Star Pinwheel Baby Quilt Part 4: Binding and Finishing

The final stage of a quilt is the binding, you're almost done! To see the other stages of this quilt look here, here and here. The kind of binding I am going to show you how to make can be made for any quilt with straight edges and corners. If you have curved corners you will need to make bias binding but if you're finishing off your star pinwheel baby quilt then this is perfect. You can make it from the left over strips you cut off your fat quarters at the very beginning. If you don't have any of these then get yourself one more fat quarter that complements your colours and cut it into strips of about 5cm.

1. For each side you will need one long strip that is slightly longer than your quilt. Simply sew together two of your long rectangles end to end, right sides together and then press your seems open. Then line up one of the long sides of this strip with the edge of your quilt, again right sides together, and stitch right the way along with a 1/4" seam allowance. Then press your binding away from your quilt. Repeat on the opposite side and it should look like this:

2. Press your unsewn edge of the binding under by another 1/4". Then press the binding again over and around the quilt.

3. Now you need to trim the ends down so you have only about half and inch extra then fold and pin the ends under like this:

And then slip stitch the binding down. Have a look here for a tutorial on slip stitching.

4. Repeats steps 2-3 on the remaining two sides of your quilt, however when you stitch your binding to the quilt only sew between the binding that you have already sewn. In other words leave a little gap unstitched at each end. To finish the corners on these two sides you will need to fold the fabric slightly differently:

Folding it this way will help the corner look lovely from the front:

The only thing you have left to do is to trim down all your threads and you're done! If you have any questions then just leave a comment and I will try and answer and if you have made your own then please let me see it! Have fun, Zoe. xx