Quilt binding overlap, Diagonal or Straight cuts

Quilt binding overlap

The question of dealing with the thickness of where a binding starts and stops came up on one of my online quilt groups, Kaffee-Klatsch, and this is a photo explanation of my method.

I only make double French bindings. My starting cut of fabric is 4.5 inches. That gets folded in half to 2.25 inches and 0.25 of that gets sewed up as a seam. Then the remaining part is folded over, so the binding width is 1 inch. Well, theoretically, it's 1 inch. In reality, my bindings seem to be somewhat different sizes on the front and the back. I'm hoping that changes one of these years.

This particular binding that you'll see in the photos is on the diagonal. I do a lot of bindings on the diagonal, but not all of them. This one I'm doing because I think the fabric will be used more effectively if cut on the diagonal, and the resulting binding will look more interesting. It's a Nancy Crow fabric and the blue fish fabric is the backing.

This is a binding I'm actually doing right now, Sunday, Feb. 2, 1997, and I realize these particular fabrics don't show up that well in terms of demonstrating what I'm trying to show. Any outlined photo can be clicked on for a larger image.

I could write many words about how to do this in detail--and if you've looked at any of the rest of my home page you will see that I really can write a lot of words--but I think that if you have questions you should email me and I'll try answer you.

Skip past these photos if you want to get directly to a discussion of diagonal or straight-grain cuts for bindings.

Diagonal or Straight cuts

Giving credit where credit is due: the way I make bindings is the same way as originally taught me by Karen Cross. These adaptations, as shown in the photos, and two others I'll mention here, I learned from the mother-daughter duo of Shirley Phelps and Laura Fenton. They are outstanding quilters and I think that at least 85 percent of what happens in our Cabin Fever Quilters Guild here in Fairbanks, Alaska, happens because of their involvement. I asked Shirley where she learned this method and she said, "Oh, I just thought it up. It seemed obvious." I realize of course many other people may do this too and it may be published in many books, and there may be many variations on it.

Additionally, press seams open when sewing binding pieces together. Also, feel free to use diagonally cut edges when joining pieces. Using this method, I add 6 inches instead of 4 inches to my total perimeter.

I almost always press my binding seams open now, but I don't always use diagonal edges, but I usually regret that I don't take the time to do that.

When I first was quilting, every binding I came to totally stumped me. I would dig out the notes Karen had made for me, study them up and finally come up with something. But it was excruciating. So I decided to make 10 little things and bind them all at once, repeating each step 10 times over. So that's what I did one day after I'd been quilting for about three years, and now I don't get stumped anymore.

Because I didn't know much about fabric and wasn't up at all on cross- and straight-grain cuts, I used both when making my bindings. It depended mostly on how I could cut up fabric into the longest pieces.

The first time I ever used a diagonal cut in a binding was because Karen told me the fabric would simply look better cut on the diagonal. And she was right. After that I used whichever cut I felt like and, because I sometimes do multi-fabric bindings, would sometimes use a variety of cuts on the binding for any one quilt.

Once I got daring and attended a mini-class on bindings taught by Shirley and Laura. They explained a bunch of stuff and even provided a most useful handout. They talked about different kinds of bindings and finally got to the last one, which they said was the best. That turned out to be the kind I already did, so I figured I'd just keep on doing it.

At one point Shirley was discussing cuts and explained the differences among cross, straight and diagonal. And she asked which each of us used. After we'd all raised our hands except me, I asked, "What about if you use all of them?"

And Shirley replied, "Oh, nobody does that."

So I just sort of quietly sat there, thinking to myself: "Well, I do."

Now, so far, I haven't gotten into any problems with my bindings. I decided that I could use my "mistakes" as "data-gathering opportunities."

Here's what I've learned so far:

On some of my first quilts, which are used all the time and washed occasionally or when dirty, I used either cross or straight cuts. And some of them are showing signs of wear. I started quilting in 1992, so none of my quilts are older than that.

This quilt, Cats in the Corners, that I made for my son has part of the binding cut on the diagonal and part on either the cross and/or straight--I don't know which, but suspect it's likely both. He uses the quilt all the time. And it's only showing signs of binding wear in one place and that is a cut that is not on the diagonal.

Later, as I've become more adept at quilting and understand the lingo better, I overheard Shirley say once that she only uses diagonal bindings for quilts that will be used, as opposed to non-diagonal for wall-hangings.

And I realized then that I, too, was starting to do that largely because of what I'd noticed on my son's quilt.