Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins of
Piece of Cake have always amazed me. Not only for their wonderful sense of color and design but also for their itty bitty cording. Yes,cording that is inserted along the inside edge of the binding. It is flawless.
Well my eyes and sewing skills are not "that great" so I am going to show you my
"flat piping".
This technique works great sewn in between borders
OR as an edge treatment next to the binding.
The first set of pictures shows piping between 2 borders.
Determine the size of the piping you want to show.
I cut mine 1.5" for a .125 finished edge.
Cut 2" for .5" finished edge.
Cut and join enough bias strips to sew around your entire quilt top. Sew the strips along the outer edge or in between borders strips as shown here. There is no need to miter or turn the corners with the piping. Sew to the end and cut. These strips will overlap and be covered as the next border is added.
The outer border on this quilt is the large green dot shown in the bottom corner of the picture. This border was added next leaving .125 of the small red dot piping peeking through. Once I was comfortable with this I started sewing the piping and borders on in one step. Until then it is best to see the piping in place before adding the next border or binding.
Now I will show you my "FAUX FLAT PIPING".
I came across this completely by accident. I was having a fabric emergency. I needed to get the binding on a quilt for a gift the next day. Believe it or not I did not have enough fabric for the binding. I dug around until I found something that would work and came strips of the blue check, but they were to narrow.
Binding-blue check cut 1.25 wide, Piping - red dot 1.5. Sew strips together.
Press open.
Fold and press wrong sides together.
Keep in mind, the narrower piece is actually the binding fabric, the wider one shows up as the piping piece.
Add this strip to your quilt top just as you would any other binding paying attention to the color placement. One option, sew the binding to the back of the quilt and bring it around to the front of the quilt top. Stitch in the ditch between the piping and binding fabric using matching thread.
Labels: Binding tutorial
