Saturday, June 1, 2013

Quilt Binding

On my last quilt a number of people have asked me about lumpless binding. 
I normally bind my quilts as shown here. The seam is stitched straight and when pressed it does not show up too badly. However sometimes creates a tiny lump depending on the type of fabric as shown below.


Straight edge seam with a slight lump

Straight edge seam - hand bound. The seam is clearly visible as the two fabrics differ in texture.
A while back while doing an ebook review about making log cabin quilts I had come across Liz Porter's tutorial on how to create lumpless binding which was an addendum to the ebook. BTW the ebook is free you can download it from here. Funny how you take away something entirely different from what the book intended. I haven't made a log cabin quilt yet :)

I tried this method of binding for the first time on the Madrona Road Challenge quilt and loved the way it turned out. The next time around I used the same method on my Improv quilt. I had to learn it all over again as I could not remember how I did it the first time...but am finally getting the hang of it. Very recently I used it to bind my Disappearing 9 Patch quilt. It essentially is the same seam that the binding strips are joined with.


Lumpless binding
You can give it a try, you won't be disappointed. Let me know if you have questions.

Another thing that I like to do when I use stripped fabric for binding is line up the stripes, especially if they are wide. I devised a method to line up the stripes correctly when I was working on the Kitchen Window quilt. Even created a tutorial for it. You can download it from here. I used the same method to line up the stripes for my Disappearing 9 Patch quilt. The stripes lined up quite well and the seams are very subtle.


Lining up the stripes


The stripe lined up at the seam

Anyway there are a million ways to bind a quilt. We had an entire session on quilt binding at the last CNJMQG meeting. So many other methods to try.

1 comment:

  1. Bindings can give me fits sometimes. I've been pressing the seams open, and cutting at a 45 degree instead of straight, makes a big difference. Thanks for the links!

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