The Yellow Quilt

The Binding

Here's the quilt, trimmed and ready for binding:

As you can see from the second photo, the edges of this quilt are not straight lines. That means the binding job is a little more complicated than a quilt that is a rectangle or square with straight edges.

To start binding the quilt, I cut bias strips four times the finished width of the binding, plus 1/8" and stitched them together. The extra 1/8" is to accommodate the thickness of the edge of the quilt. The strips were then stitched to the right side of the quilt and then folded to meet the stitching line on the back of the quilt and finally pressed. You can see this process on one of the curves below.

While the curves are not too difficult, the inside corners need careful work. Before the binding is stitched to the quilt, the inside corners need to be clipped as shown below. Normally, I would reinforce an inside corner with stay stitching, but since the corner has quilting stitches in it already, I did not need to do that.

The corner is then opened up and held straight when the binding is stitched on. In the photo below, you can see how the quilt edge is held straight as it goes into the machine. I have pulled the binding out of the way so you can see the quilt edge.

This is what the corner looks like when the binding is first folded to the back of the quilt:

The raw edge of the binding is folded to the inside, the amount of the finished binding width in the corner area, as shown below in the first photo. The excess fabric is then folded into a miter and pinned in place before stitching by hand.

Once all the binding is stitched on, folded and the corners mitered, all of the binding is fell-stitched to the back of the quilt. You can see a finished section below. I realize that I could finish the binding by machine stitching, but I really don't like that technique. I really dislike it when the stitching doesn't catch the fold of the binding underneath or when it looks straight on one side, but not on the other or goes off the binding on one side. The only solution (beside getting a binder foot for my regular machine - which is a good idea now that I think about it!) is hand stitching. With such a large quilt, this is a large undertaking, but I have worked on it one side at a time and will be finishing side four tonight.

I will show you the finished quilt early next week!

Parting Shot: View. This is the view from one of my studio windows just as you enter the studio. I walked into the studio last night and was pleasantly surprised to see all the purple blooms just outside the window.