Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Tip Tuesday! Bindings with a Flange - Updated

"Tip Tuesday!" - Bindings with a Flange

I love learning new things and then sharing that knowledge with my quilting friends. So, every Tuesday I'll provide some tips, hints, tricks, tutorials, shortcuts, etc. that I've learned over the years and share them here on the blog. 

"Tip Tuesday" will be a collection of information about a wide variety of subjects garnered from a large variety of sources.  I am not an expert by any means and do not take credit for being the great wizard behind all of these hints and tips. I will gladly give due credit whenever possible.

These tips will be archived and accessible to you just by clicking on the "Tip Tuesday" tab above. 

Read, enjoy, and be inspired!
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For a couple of years now, I've been intrigued with trying to figure out how to make my quilt bindings pop. I've made scrappy bindings, I've used a fabric and color that is completely new to the project and not found anywhere in the quilt. I've played with different sizes of bindings, although I must say that unless I'm trying to maintain points along the quilt edge, I still like my 3/8" bindings on larger quilts and 1/4" on smaller ones. I've used stripes on the bindings that create a barber pole effect or bias bindings that just looked fun. 

Although I like all of the above binding treatments (some much better than others!), I am always on the lookout for something new, fun and different. 

I think my intrigue was with unique bindings was piqued a number of years ago when I saw Susan K. Cleveland's Piping Hot Binding tool and its results. I loved how the edges of her quilts just sang to me. I took a class from her while she was in Cleveland and loved it; and I proceeded to use the technique quite a few times. Here's YouTube video of the technique.

Fast forward a few years of not using the tool or technique (not sure why I stopped doing it), and I happened upon a website that showed how to apply a flange binding totally by machine. Although I like Susan's method and results, I am always intrigued with learning something new so I read the information and decided to try this "new to me" technique. I loved it and have used it on at least four quilts since February. 

Of course I am having difficulty uploading pictures! I guess that for right now you only get to see pictures of one of the quilts with the flange binding. :-( I'll keep trying and see if I can get them here for you to see. 

UPDATED - I finally got one of the pictures to load and I'm pretty sure it was user error and not the program. :-)


These are the three quilts I quilted for my sister Kathie, who is a new quilter. I did the binding for her and since I was learning a new technique and I wanted to add something special to her first quilts, I added a flange binding. I really like how it looks. 


Even though this first picture isn't great, I think you can see the white flange along the binding.

Flange Binding

Here's a close up of a corner. It's just the little bit of pop that I wanted and it reinforces the white outlining of the letter in the quilt center. LOVE IT!

Flange Binding

Here's the picture from 52Quilts that caught my eye.  Doesn't that look fun? I'm not just talking about the binding either. I love that polka dot fabric!


Below is a link to the tutorial. It is well written and pictured which makes it easy to follow. 

http://www.52quilts.com/2012/05/tuesday-tutorial-susies-magic-binding.html

And now there's a video tutorial! YIPPEE!!:-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8N6nv90H2c

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