How to Machine Bind a Quilt (No Hand Sewing!)

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I know many people love to sew by hand, but I am not one of those people. I’ve noticed that my sewing machine is faster, more accurate, and, with all of its clever decorative stitches, more inventive than my fingers. It’s machine quilting all the way for me, baby! That’s why I was so pleased when I stumbled on this clever way of attaching quilt binding to the body of the quilt entirely by machine.

Most of us are taught to bind a quilt by machine-sewing the binding to the front side of the quilt sandwich, then folding the binding to the back and whip-stitching it down by hand. On a large quilt, this method can take quite a lot of time. And who has that kind of time?

To Machine Bind a Quilt, Just Sew the Binding to the Quilt’s Back Side

Make just one little change in this technique, and you can bind a quilt without any hand sewing at all. Instead of sewing the binding to the front of the quilt sandwich, stitch it to the back side instead. Then you fold the binding from the back to the front and use your sewing machine to stitch it down on the front side with a blanket stitch, a satin stitch, or one of the decorative stitches that imitates hand quilting. The end result looks great, and it takes a lot less time than hand sewing.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Here’s how to use the back-to-front method of binding a quilt:

1. Decide How Wide to Make the Binding

If your quilt is made of blocks without borders or has a pieced border, use a narrow ¼” finished binding width. A 1/4″ binding will just cover the ¼” seam allowance built into the blocks. This leaves the whole block visible, while a wider binding would cover up some of the block.

If your quilt doesn’t have pieced sections in its borders, I’d recommend using a wider binding strip. Wider binding is easier to work with and more forgiving of mistakes. I also like the contrast a wider binding gives to the quilt. If you want to use a decorative stitch to secure the binding, it’s definitely easier to go wider. It can be hard to fit a decorative stitch onto a narrow strip of binding.

These widths are based on this formula:

(Finished binding width x 2 + ¼” seam allowance) x 2

2. Cut and Sew a Continuous Binding Strip

Click here for a photo tutorial on making continuous quilt binding. When you are finished, you should have a binding strip that looks more or less like this:

3. Sew the Binding to the Back Side of the Quilt

  • First, trim off extra batting and backing and square up the quilt, if needed.
  • Lay the binding strip on the outside edge of the quilt’s back side, aligning its raw edges with the quilt edge. Start in an inconspicuous place on the side or bottom of the quilt. Leave a tail of about six inches at the beginning.
  • Stitch the binding to the quilt, using a 1/4″ seam allowance. Use a 1/4″ quilting foot and a seam guide if you have one. Start sewing at about the six-inch mark, leaving the tail at the beginning unstitched for now.
  • Whenever you reach a corner, stop stitching 1/4″ from the corner. With the needle down, turn the quilt 90 degrees and back stitch off the quilt’s edge. Your stitches should look like this:
  • Fold the binding up, then down again to make a fold that looks like this:
  • This will make a mitered corner when you fold the binding to the front of the quilt in the next step.
  • Keep sewing around the quilt, following the steps above at each corner. When you get back to the beginning, attach the tails of the binding together and sew them down. I cheat by inserting the tail end of the binding inside the starting end, aligning the joined ends with the edge of the quilt, and stitching them down. There are more elegant ways to join the tail ends, but they are also much more of a fuss, so I usually just take the shortcut.

4. Fold the Binding to the Front

  • Take the quilt to your ironing board and lay it down with the back of the quilt facing up. Press the binding away from the quilt:
  • Then fold the binding to the front of the quilt.

5. Create Mitered Corners and Pin Binding in Place

  •  Pick one corner of the quilt and fold the binding into a mitered corner, then pin the miter in place: Make sure the top fold points in the same direction as your sewing direction.
  • Pin the binding to the front of the quilt along one side, making sure to maintain a consistent binding width. You can pin all along the side or use just a few pins and move them as you sew. I also often use the red Wonder clips from Clover, although I stick with pins for the corner itself, because they hold the corner together more tightly than the clips do.

6. Sew the Binding to the Quilt’s Front Side

  • Start at the corner you pinned and use your sewing machine to sew the edge of the binding to the front of the quilt. I try to catch the mitered fold so I secure it with my first stitches. When you get close to the next corner, a corner, fold the binding into another mitered corner and pin or clip in place.

I like to use my sewing machine’s decorative stitches for this step. This stitch that imitates hand quilting is my favorite. With the binding in place, the quilt is all finished except for trimming stray threads and adding a quilt label.

 

Post photo by Gina Pina, Flickr.com.

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21 Comments

  1. Do you use a walking foot for binding or do you switch to a regular foot to allow for special stitches?

    BTW, your sight popped up just as I am trying to figure out how to do binding. Thanks for the clear instructions.

    1. Hi Suzanna,

      Yes, I always use a walking foot for binding because it makes it easier for my sewing machine to move all those layers of fabric, batting and backing evenly under the needle. And thanks for your kind words about my site!

  2. OH WOWWWWW!!!!! I am so excited to try this!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

    Kimberly

    (P.S. so LUVING your binding 😉

  3. If you Google How to use the Binding Tool many YouTube videos will show you how to bind a very traditional way including the tails of the binding. Then you can perfect your own style.

  4. Although useful instructions ithey would have been easier to follow if the same quilt and binding fabric had been used throughout.

  5. Thank you soooo much. I hate hand sewing. In fact I have been saying that when I read hand sew I think it really means “I did not think this through”.

    This has made quilt making even more fun.

  6. I’ve made my first quilt and now I’m ready to bind it and my heart is finally singing after reading your tutorial and seeing the details. I can’t make any errors on this wall hanging. My son is retiring as a Colonel in the Army and this is a memory quilt of 30 years and 15 of his favorite milestones. I took the designs and sent them to my best digitizer and had them made larger to 10 inches each and then the embroidery started and it’s taken me months to create the squares and finally its quilted and ready for binding. I’d love to add a photo but I see no way to do that.
    Thanks, Yvonne Lindquist
    Birch Bay, Washington

  7. Can you explain how you join the beginning to the end of the binding? I just re-read the tutorial and don’t see what you’ve done with the six inches you left hanging off at the beginning. Thanks.

  8. Thank you so much, I just completed my first small quilt using binding and it will take practice with the edges but its not half bad! I thought machine binding was easier, I am a new quilter and hand sewing is not for me! I see now sewing off the top before you fold down till help when you turn the quilt over to miter the corners will help me. Thank you for sharing your experience with those of us just learning!

    1. Thanks! I had been quilting for quite a few years before I discovered this machine-binding shortcut. What a relief! Whip-stitching long quilt edges can take a lot of time, and it happens just when you’re impatient to get the quilt over and done with.

    1. Good question, Diane! It depends on what stitch you use. If you use a straight stitch, you will see a line of straight stitching about half an inch in from the outer edge of the quilt, all around the back side. I use polar fleece to back most of my quilts, so the stitching tends to disappear in the fleece. If you use a decorative stitch, you will see the reverse side of the decorative stitch, also about a half inch from the outer edge. This never bothers me. I’ll try to post a photo tomorrow.

      1. Thank you for explaining that. I’ve always hand sewn the back binding and love the idea of finishing that chore by machine. I just finished machine binding a wall hanging quilt for the first time and noticed that my awesome decorative stitch on the front that captured the edge of the binding onto the top, is about half an inch from the binding on the back. I thought I had made a major goof, so thank you again for sharing that this is normal.

  9. Thank you so, so, so much for this post. I have a quilt, complete excepting the binding, that’s been sitting in my sewing room for 3 years. I’m going to finish it now. I trialled the method on a lap quilt for my auntie and it was so easy.

    I also used your tutorial on how to make binding. I’m no longer terrified of binding and will stop buying the overpriced ugly stuff from the shops. 😉

    Thanks again. 🙂

    1. You’re welcome, Colleen. I started out with store-bought binding too, and it took me years to arrive at the machine binding approach I use now. Good luck with the quilt, and send me a photo when it’s finished!

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