Faux Piped Binding Tutorial

I love faux piping on quilt binding. It gives such a subtle and elegant touch to the finishing of a quilt, but it's rather simple. If you can miter your quilt's binding, you can totally do this. Plus, you can machine stitch both sides of your binding -- a real plus for me! My hand sewing always falls out.

I also like this technique because it's a way to add a pop of color, or it can be a way to include something special when you don't have a lot of fabric to use. For this crib sized quilt, I just used the back of this shirt and MacGyver'd up this tutorial. I hope it's helpful. :)

This quilt is for my friend's baby, and this is the shirt her husband was wearing when they met. Can you believe that? I think it's just amazing that she held onto it for so long, and that she remembers what he was wearing when they met! I barely remember anything about the day my husband and I first met, but he remembers he & I quoting The Princess Bride at the same time. We're a match made in heaven, what can I say?

Anyway, she wanted the shirt incorporated into her quilt somehow, but I didn't quite know what to do with it. It's an old shirt, so I was worried that if I made patchwork with it, it would just fall apart eventually. Out of the blue, the idea just occurred to me - faux piping! Here's how you can do it too! Remember that you can click any picture to enlarge, or you can go to flickr to see this set.

For starters, I cut off the back of the shirt and prepped it the same way I would prep continuous bias binding (see here for a PDF of directions on how to do that courtesy of the Dread Pirate Rodgers).

My strip was 1" wide. After sewing and cutting, I folded the strip in half and pressed it. My faux piping looked like this:

Then I cut 2"wide bias binding from my Fandango Seville Spain fabric using the same technique and prepped it by folding it in half and pressing it, and then folding/pressing one side up 1/4". It looked like this:

I sewed the faux piping to the folded side of my 2" wide binding using a 1/4" seam -- I sewed along the fold line for an easy guide. I pressed it open like so:

I sewed the unfolded side of the binding to the quilt using a 3/8" seam.

I then folded it over & pinned the faux piping to the other side. Because the binding was folded/pressed in half already, this makes the side with the faux piping lay just a little lower than the side without it. That means when I sew it down, my stitch line won't show.

I pinned and pinned and pinned that binding down. Then I stitched in the ditch.

And you're all done! See how you can kinda see the stitch line on the faux piping, but not on the binding on the back?



Let me know if you have any questions! Another technique for this same thing is here at my friend/co-member of the Orange County Modern Quilting Guild's blog. Her way may even be a little faster thank mine. :)

I'm probably going to be MIA for a couple of days. We're set to start moving into our new house tonight, so I'll have my hands full, full, full with stripping wallpaper, painting, and all other manner of DIY deliciousness. Wish me luck!!

xoxo,

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