It’s a nice sunny but cool day in North Iowa – the snow is gone and it might be a harvesting day – keep your fingers crossed. Send the good vibes for all the farmers in whatever state they may be in because we Americans need farmers.

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Trim off any extra batting and backing after the quilt has been quilted.

Pick binding. I really wanted to use this light brown but I didn’t have enough yardage.

So the brown polka dot will work. Cut the number of strips you’ll need allowing for joining.

Join the ends of all the strips with a 45 degree angle.

Trim 1/4″ from stitching.

Press all seams open. Then fold in half lengthwise and press.

On back side of quilt lay raw edge of folded binding even with the edge. Leave a tail of about a foot in length.

Backstitch and start sewing 1/4″ from edge. Needle stop down is helpful here if your machine has it. The weight of the quilt tends to pull it away from the presser foot so I use a chair to the side of my machine.

When you come to the corner, stop 1/4″ from the edge and backstitch.

Make a mitered corner, folding binding up and then down the edge of the next side.

Continue stitching around the quilt until you come to your starting place and stop with about 12″ of space. Backstitch and take out of machine.

Overlap the ending of the binding with the beginning tale.

And this is how you determine where to cut off the end of the binding. Overlap the ending of your binding the same measurement of the width of the binding. Or you can open up the tail of the binding, lay it over the joining area and cut it off. In my case, the binding was cut 2-1/4″ wide.

With right sides together, join the beginning tail to the ending tail with a 45 degree angle.

Take the entire quilt to the ironing board and press this seam open.

Then fold the binding in half lengthwise again like it was and press.

Go back to the machine and finish sewing the 1/4″ seam.

It fits perfect, doesn’t it? Now press the binding from the back side of the quilt.

Now is when I’m fussy about the color of thread – I want it to match the binding color on top and the quilting thread color on the back. When I sewed the binding on, I didn’t care at all about the thread color – I think it was aqua!

With a quilting foot and a longer stitch, sew close to the edge of the binding on the top of the quilt. When coming to a corner I use a seam ripper to hold the mitered corner in place.

Here is what a corner SHOULD look like – not all of mine do.

Here’s the quilt on the porch with the pillow that started it all.

And here’s the pillow purchased at the thrift store for $2.

Here’s the back – quilt measured 46″! How did I let that happen? So I had to add a strip down the middle to get my 2 yds of backing to fit.

And the minute I laid it down on the table, Heidi sprawled out on top – like all cats do!

I hope this made sense – I was so afraid my site would crash before I finished – it has taken me three hours! And if you think this tutorial was helpful, feel free to close some ads for me. It will help us keep patterns and tutorials coming on this blog at no cost to you.

Thanks for all the compliments but I STILL don’t have that picture placed in the header so I will keep trying. If you see this photo again in the post, please don’t think I intended to post it ….again. I was sure I followed the directions – evidently not so I will try later today. This will be a big day for posts because I’m going to show you the shirt quilt and then in a separate post I’m going to do a machine binding tutorial. And that will be the title so you can find it again when you need it.

Remember these two men’s shirts, both by the same company but slightly different tropical prints?

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