There has been very little change in my 'score card' from last week's list of four quilts headed to the finish line. As I mentioned, I had to change focus for a hot minute to address a couple of smaller items needed for a local gift shop. Those are rounding out nicely.
For one of the projects, I decided to add a faux piping to the binding. This week, I thought I'd show you how I did that. I love the Piping Hot Binding tool by Susan Cleveland; it's very accurate, but a bit fussy. I wanted something more quick-and-dirty, but just as effective, so I opted to add the illusion of a piping to the binding instead.
This isn't a new technique, and you can probably find tons of tutorials to do faux piped binding online. In an entry in my quilt notebook, I opted to figure it out on my own. You can see my small sample, and some very cryptic quilt math. I don't recommend that you spend too much time on trying to figure out my shorthand. My notes are my notes and sometimes it takes some re-calculation to figure out what I was trying to do!
A quick run-through of the steps I followed:
I measured the project (a table runner, in this case) and determined I needed three strips for the project.
I cut two sets of strips:
- 1-3/8" wide from the binding fabric
- 1-5/8" wide from the 'piping' fabric
This feels counter-intuitive, feels like you want more of the binding than the piping, but it's okay
I connected the strips end to end, creating two long strips, one 1-3/8" wide (binding) and one 1-5/8" wide (piping). The connecting seams are pressed open.
Then I sewed the strips together lengthwise using a quarter inch seam.
I pressed the seam toward the binding fabric, which, in this case, is the dark green.
This should give me a binding strip about 2.5" wide.
I then pressed the strip in half.
Since I normally cut my binding strips 2.25" wide, I decided to trim the raw edges 1-1/8" from the fold along the entire length.
Whenever you do that, you have to take a picture of the messy fabric leavings. I don't know why, but you just have to.
Next, I turn the project right side down and pin, then sew the binding to the wrong side of the project. The binding side of the binding strip faces the right side of the back of the quilt. This is done exactly like a normal binding, with mitered corners, etc., except it's all done on the back of the project.
[I could have skipped this step and simply pinned or clipped the binding all the way around the quilt and moved on to the final step, below.]
Then I sewed the folded edge of the binding to the front of the quilt with thread that matched the 'piping'.
I think this extra step adds a little insurance policy to secure the binding.
And finally, I stitched-in-the-ditch along the 'piping'/binding seam to make the piping 'pop' a little bit.
And this brings us back to the very first photo in this post of the finished nobody-will-ever-know simulated piped binding.
Well, of course, now you know.
Happy Stitching!
Head Hummingbird
Hummingbird-Highway.com
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