Never join binding strips with a straight seam. It is the obvious way to do it, it takes half the thought, and it puts a lump on the edge of your quilt that you cannot get rid of afterward. Lea Louise shows what to do instead.
This tutorial was made with us by Lea Louise, who runs the Inspired Quilting by Lea Louise channel. Watch it below, and the written walkthrough follows underneath.
Why not just sew the strips end to end
The instinct is to lay two strips on top of each other, line up the short ends, and sew straight across. It is quick and the seam is neat. So what is wrong with it?
Follow that seam through what happens next. Binding gets folded in half lengthwise, then folded again as it wraps around the edge of the quilt. A straight seam sits in one place through all of that folding, and every fold doubles it. By the time it is on the quilt, that one spot is about as thick as a pair of jeans. It shows. It will not lie flat. And it is sitting on the outside edge where every eye lands.
A diagonal join takes exactly the same fabric and spreads it along the strip instead of stacking it in one line. Nothing bulks up, and the binding lies smooth all the way around. Getting it right is mostly about how you lay the two strips down.
Cutting the strips
Cut your strips 2 1/2 inches wide by the width of the fabric. How many depends on the size of the quilt: measure the perimeter, add enough for the corners and the final join, and divide by your usable width.
Lining up the diagonal join
Right sides together. It is worth saying out loud, because it is an easy one to get wrong when you are moving quickly.
Lay the first strip running left to right and the second strip running front to back, so they cross at right angles. Let each strip overhang the other by the smallest amount at both ends.
That little overhang is not sloppiness. It is the point. It gives you something to aim at, and a bit of room to be slightly off without it mattering. Which brings us to the part that trips people up.
Hitting the corner every time
You are sewing from one corner of the crossed square to the other, and the seam has to land in both corners. There are three ways to be sure it does, and they all work:
- Draw a line from corner to corner with a pencil or a marker and sew on it
- Press one strip's corner over at 45 degrees first, so you have a folded line to follow
- Use the overhang as your sight line, which is what Lea Louise does in the video
Lift the presser foot, tuck the corner right up to the needle, drop the needle into the fabric, then straighten the strips so you are running true before you sew. You are only crossing a couple of inches. The second corner is not hard to hit once the first one is right. Chain piecing the joins one after another keeps the whole job moving.
One small thing that will save you a moment of confusion. If you cut the selvage off in a hurry with scissors rather than squaring it with a rotary cutter and ruler, the ends will not be quite even and the strips will not line up perfectly. It still works. It is just why a rotary cut end makes this step easier.
Trimming and pressing
Trim the excess back to a quarter inch seam. Scissors or a rotary cutter, whichever is nearer.
Then press. Press the seams first so they lie flat, and then press the whole length in half, wrong sides together, and your binding is ready to go onto the quilt.
Before you sweep the table, look at what you just cut off.
Do not throw away the trimmings
Every diagonal join leaves a small triangle of two fabrics already sewn together. Lea Louise keeps hers. Trimmed down, they become mini half square triangles, and once you have a pile of them there is a scrappy project waiting. It costs nothing to drop them in a jar instead of the bin.
What comes next
With the binding made, the next question is how to put it on. Two tutorials in this series take it from here: hand binding with mitered corners, which is the finish for a quilt that matters, and machine binding, which is the quick, hard wearing one.
Our thanks to Lea Louise for making this tutorial with us. There is plenty more of her quilting on the Inspired Quilting by Lea Louise channel.
Have you been sewing your binding strips end to end all this time? Plenty of quilters have. Tell us in the comments how it went once you switched.
One tool makes this step easy: a ruler long enough to draw the diagonal in a single stroke, and a marker that shows on your binding fabric. Both are in our notions collection.
