How to Finish Your Quilt

You've spent all this time and energy piecing your quilt top, but now what?

Step 1: Do a Victory Lap

A "victory lap" is when you stitch a narrow seam around the perimeter of your quilt top, which helps ensure that all those seams you spent time on, stay put. Don't worry about it showing, it will be hidden beneath your binding!

• Sew a seam about 1/8" inside the edge of your quilt top, on all sides.

Step 2: Piece Your Backing

Your backing fabric is the fabric...well, on the back of your quilt. So by definition, you'll need this to be at least the size of your quilt top. The standard rule-of-thumb is to size your backing for 4" of overage on all four sides, which would make it 8" wider and longer than your quilt top. In most cases, this means you'll need to piece together full widths of fabric to make sure your backing is wide enough.

Note that if you purchase 108" wide fabric, you won't need to piece your backing together. With 108" wide fabric, you simply need to make sure you buy enough so that it's the length of your quilt plus 8 inches.

• Cut of your backing fabric in equal-length halves or thirds, depending on the width of your quilt top. Typically, Queen and King size quilts require three widths of backing fabric, while smaller sizes require two.
• Remove the selvages from all backing pieces, and sew them together along their length using a 1/2" seam allowance. After sewing, press your seam open.

Step 3: Make a Quilt Sandwich

Now that your backing is pieced, it's time to place the three layers of your quilt together.

• On a surface big enough to lay out your quilt, place the backing fabric piece with the wrong side facing up. 
• Layer the batting on top of the backing, roughly centering it on the backing - it doesn't need to be perfect! - and smoothing out any wrinkles.
• Layer your quilt top on top of the batting, roughly centering it on the batting. 
• Smooth the quilt sandwich with your hands, starting from the center and working outwards to the edges. This smoothing will get all the wrinkles out and ensure that your final quilt doesn't have any puckers ahead of basting.

Note: If your batting is larger than your backing, roughly trim your batting down so that it's only a few inches bigger than your quilt top on each side - our recommendation is at least 3 inches on all sides.

Step 4: Baste

This step is a choose-your-own-adventure. Some folks prefer to baste with large basting safety pins; others prefer to spray baste with spray adhesive. The more quilts you make, the sooner you'll find your preferred method. If you're new to basting, here's the skinny on both methods.

Option 1: Pin Basting

Just as the name suggests, this basting method has you place pins every 3 to 4". A lot of quilters call this distance a "hand-width" apart. Remember that this is a rough guideline but ensures that you're pinning all three layers together every so often as this reduces the likelihood of the layers sliding out of place. The pins used are safety pins, and they even make quilting safety pins that have a curve helping you pin and unpin a little easier. We recommend Size 2 safety pins for the right balance of not too big and not too small.

• Starting in the center of your quilt, pin all three layers together
• Move your hand over about 3 to 4" in each direction from center, adding pins as you go
• Continue until the entire quilt has been pinned, approximately every 3 to 4"

Option 2: Spray Basting

While this method tends to be quicker, things can get a bit...sticky. To protect precious surfaces from "overspray" and resulting residue, it is recommended to lay down a drop cloth or other material beneath your quilt sandwich that extends at least several inches beyond your backing on all sides.

• Start with your quilt sandwich face up. Standing at the bottom edge of your quilt, fold back your quilt top about 10"-12" to expose the batting underneath, and continue to fold it back onto itself until about half of the quilt top is folded back. 
• Spray the basting adhesive onto the batting, just before the fold. Be sure to cover the full width of the batting for the 10"-12" leading up to the fold. 
• Gently unroll one fold of the quilt top onto the area just sprayed and, starting from the center outwards, use your hands (or the edge of an acrylic ruler!) to press and smooth the quilt top to the batting. If any major wrinkles form, you may need to lift up that section of the quilt top, and gently place back onto the batting to try again.

• Continue to spray, unroll, and smooth until you have basted down the entire bottom half of your quilt top.
• Standing at the top edge of your quilt, repeat the entire process to fold back your quilt top from the top edge and baste down this half of your quilt top to the batting.
• Carefully flip your quilt sandwich face down - making sure the placement of each layer does not shift - and follow the same process to baste the top half and then bottom half of backing to the batting.

Step 5: Quilt

The quilting on a quilt can contribute a lot to the final look and feel of your project. Some makers choose free-motion quilting, others choose straight line quilting. You may decide to play with different decorative stitches on your machine - or even work in some hand-stitching. The world is your oyster!

There's a great article, Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting for American Patchwork & Quilting, written by HollyAnne Knight of String & Story, if you're looking for very detailed information on Free Motion Quilting.

• Quilt your layers together using your desired method, making sure to check your batting specifications to ensure quilting distance is within the stated recommendation.

Step 6: Trim & Square

While your quilt may have started out with 90 degree corners, quilting often creates some shifting and gives back some non-90 degree corners. That's okay; that's why we trim and square after quilting.

• Find a place where your entire quilt can lay out flat. If you don't have a space long enough, find the largest one you can and fold your quilt on top of itself ensuring that no part of your quilt is hanging down or off of the surface. That extra weight will pull on your quilt and you will not have a good, 90 degree corner.
• With the biggest ruler you have, start at one corner and align your ruler with the corner of the quilt top. There may be parts of your quilt top that extend outside the ruler and parts that don't meet the edge of the ruler; that's okay. In general, you don't want the quilt top to dip any further than 1/4" inside the ruler's edge; any wonkiness within that margin will get covered with your binding. 
• Trim along the two edges of your ruler so you have one 90 degree corner on this corner your quilt. Note that you are not trimming the full edge of the quilt, only the corner, as far as your ruler will allow in each direction.
• Repeat this process for the other three corners.
• Use your longest ruler to join the squared-up trims on each edge. For larger quilts, you may want to first use your ruler to draw a line connecting the trims, and then use that line as a trimming guide, since you will need to advance your ruler.

Step 7: Make the Binding Strips

The first step in binding is to create binding strips from your binding fabric. Most patterns instruct to cut a specific number of 2 1/4" strips or 2 1/2" strips from the binding fabric.

Once you have your specified number of binding strips, you'll want to sew them together to you create one continuous strip of fabric. Some folks sew them end-to-end, simply sewing straight across the end. Note that this may lead to a bulky seam when you go to actually sew the binding onto the quilt, given the needle has to go through 4 layers just for the binding. However, some prefer this method for its simplicity.

Another method is to join the binding strips together using a diagonal seam. This ensures that you're spreading that seam over a wider area, leading to less bulk. To do this:

• Cut the proper number of binding strips cut to the width specified by the quilt pattern - or your preference.
• Trim selvages off the ends of each binding strip, ensuring square edges.
• Take one binding strip, and orient it vertically. Draw a 45-degree line from the bottom left corner.
• Place the binding strip right sides together with and perpendicular to a second binding strip, lining up the corners and edges. The drawn line should intersect with the corner of the strip underneath it. Pin the two ends in place.
  

• Keeping the strip ends aligned, sew along the drawn line, then trim 1/4" outside of the seam.

  
• Repeat this process until all strips are sewn together to form one long, continuous strip of fabric. Press the diagonal seams open.
• Take your single, long binding strip, and fold it in half lengthwise, bringing raw edge to raw edge with the right side of fabric facing out. Press the entire length of your binding strip.

Step 7: Binding Your Quilt

Another choose-your-own-adventure step! However, as a principle, binding is how we encase the edge of our quilt. Some folks prefer machine binding; other folks prefer hand binding. With hand binding, typically the initial steps are the same to first attach the binding to one side of the quilt using a sewing machine, and the final step of sewing down the binding to the other side of the quilt is done by hand rather than machine. Just as with basting, the more quilts you make, the sooner you'll likely have a favorite method.

If machine-binding using the method outlined here, another decision to make is whether you prefer the slightly wider (especially in the case of 2 1/2" binding strips), topstitched binding on the front or back side of your quilt. Note that since the binding is folded around to the other side of your quilt and topstitched, there will be a stitch line on the opposite side of the quilt that you're securing the folded edge of your binding to. With this in mind, determine whether you prefer the topstitched binding on the front or back of your quilt: if the back, you'll first sew your binding to the front of your quilt; if the back, you'll first sew your binding to the front of your quilt. Or, an easier way to remember this is to first sew your binding to the side of your quilt that you prefer the extra stitch line to show up on.

Step 7a: Sew Your Binding to One Side of Your Quilt

Once you've landed on which side of your quilt to start with, let's get to attaching that binding! Note that the thread color on this step doesn't matter since it'll all be hidden by later steps.

• Starting somewhere on the middle-to-lower end of one side of your quilt, take one end of your binding strip and place it on your quilt so that the binding's raw edges align with the quilt's raw edge, and the fold of the binding strip is pointing towards the center of your quilt. Pin or clip the starting end of the binding strip to the quilt.
• From the starting end of the strip, measure down at least 10", and pin or clip the binding strip to the quilt at this point. We'll need this length to connect the two binding tails toward the end.

• Starting at the 10" point, begin to sew your binding strip to your quilt using a 1/4" seam allowance. It's helpful to stitch slowly, since you're sewing 5 layers of material together, and things can get out of alignment quickly. 
• Continue sewing until you reach 1/4" from the end of the side of the quilt. At the 1/4" point, stop sewing with your needle down, lift your presser foot and pivot your quilt 45 degrees (so you're now going to continue stitching towards the corner point). Sew off of the corner of the quilt, and cut the threads.

• To make those beautiful mitered corners, fold your binding 90 degrees, away from the quilt (which creates a 45-degree fold to the corner of the quilt). Finger press to get a nice crease. Then, holding the diagonal fold in place, fold the binding strip back toward the quilt so that the raw edge of your binding is now aligned with the next edge of your quilt.

• Starting with a backstitch, sew a 1/4" seam along this new edge of the quilt, all the way until 1/4" away from the next edge.
• Repeat the corner method for the next 3 corners, and stop when you're about 12" away from your original starting stitch. Cut the threads and remove the quilt from the machine.

Step 7b: Connect the Tails of your Binding Strip

Once you've sewn your binding strip along all 4 sides, leaving a 12" gap, it's time to connect your binding strip into one continuous strip of fabric.

• Lay the starting end of the binding flat and aligned with the quilt edge. Then, lay the remaining binding flat along the quilt edge and on top of the starting end.
• On the remaining binding, mark the point where there is 2 1/2”* of overlap between it and the starting end of the binding. Unfold the remaining end of the binding, and trim at the marked point, ensuring a square cut.

*Note: The 2 1/2” measurement assumes that the binding strips were cut to 2 1/2”; whatever width your binding strips were cut to, use that measurement in this step.

• Unfold the starting end of the binding, and turn it slightly away from you so that the right side is face down. Draw a 45-degree line from the top left corner, as shown.
  

• Unfold the remaining end of the binding and turn it slightly toward you so that the right side is face up, and place the starting end on top, right sides together, so that they are perpendicular and the squared edges align. The drawn line should intersect with the corner of the binding end underneath it. After making sure there are no extra twists in either end of the binding, pin or clip the ends together to keep them aligned in place.
• Sew along the drawn line, and trim 1/4” outside of the seam and finger press the seam open.
  

• Refold the unsewn segment of binding, and lay it flat and aligned with the quilt edge. Pin or clip the remaining binding strip every few inches to the quilt to keep it properly spaced and in place - otherwise, it can easily bunch, causing a fold or pucker just before reaching your starting stitch.
• Starting with a backstitch at where you last ended your seam, continue to sew the rest of the binding to the quilt until you reach your starting stitches. End with a backstitch. 

Another option is using one of the many binding tools that are the market. One of our staff members, Kellie Jez, uses the Binding Tool by TQM Rulers and loves the simplicity and straightforwardness the tool offers.

Step 7c: Wrap Around and Secure Binding Down

First things first: Let's check our thread colors since we're going to be sewing visible stitches. For your top thread, you may want to choose a thread color that matches your binding - or go for something contrasting! For your bobbin thread, you may want to choose a color that matches the side of the quilt where those stitches will show: either your quilt top (if you first sewed your binding to the front) or your backing (if you first sewed your binding to the back).

With thread colors figured out, let's get our quilt bound. Before you put your quilt under the machine, let's do some prep work so this part goes as easily as possible.

• Whichever side of the quilt you sewed the binding to first, start with this side up. Fold and press the binding outward, back onto itself - away from the quilt. Continue to fold and press the binding outward around the entire perimeter of the quilt.
• Turn the full quilt over. Along one edge of the quilt, begin folding the binding back over onto this other side of the quilt, and press. Keep the folded binding in place with clips, or baste it down using a washable glue or fusible webbing (e.g., Steam-A-Seam).
• When approaching a quilt corner, continue to fold and press the binding all the way until the end, creating a 45-degree fold in the binding that starts in the corner of the quilt.
• Keeping the existing fold in place, fold the start of the next edge of binding back onto the quilt, bringing the corner of the 45-degree fold to line up with the inside edge of the already-folded binding. Clip or baste the corner in place, and continue to fold, press, and clip/baste the binding down along the full perimeter of the quilt.

• If sewing a label into the binding, tuck the label edges just under the binding edge in your preferred placement, and pin or clip in place.
• With the newly folded binding face up, place one edge of your quilt on your machine, and position your needle to sew your desired distance inside the binding edge (we like a few thread widths).
• Beginning with a backstitch, slowly start to topstitch the inside edge of your binding, keeping this stitch line as consistent as you can. You'll also notice the stitches on the underside of your quilt.
• As you near a corner, sew one or two stitches beyond the 45-degree fold, then backstitch so that the needle is back on the 45-degree fold. With the needle down, rotate the quilt 90 degrees. Backstitch one or two stitches before the 45-degree fold, then continue to topstitch the binding.
• When you reach the beginning of your topstitching, do a small backstitch and cut the threads.

Step 8: Admire That Beautiful Quilt

Drumroll please...Congratulations; you did it! You finished your quilt. Take a step back and admire the beautiful creation you put so much love (and perhaps a swear word or two) into.