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Creating Your Binding Strips

So I'm just about ready to move us on to binding and I want to make sure that we have plenty of time for that because that's a part of the quilt making process that often gives people pause so it's actually one part that I would like to try to do from start to finish in real time if we can so I'm going to go ahead and start while you guys were doing some machine quilting practice and if you would like to bind your sample piece you can follow along with me using whatever quilting you've got done there is ok or if you would prefer to keep quoting and just watch what I'm doing, you can do that as well. So I am going to switch to the quilt top that we were working with earlier and I should say then in a perfect world this would already have a lot more quilting on it, so I'm kind of doing a tiny no no which is I'm going to buy into this without any little much quoting at all I think we've done like to hand ties and two machine ties but this is the sample size that I had prepared for this op...

eration so I kind of want you guys to understand that this should be quilted and set aside the fact that it's not and then this is the peaceful use to practice binding so binding fabric is also woven fabric. What we do with this is we cut a thin strip of it, and then we'll basically wrap that around the raw edges of the quilt here, and that will seal in all these layers, and it will give our quilt a nice professional finished edge, and I like to use by it not a bias finding, but a straight grained binding so there's two different kinds straight grained binding is we've already talked about is where the vertical and the horizontal threads of the fabric perfectly perpendicular. A bias finding is where those threads air at a forty five degree angle, so fabric on its grain is not stretchy if you stretch fabric along its bias grain it's usually quite stretchy, so some quilters like to cut their binding pieces along the bias because they're a little more forgiving personally for beginners, I'm more of a fan oven on grain binding so that's what we're going toe learn how to do today so how do we figure out how much binding fabric we need? You know there there's matthew khun do for this? The classwork book covers it in great detail, but then the class work but goes on to recommend that you just go online and search for binding calculators, or you get that awesome robert kauffman app that I mentioned earlier quilters little helper, because all you have to do then is put in the dimensions of your quilt, and it will tell you how much binding to get so on the fan of anything that takes the math away. If you want just a general rule of thumb for the kind of lap size quilts that we're working with here forty to sixty inches wide, fifty two, seven inches tall, generally speaking, somewhere between a quarter of a yard to a third of the yard is all you need to bind because we're on lee working with little strips of fabric here. So I've got a piece of binding fabric that I'm going to use on my wall hanging size quilt here, and as we did previously with our backing exercise, the first thing to do is to get this nice and squared up, so hopefully everybody remembers how to do that. We're going to go ahead and press out the factory crease here. In this case, though, we only have to square one edge of it because we're going to cut this into strips just using the squared edge is our guide. I don't know when in my life I have ironed faster, ten entering that we'll know it's really funny said, because just as you said, that diana question came from elizabeth saying what's, the best way to ryan quickly when you hate I think that press perfect that debbie was recommending in the previous segment sounds like the ticket to that professed pressed, professed press I find I mean quite therapy to me, I don't like doing it, but it's that's a different kind of therapy conversion, all right? So then with my crease pressed out, I'll just put myself just together and shipped him around until I get a nice clean fold and then I'll press that into place. Another thing you can do, though on that question of pressing is if you have pre shrunk your fabrics, there's no reason you can't kind of spritz them and put them in a cool, drier and let the tumble dry do most of the wrinkle removal that you're using just quilting cotton's sometimes that'll work great, okay, so I have established a straight fold. I'm just going to go ahead and trim this edge because of course, now the cut edges of the fabric don't match and I only need to do the one edge, so double check my alignment up here she ruler needs a little shift and I don't need to do anything else was squaring because at this point what I need her strips, so I like to use a binding strip that is two and a quarter inches wide. There are a lot of quilters in the world that prefer to inch strip, but I've always felt like a two and a quarter gives you a tiny extra margin, which makes the mighty airing of the corners of the binding much easier. So we're going to use a two and a quarter inch wide strip here, and you can cut that by using the lines on your cutting, matt, like so or since we really just need to take a piece of fabric off the edge, you might want to play with this cutting method that we were using in the last segment, which is to line up the ruler against the edge of the fabric. So see here I've got two inches and a quarter, and I can just cut straight up and get a nice straight strip that way without having to mess with the cutting lines on my mat. Number of strips that you will need will be determined by the size of your quilt and the online calculators or the phone app will tell you how many strips to cut. Um, I know for this little guy, I'm going to need three strips, so that's, what I'm going to cut, but don't let the math of how much fabric he need for binding or how many strips you need intimidate you too much if you if he wants there's no reason in the world you can't just by a half a yard of fabric, cut it into a few strips and then lay your quilt on the floor and just start stretching those strips and to end along the edge of the quilt until they reach all the way around. That's a very low tech but effective way to measure a binding and its legal completely legal go ahead and cut of fourth just so there's, no chance in the world that I'm going to run out here if you cut your binding and you can't quite get to if you have it paper towel roller are twitter if you wrap it around that so it just don't get afraid and stuff and you can put it away in a safe place where doesn't get all unfolded begin in health oh, that's! A great idea. Thank you for that. Yeah, I love that caper towel paper tell roles as a great binding storage. Especially because yeah, you know, we talked about how big these processes are, of sandwiching and basting and quilting, and so it's very likely may not want to do them on the same day, I usually d'oh every one of these processes that we're doing today on different days because otherwise it's just too long and exhausting of a quilting day, so that be a great way to hold your binding in between. So I've got my four strips here now, here's the thing my strip still have salvages on them because I simply cut my fabric from salvage to salvage and as we established, the salvage is a slightly thicker place, so this is definitely a good moment to just lock those salvages right off. There are quilters who will cut the fabrics that salvages off before they cut the long strips that's also a completely legal way to do this there's no particular reason it has to be done one way or the other, I tend to like myself, which is in place because they're just a nice straight guideline to follow, and then I go ahead and chop him off once the strips air cut like this, so is anyone commenting in the chat j k about binding strips in the wits they like to use or whether they like grain versus bias. Well, we actually got some questions coming in about grains and maybe this is a good time to mention those regrouped on from that you're okay with that time? Absolutely because it's actually mon a monitor is saying they really appreciate you answering the previous question particularly for newbies but they were looking at her notes from yesterday where you said to lay the grain of the interfacing horizontally across the t shirt and she just wants to know why is that wouldn't you want the grain going along the long side of the shirt to prevent stretching depending on the pattern of the shirt? I would say the reason the reason that I cut the interfacing the way I do and the reason that I oriented horizontally across the blocks is simply that that is a very space efficient way to cut the usable interfacing I like tio use that stuff as efficiently as I can not that it's terribly expensive or anything but that way I can cut less and use more of it and not have a lot of waste if I were trying to make the cuts of interfacing along the other grain if you can imagine it would be nice to have a piece of interfacing to really illustrate this but if I have my giant long strip of interfacing and the grain is running this way and I need to cut pieces to go in a vertical orientation of grain along my blocks and limited to cutting on lee to twenty inches whereas if I'm cutting the other way and my strip is horizontal and I'm cutting slices on it I can cut whatever I need to so it's it's just a more efficient way to use the stuff as we discovered yesterday not all machines even have an issue with stretching when you so across that grain you really need to test your machine out and see whether that's going to be an issue and if it is it's such an easy fix with that one extra little strip that that way all your horizontal seems come out perfect cause they're sewn on grain and then you have an easy way to correct those vertical seems that that's something that you need to do with your machine so I hope that I hope that clarifies thank you time and michelle be saying she's always been told it's a straight cut the binding sorry if you have a straight cut on the binding it worked is strong and can fall apart but if you cut on the diagonal it's really strong they're definitely this is something I've heard about bias findings to and I think that they're great it's the reason I like to teach beginners with the straight grained binding is simply that I find it so much easier to handle when you're installing it on the quilt and I thanks for your first experience with binding there's a lot to manage in terms of sewing it to the quilt and sowing the strips together and turning the corners and all these things I'd rather have you with a non stretchy easy to handle binding you may wanna on your next quilt try a bias finding and see how different they feel so I use the straight grained binding all the time I've never had a wear issue with it, but I know there are definitely proponents of the bias finding on angie's seems to like it because it looks more attractive so she was saying, would you so the strips together at an angle rather the straight just because it gets a mighty nice of finish for the angie is predicting the future yes that's exactly what I'm going to do next actually well time dungy yes, exactly so yes, I do prefer to sew these together at an angle other there certainly could sew them together straight and to end there's no law against that the way that we will do that is by pressing some handy sewing guide creases into most of these strips. So I've got four strips here I'm going to set one of them aside and I'm not going to do any pressing on that at all and then the other three what I'm going to do is just press a diagonal fold in the end so it's like a forty five degree fold and all I'm doing is taking the corner and bringing it down so that the edges lineup and those little crease lines will then become the places where I so so it's just a very easy way to do a diagonal seem so then coming back over here to the sewing machine here's what we're gonna d'oh you want to take the strip that you did not press and you want to take one of your strips that is pressed and you orient the's at a forty five degree angle like so I'm sorry make that a ninety degree angle and then this fold that we've just press this little crease that should be basically aimed as if it were cutting off the corner does that make sense so they got a ninety degree angle and that creases aimed so this is cutting off the corner basically now you can pin this or not pin this as you see fit I think I will stick a pin in here maybe to what you'll do then is you'll so these together and you'll just so right in that crease line okay, so do that real quick it's a little bit like stitching in the ditch because your are aiming right along increase but see once I've done that then I'm just going to trim the seam allowance which you don't have to be super precise about you can just use scissors I'll trim that to a quarter inch and then when I pressed that seem allowance open, it forms a nice continuous strip with this nice diagonal scene and that's the joint point between them and then I'll just continue to add the next strip, right? So I have another folded piece here. I just want to make sure that the two seams are facing the same way, so I will be careful to lay my strip out and oriented so that I'll be sewing the seem on the same side, and in this case, I will not pin it, I'll just go ahead and sew them together. It works just fine either way, that really just comes down to what your comfort level is about pinning debbie, were you up in early and you're selling career or is that something that you've never done? It probably was a pin or back in the day vacuum attain? Yeah, but you know, I kind of grew out of it. You're liking it works just fine without most of the time. So is your hands grew more confident with guiding fabric and wrangling an experience level that that you gain because you trust yourself they go, I think that's a nice way to say that, but he caught when you have a little rhyme that makes you remember things a pneumonic, yes, so because it always gets me can you use when we're joining them? When it's on the quilt so I take the right sides together and it's a kiss twist, and then you cross the letter a u you line your letter a and that's clean which way that does that make sense? No, do it again. You have your two right sides together so they want to kiss and then twist and then that's like the letter a and you cross and that you know, the diagonal that's. Very nice e like that. I can't take credit for it. I've watched a lot of like you two things and those were the things that stuck in my in my head. Youtube is an amazing resource. That's true s everybody's working on binding strips here. Good. I'll just continue assembling this one. It's a good moment for commentary or questions from the outside world if we have any. Yeah, we got a question regarding the cutting of the binding. They were saying they haven't left the name of saying I missed how wide dying cuts her binding. But I used two and a half inch and then trim the ends together. Trim the ends after they are sewn together, okay, that's completely legal. Yeah, that, and the two and a half inch binding would give you even more of a even more of a margin, a two corners there where you're monitoring, so I think that would be fine. I've seen it is two inches, two and a quarter and two and a half, and they all make beautiful bindings, so you can definitely use what feels comfortable to you. Another view is saying, I've only used by us finding, so I'm interested to see how it will lay around the quilt. Excellent, yeah, that'll be good to see I have a friend in portland who believes strongly that bias finding is the way to go. What I always find interesting about quilting is that, you know, people get very invested in the techniques and the ideas that they like the best, and I've always heard I've always my whole my whole crafting life, you know, I've heard people say, this is the only way to do it. This is the best way to do it, and I think the internet age, being able to look at so many other crafters and share ideas with so many other crafters, has really given a lot of us a feeling of freedom to experiment and find our own techniques and that's been a great thing for kraft, because suddenly we see that there's a million right ways to do anything and we can all really be enriched by that fact I could see in our chat room right now, she in the lounge, lots of our viewers are sharing their stories of how they tried to the that some of them they're tired, they're diagonal. Some of them are trying with the mighty rings, they've all tried different techniques, and they're sharing with each other how that works. Well, that's great. I love that great community here on creative life there is it is a great community here I've really enjoyed here and everybody's commentary in questions and sharing, and we've had some wonderful questions here in the studio too. You don't really, really well, I mean, I know that kelly and nina was saying yesterday they didn't have much sewing experience, but looking at the work that you producing here, it looks very, very impressive. I mean, have you found it very easy to follow diane's steps for me, it's been really? I mean, I think she really breaks it down into the very basic. So it's been great I've understood attract with her, I'm a little slower than everybody else, but I feel like I can get it get get through this untested three it's a little hard for me too. I get confused should I watch her? Should I you know so that part doing it and trying to learn at the same time but I've definitely have learned a lot and then when you take your work home yeah, definitely reminders of everything now, jane, you had a very specific project, but in fact you told me at lunch you almost gave this a way for somebody else to do for you. Yes thiscause tonto rescue saw groupon or living social or one of those where they would do it for nineteen dollars but that was a small one, okay? And uh but I didn't want to send my t shirts away this cross on that collection and that I would not send that collection away in this city either they have you found it because you are. You have done a lot of sewing obviously because he would tell you actually sold your daughter's wedding dress. Yes, they did in what? Five days? Well, I I cut it out. It was all cut out but I took it to london with me in a suitcase borrowed a sewing machine and so did in the hotel in london nice taking on some big projects before yes find you know, you know, this is going to be amazing but it's through it's going to be beautiful well, that would be on about it the show my work yes please things are headed to the gallery because the galleries are always there and you can do that too or you need to do is go to the course page and you click on the share your work button and since it's friday at it to the I made it friday hashtag as well when you are loaded because we'd love to see it out on any of the work that you created not actually just on this course but any of the crafting channel courses or indeed is the photography courses would love to see your work always on creative life so thanks for sharing it with us actually, so I'm living on to the next stage of making the binding strip I've sewn my pieces together my four binding strip pieces and now I'm just pressing them in half lengthwise so that I end up with a very long folded strip finding making is definitely another one of those good netflix crafts were here really taking it takes a little while to make a binding strip but you don't have to concentrate on it too hard for most of it so you can do other things once we have this all made then we're going to sew it down to my sample quilt top they're a sample quote sandwich I think a lot of new quilters feel very intimidated by binding because they may have seen bindings or bias tape edge ings that air primarily put on using machines sewing and it can be a little tricky to aim a seem perfectly so that it'll catch both sides of thie binding and so the method that we're going to use today involves but pass of machines sewing and then a passive hand sewing there are people in the world who don't love hand sewing as muchas I dio so if you're in if you're intimidated by the amount of hand sewing that this method will require at the fourth segment, I'm going to show you an alternate method of finishing a quote were this whole stage of making a binding strip and sewing it to the quote will not be necessary so if you're if you're looking at this and kind of blanching, just stay tuned we'll we'll deal with you later I grew up in a sewing household my mother and my sisters were prodigious so is the fact that my grandmother as well but maybe it's because technologies moved on but I do remember my mother always had hand sewing was far more reliable in machine, so I'm sure that's not true now because these machines is so advanced branch perhaps when you had all the machines that was the case andi she wanted something done really, really, really well she did it by hand or where she didn't trust the machine and really love that that's. Why I have a friend who likes to sew everything by hand still, too, because she's, just a very precision hand, so and and her seems, come out stronger and more precise. I'm sure it's all to do with your own personal skill rather than the actual equipment. Yes, I agree by hand. If you go to tokyo, all right, we're going to hong kong, where I go for my suits.