Getting Perfect Mitered Joins in Binding

As promised in Episode 103, here is the tutorial for getting mitered binding joins in your quilts!

Step 1

Get a small cutting mat and mark with permanent market a line all the way across the mat. Then mark a square with the same dimensions as the width of your binding; I use 2 1/4″ width binding usually, so my marked square is 2 1/4″.

Stitch the binding down so you have about 6″ unstitched space on the quilt, with about 8″ of binding of each side so there’s plenty of overlap. Line up your mat so the line you drew lines up with the edge of the quilt.

Step 2

Flop one side of the binding down across the drawn square so the edge of the binding lines up with the edge of the quilt and the line drawn on the mat. Put your ruler so it lines up with the far edge of the drawn square (i.e. - the binding on the left side of the mat will get cut on the right side of the square). Cut the binding.

Flop the binding you just cut out of the way, and flop the other side in a similar way. Cut it on the other side of the square.  When you’re done cutting and flop both pieces back in place, it should look like this, so the overlap of the two pieces is the same as the width of the binding:

Step 3

Now you’ll need to fold the quilt a bit to get some “play” in the binding pieces.  Match them up right sides together with one piece at a 90 degree angle to the other, as you would join mitered strips when joining them regularly. Pin in place, and stitch on the diagonal.

Step 4

After stitching, trim the seam a quarter inch and finger press open. Voila!

Then stitch it down and admire your neat, clean binding join.

6 thoughts on “Getting Perfect Mitered Joins in Binding

  1. hey thanks for this tutorial. I was shown a similar way in a class last year, but they didnt use the lil cutting mat with the markings.I was never able to recreate it sucessfully and just settled for the lumpy straight join. Ill for sure do this now.

  2. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You should have seen the mental gymnastics I went through last week trying to figure out how to do that, and then I sewed on the WRONG diagonal. It wasn’t pretty. So again, THANKS!

  3. I love this tutorial! Thanks, this is so awesome! In the past I always had to fight with the quilt and the binding to get my binding seam together. My seam I just put in looks great and with no fighting of the quilt and no fuss.

  4. I had to refer once again to our tutorial to finish off my binding. Thanks for having it posted and easily accessible. I should probably just print it off.

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