When I finished quilting my Hexagon Quilt-Along quilt, I was determined to have cool funky edges across the top and bottom. This, of course, meant some awkward corners on the binding. I did a few searches online and found this tutorial. That helped me sew the binding on to the front of the quilt easily enough. My big problem came when I went to attach the binding down to the back. Try as I might, I couldn't get a nice-looking miter on those inside corners.
So in this post I would like to show you my technique to get from this...
... to this:
NOTE: If you don't yet have binding attached to the front of your quilt, first make sure you're using bias binding (cut on the bias to allow some stretch) and follow the first part of this tutorial. Then come back here for more details on getting the binding attached to the back!
The first thing you want to do when attaching binding to the back of your quilt is press the binding from the front. The "outside" corners miter nicely, but the inside corners stick straight up and sort of curve (see the picture above). Going from right to left, I used one hand to hold the binding down flat on the right side of the corner, and pressed that side flat:
Next, I aligned a ruler to the mid-point of the inside angle. With this quilt, it lined up with the seam between my hexagons. I used this as a guide and finger-pressed the left side of the binding up, like this:
Then I pressed that fold with my iron to set it and get it nice and flat. Notice how the fold starts just a bit away from where the binding meets the quilt top:
Once you've pressed your corners from the front, it's time to flip over to the back. It will look something like this:
I use pins rather than binding clips simply because I don't have binding clips. I think for these purposes, pins would be beneficial at least on the corners. This time, we'll move from left to right, first pinning down the left side of the binding, a bit away from the corner:
Now, pin the right side down, again just a bit away from the corner. You should have something like this:
See how the middle wants to stand up a bit? Fold your quilt over some so you can get to the front. I found it helpful (especially since I clipped the corner a bit to sew the binding to the front) to sort of squeeze the corner together a bit, to get the miter to fold properly. Then you'll put a pin from the top down through the front miter:
Fold your quilt back over and put another pin in the back miter. Keep in mind that your miter will start a bit above where the binding is sewn to the quilt.
Once you have your corners pinned, you can start sewing the binding down. I learned this technique from this tutorial on Amy's Creative Side. Amy has some great tutorials on attaching the binding to the front and mitering your typical right-angle corner, too.
This is where I differ a bit from the tutorial I linked to above. Once I got to the "point" of my corner, I made a stitch that came out along the crease of the miter, then sewed a few stitches up along that fold, using the same technique as you would to attach the binding to the back of your quilt:
When I got to the top, I took a couple stitches that I can best describe as a sort-of whipstitch, coming out at the fold, down through the lower layer, then up again at the fold:
Those stitches are only that visible because the thread isn't pulled taught. If you do it right, they'll hardly show at all. After a few of those stitches at the top, I continued to sew down the miter on the front of the quilt:
When you get to the end of the fold (which will be a bit before the binding meets the quilt top) insert your needle in through the binding and into the batting, then flip to the back. Maneuver your needle so it comes out the quilt back just barely below the binding:
Give your needle a gentle tug, making sure all the stitches in your corner are pulled taught (they should all but disappear when you do this), then continue along the binding as you were before.
And that's it! I recently washed my Hexagon Quilt-Along quilt, and was very happy to see that the miters stayed in place using this technique.
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This is my first real tutorial here at Thrifty Quilter, so any feedback is greatly appreciated. I'm always available to answer any questions — just leave me a comment and make sure you aren't a "no-reply" blogger so that I can get back to you.
Happy quilting!
