Binding Tutorial Part 2

After you have made yards and yards of binding, you are ready to put it on the quilt.

1. Leaving a few inches hanging loose, line up the raw edges of the binding and the quilt. I use a walking foot because it is usually on the machine at this point. It has an etched line to mark the quarter inch seam. Stitch down the edge, using a quarter inch seam ALMOST to the corner.
2. When you get within a quarter inch of the end of the side, stop and needle down. My walking foot has another etched line to mark the quarter inch spot from this direction, if yours doesn't, just eyeball it, a little more is better than a little less at this point.
4. With the needle down, pivot your quilt and sew diagonally off the corner of the quilt. Lift the presser foot, but don't cut the threads.
5. Rotate the quilt 45 degrees, so that the next side is ready to be sewn. Take the binding strip, and using the diagonal seam as a guide, pick up the binding and fold it away from you. Put your thumb on the bottom of the triangle to hold it in place. Notice everything is still attached to the machine. I hate to break the threads and would rather just keep going around and around.
6. Keeping that little triangle underneath, fold the binding strip straight back down so the raw edges line up on the side of the quilt you are ready to sew. Slide the quilt back under the foot and sew down the second side. You can peek underneath at this point and make sure you have a folded triangle under there, ready to form the corner.