Quilt in ONE weekend! Part 3

Congrats! You finished the hardest part of this project! Now its time to put the finishing touches on your quilt.

For this project, I opted to do a very wide binding (approx 3") but this is less common. I liked the look of it since it is a bit more dramatic than a traditional binding. Since this is a fairly simple project, this is a good way to fancy it up!

Part 3: Adding a Wide Binding to your Quilt

1) Once you have finished quilting, thoroughly check over both front and back for loose threads! I checked and checked and checked and still kept finding more threads to snip.
2) Carefully trim any excess batting/backing to extend only 2.5" beyond the edge of your quilt top. Depending on how accurately the batting was cut in the factory, you may have a lot or no trimming at all. I personally found that I didn't need to cut the ends at all but the width needed a fair amount of trimming.
3) Create your binding.

• Using your 1 yard of coordinating pattern fabric left from part 1, carefully cut 5, 6.5" wide strips (cutting from edge to edge, not lengthwise).
• Align 2 pieces right sides together and sew across one short end. Press seams open.
• Repeat above until all 5 pieces have been joined into one long strip.
• Although not required, I also then pressed the entire binding strip in half, to help with the final foldover.

4) Starting in the middle of one long side, begin pinning binding to quilt- right sides together. Begin sewing 3-4 inches from edge of binding (this will allow us to match edges at the end). Sew until you are 1/4" from the corner.

5)Making the corner: You will need to fold the binding a special way to ensure that you have enough to make a nice mitered corner. I highly recommend this video tutorial (from you tube) if you have any questions about the instructions below!

• Fold binding strip 90 deg. towards the outside edge of the quilt.
• At edge of BATTING (not quilt top) fold binding back over
• Align edge of binding with edge of quilt top (not batting)
• Resume sewing 1/4" from edge of quilt top.

6) Repeat at all corners. Stop sewing approximately 3-4" from beginning.

7) Carefully pinch together beginning edge and ending edge until it is evenly touching but not overly tight. Stitch together ends. Trim excess binding. Finger press open the seam.

8) Resume sewing until all binding has been attached to the quilt.

9) Fold binding over quilt edge and batting. Fold under raw edge of binding approx. 1/2". Pin to backing fabric-- use stitching line from attaching the border as a guide to keep edges even. Take care to fold each corner into a nice crisp miter.

10) Top stitch binding around entire perimeter of quilt using 1/4" guide.

11) You can go back and machine stitch the miters on the corner OR I chose to hand stitch them with a coordinating thread that almost disappears. I used a blind hem type of stitch commonly used when quilters hand sew their bindings. See this tutorial for a good example.

YOU ARE FINISHED WITH YOUR QUILT!! CONGRATS!!!!!

Tomorrow,  in part 4, we're going to use some of our fabric scraps to make a super cute travel/toddler sized pillow with a coordinating pillow case!