The last seam is the one people see. Hand binding is what turns a quilt from homemade into heirloom, and it is also the most pleasant evening's work in quilting. In this tutorial Yvonne, of The Fabric Hut, takes a quilt from the first stitch of binding on the front through perfect mitered corners, an invisible join, and the hand stitching that holds it all down without showing.
It is a long video because nothing is skipped. Watch it below, and the written walkthrough follows underneath, in the same order, so you can work from either one.
Before you start
Have your binding made: strips joined with diagonal seams so nothing bulks up, and the whole length pressed in half, wrong sides together. Yvonne uses a 2 1/2 inch binding here. If the joins are new to you, they are covered in our tutorial on making the binding.
You do not have to trim the quilt first. Batting and backing sticking out past the quilt top are not a problem, because you will line the binding up with the quilt top and trim afterward.
Give some thought to where the binding lives while you sew. Yvonne accordion folds hers and rests it on her knee for a small project, or on the floor beside her for a big one. Other quilters wind it around a cardboard tube or an old spool. Any method that stops it dragging and twisting is the right method.
Starting in the right place
Start in the middle of a long side, not near a corner, and leave a tail of about 10 inches loose before your first stitch. You need that tail later to make the final join look seamless, and you need the distance from the corner so the join does not land somewhere awkward.
Line the raw edge of the binding up with the edge of the quilt top. If your batting and backing are still hanging out past it, ignore them and follow the quilt top.
Yvonne sews a 3/8 inch seam rather than a quarter inch. With a 2 1/2 inch binding that leaves enough to wrap comfortably to the back without a surplus flopping about. She uses a quarter inch foot with the needle moved slightly left to get there. A walking foot or even feed foot is the better tool if you have one, and on a large quilt it is close to essential.
Sew until you approach the first corner. That is where most people slow down, and it is mostly one fold.
The mitered corner
Sew down the side and stop the same distance from the next edge as your seam width, so 3/8 inch if that is what you are using. You can feel the edge with a finger. Turn and sew off at an angle to the point of the corner, then take the work out from under the needle.
Now fold the binding up, away from you, so that little diagonal you just sewed pulls the fabric into a clean 45 degree fold. Keep going until the binding lies straight along the next edge. Then hold the fold down at the edge of the quilt with a fingernail and fold the binding back down over your finger, so it is square with the corner and square with the next edge. Pinch it flat.
Turn the quilt, start at the very edge, and sew down the next side. Do not catch the fold with your stitching. It needs to stay loose so it can open into a miter when you turn the binding to the back.
Want to check yourself? Fold the binding back and look at the diagonal underneath. It should already look like a neat miter.
Joining the ends invisibly
Stop sewing a few inches past the last corner, well before you reach the tail you left at the start. You want plenty of loose binding at both ends to work with.
Yvonne shows two ways to close the loop. The simpler one is to open the starting tail out, fold it down at 45 degrees, sew it in place at the beginning, and later feed the finishing end into that folded pocket. It works and it looks lovely, and it leaves a short length to hand stitch so nothing peeks up.
Her preferred method is a true diagonal join, because it is seamless. Here is how it goes:
- Lay the two ends over each other so you can see both
- Cut a small piece off one end and use it as a gauge. Your binding is 2 1/2 inches wide, so that scrap measures the overlap you need
- Lay the gauge on the binding, line it up with the strip underneath, and cut the top strip at the far edge of it. On a large quilt Yvonne cuts a fraction short, because the fabric tends to creep in that area
- Turn the quilt so it faces the direction you will sew
- Open the top strip out flat, right side up. Bring the bottom strip up and lay it onto that corner without opening it first, because opening it first is how strips end up twisted. Then open it out
- Draw a diagonal line from the top left corner to the bottom right corner, right into the corners
- If you are unsure whether it is twisted, put a pin along the seam line and open the binding out to check it lies properly before you sew
- Sew on the line, check it again, then trim the excess to about a quarter inch
A finger press is enough at this stage. Fold the binding back in half, making sure it stays the right way round, and sew the last stretch down.
Clipping the corners
Pull the binding back at each corner and trim away as much bulk as you can without cutting into the binding itself. Do all four. This is what gives you a smooth corner instead of a hard lump.
Then push each corner out with your thumb and fold the binding over. The miter appears on its own. Fold one side in first and lay the other over the top of it, and the two edges meet exactly at the corner point. Check the front as well as the back, because a corner that is right will look right on both faces.
Clipping the binding down
Clip the binding in place all the way round, roughly every 4 inches, with one clip right at each corner. Yvonne prefers clips to pins for hand work, because pins catch the sewing thread as you go and clips do not.
Now the machine is finished with. Everything from here happens in your hands, and two small choices decide how it goes.
Choosing the needle and thread
The needle matters more than people expect. You want one that is thin and sharp and that sits comfortably in your hand, and Yvonne's advice is to use the smallest needle you can work with, since smaller needles tend to be finer. A little flex in the needle is a good thing rather than a fault: after a while it takes a slight curve against your thumb, which makes the sewing more comfortable.
Self threading needles, the ones with a slit beside the eye that lets you drop the thread in from the side, are excellent if threading is the part you dread. They are a little thicker than a fine sharp, which is why Yvonne uses them as a second choice rather than a first. Plenty of quilters swear by them. A small needle threader is the other answer: hook it through the eye, lay the thread across the hook, hold it taut, and pull the needle off the threader.
If you are working on a big quilt, thread ten needles onto the spool before you start. Then you can keep going without stopping every few minutes to rethread, which is worth more than it sounds when you are in a rhythm.
Match the thread to the binding, not to the backing, because the little that shows will show on the binding. Cut a length of 24 to 30 inches. Longer than that and it starts to tangle.
The needles, threaders and clips shown in the video are all in our notions collection, and the thread is in our thread collection.
The quilter's knot
Any knot works, since these are going to be buried. The one Yvonne uses is worth learning anyway, because it comes out small and neat. It goes like this.
Hold the needle in your right hand, pointing left. Lay the thread across the needle and pinch it against the needle with your thumb and forefinger. Wrap the thread around the needle about four times. Slide the wraps down between your finger and thumb and off the needle, keeping tension the whole way as you pull the thread through. That is the knot.
The stitch
Bury the knot first. Go in through the batting and come out at the folded edge of the binding, so the knot ends up hidden inside the quilt.
Then the stitch is small and repetitive. Come up through the very edge of the binding, take a tiny bite, go back down in almost the same spot, travel a little under a quarter inch inside the backing and batting, and come up again at the edge of the binding. Repeat, taking the clips off as you reach them.
Keep your index finger underneath as you sew, feeling for the needle. That is how you know you are staying in the backing and the batting, and not coming through to the front of the quilt where the stitch would show.
Done properly the stitches disappear completely, even in a contrasting thread. That is the aim. Not small stitches. Invisible ones.
At a corner, take the clip off, stitch all the way up to the point, bring the needle up in the middle of the miter so that when you fold it down you catch the very corner of the fold, take one stitch there, and carry on down the next side.
How long it takes
Less than you fear. Yvonne bound a lap quilt of roughly 65 by 70 inches in one evening, about two and a half hours, sitting in front of a movie. It is the kind of work you can do on a porch in the sun, or late in the day when you are too tired to cut and piece but do not want to feel you have stopped.
If you would rather have it finished tonight and on a bed tomorrow, the other end of the series is our machine binding tutorial, which is quick and hard wearing and does not pretend to be heirloom work.
What is your biggest challenge with binding, getting the corners to lie flat or keeping the stitches invisible? Ask in the comments and Yvonne will answer what she can.
One last thing before you sit down with it. Two hours of hand work is pleasant with a fine sharp needle and a thread that matches, and miserable with the wrong ones. The needles, threaders and clips Yvonne uses are in our notions collection, and the thread is in our thread collection.
