I found a 100% cotton, dark blue, twin size, fitted sheet at my local Value Village for $4. I cut off the elastic, washed, dried, starched, then ironed it flat. I now had a ~64”x72” piece of fabric. I carefully folded it in half lengthwise and ironed the fold. It was still wider than my 24” ruler, so I again carefully folded and ironed it.
I then cut 3” strips to yield a 3/8” finished binding. I ironed the folds out of the strips and stacked ‘em right side up.
I used a ruler to see the line of the needle.
and a sharpie on my bernina.
I used my walking foot and the guide to sew the strips together. I simply kept the angles in the two opposing corners on the guide.
I set the stack of strips on my lap right side up.
I put the first 2 strips right sides together at about a 90 degree angle. I lined up the 2 opposite outside corners with the marked line and stitched, keeping it lined up. I put strip 2’s unsewn end face up and put strip 3 face down repeating the process of sewing the 2 strips together. I continued in this fashion until the strips were sewn together, being careful to not get the binding twisted. I snipped them apart and fed the now really long strip into a basket, checking as I went to be sure my seams all ended up on one side. They did. Yay!
As I fed the strip into another basket, with a rotary cutter and no ruler, I carefully cut off excess seam allowance.
I then fed the strip back onto the first basket, ironing the seam allowance open as I went.
I ended up with about 1300 inches – slightly more than 100 feet.
Filed under: Quilting, Sewing | Tagged: machine binding, making quilt binding, quilt binding, Quilting, Sewing | 1 Comment »