Highmtn

Hi,

I think mastering binding is the toughest part for all new quilters OR quilters who have not found their "way" yet. I stumbled around for about 2.5 years in this area. I took a "borders and binding" class once and it left me more confused...lol I bought the "Fons and Porter" binding tool and NO ONE could figure out HOW to use that thing.. so I gave it away.

The suggestion of making lots of pot holders or mug rugs is a great way to play with this until you find your binding "mo-jo". For kids quilts or what I call "USING QUILTS" I machine sew the entire binding on with a double row of stitching in the binding. I attach to the back first and then to the front. I use a SUPER SIMPLE way to join the tails of my bindings that works EVERY TIME. Drops the final binding down soooo perfect with no guessing or measuring. I've been hoping to make a tutorial of the steps. I think reading it could be confusing, but I did a demo at my quilt group and even ladies who'd been quilting for years could not believe it works. I originally saw it on a quilting show several years back and luckily I had my VCR running. It was just a quickie fairly insignificant 5 min segment on some show. I watched it back about 5 times and tried it. It's my tried and true method.

Basically.. you cross your tails over..and mark where they meet in the center. You cut off the lower/under tail at that line. You open up the tail you cut off and measure the width. So.. if you had cut a 2" wide binding strip -when you open that cut off tail it's 2". You ADD WHAT EVER the wide of that binding strip to the upper binding strip and cut off there. So... on the upper tail you'd add that 2" in length before cutting off. Then you open both bindings. Put them face to face and turn to make the 90° angle (like you're making binding lengths). Sew diagonally and fold it back in half and lay it down. It FITS every time. Once I double ck the fit I cut off the excess and sew it down.

There are a couple Youtubes that are close to this, but they complicate that last step. Just add the width of the binding to the top tail. Some tuts have you split that length between the upper and lower tail. It's not necessary.. just open the chunk of binding you cut off and add that width to the upper tail. Cut, join..and you're done.

IT NEVER FAILS.
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