For the love of mini mini quilts!

Binding a quilt has been my favourite bit of quilt making for a while now (took me a while to build up the courage though!). It shows that the end is in sight and, as I hand stitch the back of my bindings, has a nice therapeutic slow down after the frantic rush to finish your quilt and get to see what it finally looks like.

For other quilting projects I mainly use double fold binding but with mini mini quilts for the #miniminiquiltswap this uses too much fabric which just bulks loads and makes things more difficult to sew. So single fold binding is the way to go and here’s a little tutorial on how I go about it.

You will need:
– a mini mini quilt that is ready to be bound
– you binding fabric
– hand sewing supplies (binder clips/wonder clips are super useful)
– sewing machine and supplies (although I have done this completely by hand before)

Method:

1. Square up you quilt by trimming the edges to its finished size.

2. Cut your binding strips. For mini mini quilts I use 1″ wide strips and these need to be long enough to go around each side of your mini mini quilt + 6-8″ to allow you to connect the ends easier. If your fabric isn’t long enough cut 2 or more and join them using a straight seam. For small straight edges there really is no need to join at an angle as with bias binding.

3. Start by aligning your strip with one edge of you mini mini quilt, leaving roughly 3-4″ of your binding strip available for joining when you start sewing. For any side smaller than 4″ you really want to start sewing only about half and inch away from the corner to allow enough movement later for joining the ends.

4. Sew a scant 1/4″ (just less than 1/4″) along the edge of your quilt and binding sandwich stopping just under 1/4″ before the corner.

 

5. Using the pictures as a guide, first position the quilt so that the binding lays off to the right, then flip this so that it lies flat upwards, then flip back down to lay parallel to the next edge of the quilt.

6. Start sewing right from the top edge with your scant 1/4″ seam allowance and as before stop just under 1/4″ from the next edge.

Repeat steps 5 and 6 but only sew about 1/2″ down on the final side

7. Find where you want the two ends to meet and start by folding the two ends back on them selves and give the join folds a quick press so that they just meet.

8. Lift the two ends back up, lining them up with each other whilst keeping the quilt edges flat and pin the two layers together. Fold the quilt so that the ends stick out at about a right angle and flat and using the binder clips or a pin clip together.

9. Sew along the crease made when pressing the ends. Un-clip everything again and check that the seam lies flat against the quilt before you trim the ends. Sew this edge down as before with a scant 1/4″ seam allowance.

10. Flip your miniquilt over and push the corners out. Then start to fold one edge of the binding towards the edge of the quilt, then fold again to enclose all the raw edges. Use pins or binder clips to hold in place.

11. Move onto the next edge and repeat ensuring that the corners form a nice mitre. You can go onto pre-fold all four edges but I tend to work on each side as I sew (this is also limited by how many binder clips I own!)

12. I like to hand sew my binding but this step can also be done on the machine. If hand sewing start by inserting the needle just shy of the previous stitch line, so that the knot can be hidden under the binding, and bring it back up just catching the folded edge of the binding straight above it. Insert the needle again around about the same place in the quilt back as you came up but this time the other side of the stitch line, bringing it back up just catching the edge of the binding again. You’ll get into the swing of it in no time!

13. When you reach the corner just make sure that your last stitch comes up where the mitred corner meets and catch the edge right in this corner before going down and continuing as before. When you reach the beginning again do a couple of fixing loops/knots (make loop with your stitch and pull the thread through a couple of times being the simplest way) and bury the tail into the binding again before trimming it down.

14 . Your done! Go celebrate by using it as a drinks coaster! Or just pin it up on a wall for all to see or even join in with some #miniminiquiltswap fun!