Tutorial: How to Machine-Bind Your Quilt

I fully machine-bind my quilts. Back and front. No hand-stitching to finish. Call me a heretic, but I highly recommend it. It's fast, it's easy, it's even enjoyable. Sure, the stitches show on the binding, but if you blend your thread carefully, they only show if you look carefully. Or you can make them purposefully visible, as a design element. It's up to you.

Now, I admit that when I first started making quilts, binding was my least favorite part of the process. It may not have become my favorite, but I don't mind it. In a couple of episodes of Bones or Law & Order or NCIS or Criminal Minds (notice a pattern here), I can attached and complete the binding for a pretty big lap quilt. So when anyone asks me about how to get better at binding, my recurrent theme is practice, practice, practice. It's cliche, but I found that making challah covers really helped me figure it out. They're small and manageable and allow for a lot of binding practice in a short amount of time.

I've made a tutorial for my method of machine-binding your quilt (using double-fold binding). I asked a couple sewer friends, including Michelle, to read it over, but any errors are mine alone. I wrote it for a beginner audience, so that it's accessible to a new quilter. But a more experienced quilter can skip the first few steps about how to cut, sew, and press binding and move on to the method. The link below will take you to a downloadable pdf file, which allows you to print it and keep it near your sewing machine for reference. If you're unsure about a step or are confused or want more information, please leave a comment or email me.

Two Hippos' Machine-Binding Tutorial

This tutorial is for personal use only. 

If you want to teach it in a class, contact me before using and distributing it.