine sew onto the quilt.

1. With your width of fabric 2 1/2" strip, face down on the ironing board, fold and iron a 45 degree angle on the end. Then apply a small line of starch based washable glue to the folded edge. Do not use white glue, it won't wash out!





2. Place the next strip to be joined on top of the glue and heat set it into place with the iron.


3. Continue in this manner until all of your strips are joined. I needed ten.


4. Take the whole mess over to the sewing machine and, one at a time, stitch through the fold with the points facing towards the right and the long tails facing left.






5. Next is a very important step. On each one of the joins, "pop" the tabs of the points apart to expose the seam that you just sewed. If you forget to do this BEFORE trimming, it is much more difficult to press the seam open later. It takes both hands to do this, but I was holding my camera in my right hand to take the picture.

6. Now that the two layers are separated, trim them to a quarter of an inch.


7. Press each of your bias-joined seams open to distribute the fullness.


8. Using a little starch or homemade best press, press the whole long binding in half, lengthwise. The starch will stick the two sides together and stabilize them from siding around when you go to sew it all to the quilt.

The starch will make a mess of your ironing board cover, but it is worth it to me to have beautifully made bindings. I suppose you could put down a piece of muslin, too, if the build-up bothers you.

9. I use a little open work basket on the floor to catch the prepared binding as it is finished. That helps to keep it clean and organized and ready to sew onto the quilt.


10. Hooray! It is done and ready to sew!





I also had a fun day at The Sunshine Club putting a border onto my RJR Lovely by Debbie Beaves quilt. I sure am missing out on the last November deadline for the MSQC contest, LOL!!!


Hope you are staying cool and getting to work on some of your "older" UFO's, too!


Stay calm and quilt on!






3 comments:

Kay said...

Love your RJR Lovely quilt top. So pretty!
How are your kitties doing?

MarneyMay said...

Thanks for sharing. Beautiful colours in your quilt top
Cheers Pauline

cityquilter grace said...

lookin' good there vic....closing in on another finish...wooohoo!

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