Hello, my name is Aimee Griffin, from overallquilter.com

Welcome to video 5: How to Join Strips for Borders and Bindings.

Today we’ll be using:

• The Olfa Mat
• Clover Silk Pins
• Fons & Porter Marking Pencil
• A Small Ruler, and
• Your Strips

So we are going to join our strips together for borders, or for doing your bindings. And what I’m gonna do is, start by taking my first strip and laying it on my mat, lining it up with my grid. So this strip is laid horizontally.

My next strip is going to lie on top of it, but vertically. And again, I’m going to follow my grid lines on my mat. This way I know that I’m nice and straight horizontally, as well as vertically. I also overlap top and bottom, or top and side, where my selvages are. And the reason I do that is, it is much easier to see your corners, if you have a little bit of your overlap. Once you have one horizontal and one vertical, draw a diagonal line from the top corner, top left corner, to the bottom right corner. And then add two pins, one on each side of the line just to keep your strips together. Now, if you have multiple strips then take your strip, flip it over, and now this strip becomes your horizontal, and your new strip becomes your vertical. Again, overlap it, leaving your selvages, so that you can clearly see corner to corner. Draw your line, and pins on both sides of the line. Now the trick to having a perfect joint, is to make sure that you draw a straight line from that corner to that corner, but also to stitch right on top of that line, from corner to corner. And we’ll go to the Sewing Machine so we can show you how to do that.

So now, we are going to stitch right on top of the drawn line. I’m gonna start with a little piece, my starter, and I’m going to stitch right on top of that line. I’ve changed my foot to an open-toe foot, to an appliqué foot because it’s easier for me to see my stitching line. And once you’ve done your stitching, you should have a perfect joint. And what I’m looking at is to make sure that my piece is nice and straight. Once I have a nice and straight piece, then I can go ahead and cut my quarter. And I just do it with my scissors. By just an approximate quarter. And we’ll take it to the Ironing Board, and we’ll press that seam open. Once that seam is pressed open, you’ll have a nice joint. And you do that with all your strips.