Binding with dotted fabric

For the binding on the feedsack quilt, the fabric chosen was Mama's Feedsacks by Darlene Zimmerman for Robert Kaufman. It's a reproduction of the original red so it matches nicely to give an attractive edge to frame the variety of prints in the quilt. The same fabric was used to back the quilt as well. Love, love, love this red.

Using about 2/3 yd. of the fabric, fold in half, selvedge to selvedge, and cut several 2-1/2" strips. To join one to another, lay the strip right side down and fold the end over on a 45 degree angle. Finger press the fold or use a light iron.

Then position this vertical folded piece directly on top of a second horizontal strip, right side up. Notice how the fold is positioned so the dots are evenly spaced.

The dot pattern needs to remain even while joining strips so check each one for proper placement as you go. Once it looks correct, lay the fold out flat so you see the wrong side with the diagonal crease. Pin in place along the diagonal crease.
By folding the tip down you can see that the dots line up. The fold line is just to the left of the dot and will be the line that is stitched. The dots on the right will become part of the seam line as you will see in the pictures below.

Start at the corner and stitch down the visible fold line to the opposite corner. If you have prepared all your strips, you can continue to stitch the next one by allowing your machine to take a few stitches in between, then sew the next strip without breaking the thread. By chain piecing in this way, you will end up with your strips completely joined in one go. Snip between each thread join to make one continuous strip.

Double check your stitching before trimming the seam lines. Using an acrylic ruler, line up the 1/4" mark along the stitched line.

Trim the seam to 1/4" using a rotary cutter.

Press the seams open.

A perfect seam makes the fabric's pattern look continuous.Trim the thread tails. Fold the strip in half, right sides facing out, and press. This creates a double-fold binding strip. For more details on the process of sewing the binding to the quilt, please see posts from Feb. 2009--Straight Grain Binding and Binding Corners and Joining Ends.


Copyright 2010, Sharon Baggs