This is it! The last step of making a quilt! You made it all this way through your quilt project and after all that time and effort, you’re ready to call it a finished project. With today’s machine quilt binding tutorial you’ll be done with this project not only with a clean and professional quilt binding, but a super quick one too! 

3 reasons why machine binding will be your new favorite method

Binding is traditionally completed by hand stitching, so why would we bother binding it by machine? Well there are a few (really good) reasons why and most of them have to do with the convenience. 

It’s significantly faster than hand binding

Typically binding is applied to a quilt by sewing the binding on to one side of the quilt and wrapping it around and securing it using either an appliqué or decorative hand stitch. 

In order to make sure that the binding won’t come off revealing the raw edges of the quilt, your stitches need to be about 1/4” apart from each other. On a queen or king size quilt, that’s days and days, potentially a couple weeks, of sitting and hand stitching every. single. stitch. 

All the way around the quilt. 

By binding the quilt by machine, you can have that entire binding process done in an afternoon and put those next two weeks towards your next project. This is especially useful if you are in a rush to get the quilt out for a deadline, a wedding, baby shower, birthday, and sometimes you just don’t want to take the time to do it the old fashioned way.

The stitching is stronger against wear, tear, and washing

As the quilt gets older, the thread used to make it sees wear and washes, and strain will slowly start to affect the stitches more and more making them more likely to break.

The tighter and more dense your stitches are, the easier it is to distribute the strain from wear and tear. The more stitches you have, the less strain you have on any one particular stitch. Less strain, less chance of thread breaking. 

It is just not feasible to hand stitch at the same density that a machine will stitch. All those added stitches with the machine will contribute to a much stronger binding and a longer life overall. 

Your hands wont hurt from stitching by hand

Depending on how long you are sitting down to bind at a single time, you can often find your hands and knuckle joints becoming sore. 

When you machine bind your quilt, you let the machine do all the work for you so all you have to do is sit back and feed the quilt through the machine. 

No more sore hands from all those tiny stitches!

Necessary Materials 

To get started with this machine quilt binding tutorial, we’ll need to grab a few materials. 

• Finished quilt – squared and ready for binding
• Binding strip made and ready to go 
• Clover Wonder Clip Binding Clips to keep everything in place (optional but very useful) 

We have lots of resources on the blog for getting these things ready to go for this machine quilt binding tutorial so if you need a refresher, here’s a few tutorials to get you ready to go:

No More Wonky Corners: How to Square a Quilt
How to Make Quilt Binding Right the First Time

The binding clips are 100% optional, however I find that a lot of the strain on my hands during binding happens when I’m trying to fold and hold the binding over the edge of the quilt. Using wonder clips makes a huge difference since its a bit too thick for normal straight pins. 

You can find Wonder clips on Amazon here.

Without further ado, let’s get started with this machine quilt binding tutorial!

Step 1: Figure out where to start 

Can’t we start anywhere? Technically you can start wherever you like, however there are a few tips to make your life easier later in the process. 

Start by picking any point on the quilt that is atleast 12 inches away from a corner. 

You’ll need space to connect the start of the binding strip to the end of the binding strip and it is much easier to figure that part out later when it’s just a straight edge between the start and the end. 

Lay out the binding all the way around the edge of the quilt

If possible you want to avoid having binding strip seams end up in the corners of your quilt. 

The corners are naturally going to have more fabric in them as you turn the corner with your binding strip. By keeping the excess bulk of seams out of those areas, you’ll end up with a more consistent texture to your border instead of corners that are bumpy compared to the stretches of straight sides. 

With the backing of the quilt facing up, place the binding around the edge of the quilt to see where your seams end up. If one ends up in the corner, shift your start location up or down a bit to adjust the seam out of the corner. 

We’ll need a bit of slack at the start and the end to attach the ends together later, so once you’ve got a good layout of your binding strip, take a wonder clip and clip the binding to the back of the quilt about 8-12 inches away from the start of the binding strip to create a tail. This clip’s location is your official “Start Sewing Here” spot! 

Attach binding

Matching up the raw edges of your binding strip to the raw edges of the quilt, and using the walking foot presser foot, start sewing 1/4” away from the edge of the quilt to attach the binding to the back of the quilt. 

For this machine quilt binding tutorial we are going to do a mitered corner, so when you get close to the end of that first side, grab a ruler and make a mark 1/4” in from the corner of the end of the quilt. 

Continue sewing your first side on, and stop when you get to that mark. Back stitch to secure your stitches and break the thread. 

Why use the walking foot? 

If you take a close look at your walking foot, you’ll notice that it actually has its own set of feed dogs that feeds the top of the fabric, while the sewing machine feed dogs feed from the bottom at the same time. 

This feature makes it much easier to handle thicker-than-the-average fabrics in your sewing machine (like a thick quilt with batting). When you have multiple layers you are sewing through, the bottom feed dogs aren’t always enough to pull all of the layers evenly so using the regular presser foot on top may actually shift your layers as it feeds in. 

By feeding from the top and the bottom at the same time with the walking foot, all of your layers will be feeding through the machine at the same time giving you a consistent stitch. 

Can you get away without using a walking foot? 

Most definitely, you’ll likely have to take it slower to keep things consistent, but in the end, all you need is to make a straight stitch and you can make it work in a pinch with your regular presser foot. 

Turning the Corner

Once you have your quilt pulled out of the sewing machine, lay the corner out on the table in front of you. 

Fold the binding so the binding is folded on the diagonal and now runs away from your next quilt side. 

Then fold the binding back on the dotted line in photo B so the fold meets up nicely with the edge of the side you just completed. 

Your binding should lined up nicely with itself on the inside and with the raw edge of the quilt on the outside. 

Start sewing right at the edge of the quilt along your next side, being sure to reinforce your stitches at the start and stop. 

When you get close to the next corner just repeat the process!

When you get all the way around the quilt and find yourself getting close to the point where you started, stop sewing about 12-18 inches away from the point where you started sewing the binding on. 

Give yourself enough excess binding to reach across the remaining gap between where you started and stopped sewing, and cut off any excess quilt binding. 

Combining Tails 

Lay your two binding tails across the gap thats’s left, one on top of the other.

Find the approximate center of your gap and fold both tails backward so they just barely meet and mark the binding at the point where it is folded back with a pen or pencil. 

Unfolding the binding, match up the two points with the fabrics right sides together. 

Use a ruler to extend your mark across the back side of the fabric so it is square with both horizontal edges of the binding. This is going to act as a “sew here” line. Pin both tails right sides together so the marks are still lined up and sew directly on the drawn line. 

Once connected, trim 1/4” away from the sewn line to remove the excess binding fabric. Head to the ironing board to press the seam open and press the now connected binding strip in half the long way.

The strip should now be the perfect length to finish sewing the gap closed. Start sewing again at the point where you stopped earlier and reinforce your stitching. Continue to sew across the gap to finish adding the binding strip to the quilt. Sew past your original start location, and reinforce your stitching to finish attaching the binding!

Wrapping around the front

Now that the binding is attached to the back side of the quilt, all we need to do is wrap it around to the front and sew it down. 

Pick any place on the quilt, that isn’t exactly the corner, and wrap the binding around to the front of the quilt. Ideally when you wrap around the front of the quilt, the binding will cover the stitch line where it was attached to the back of the quilt. 

Staying as close to the inside edge of the binding as possible, start stitching to secure the binding in place. It often helps to have a length of binding clipped in place ahead of time to avoid strain on your hands trying to wrap and hold it the entire time. 

Rounding the Corner

As you start to get close to a corner, stop a bit early (without taking the quilt out of the machine) so you can get yourself prepared to round the corner. 

Just like on the back of the quilt, fold one side of the corner in first, and the other half should lay right on top to give you a beautiful mitered corner in your binding. Hold the folds in place as you sew and stop right in the inside corner where both sides overlap. By catching that one spot it will secure both sides down locking your mitered corner in. 

From there you can turn your quilt under the sewing machine and you’ll be perfectly lined up to continue sewing down your next side. All you have to do is keep repeating the process at the corners to make your way all around the quilt and finish your binding! 

There are a TON of great ways to make your quilting life easier and every week we release new articles to give you new tips and tricks that you may not have known! Not to mention the occasional free pattern!

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