Adding Pizazz with Piping Hot Binding

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

And today, I’m going to show you what to do with panels to jazz them up a little bit, by using the Piping Hot Binding Tool. But this time, we’re not going to put it on the binding. We are going to put it on between the inner border and the outer border to create almost a T, but give it a spark to those two places.

So with the panel, what I want to do is, cut a ½ inch from the frames of the block. And to do this, I’m just going to take my ruler and find my ½ inch measurement, and lay it right on that green frame. And as I do that, I’ll cut, and then I’ll bring my panel down, so that I can do the next part.
And this is great for all those panels that you might find when you go to quilt shows, and you’re just not sure what to do with them. Sometimes, it just takes a couple of borders and a little piping, to pizzazz the panel and make a great quick and easy gift for someone. So I’m going to do this all the way around, around the panel. You can cut that.

When I get to … sometimes the panels are not printed exactly straight. So sometimes you’ll have to do just a little fudging. But I think I can make that work; right here. And remember to just go around the whole panel.

And after this, I’m going to go ahead and get my borders cut out. I’m going to start with a 2 inch, and I’m going to; little piece of piping in between my second border and my outside border. I think I got that all worked out, 2 inches all the way around. Okay. So I’ll be right back. I’m going to cut my borders out.

So the idea is to just to put a couple of borders to make the panel just a little bit bigger than what it is. But just adding those two borders doesn’t really add anything to it. So, at my local quilt shop, I picked up this Piping Hot Binding, by Susan Cleveland.

And it’s basically adding a little bit of pizzazz to either your binding, or in this case, I’m going to be adding it right between those two borders, just to pop the red from my outside border. So to do that, you need to figure out how much piping you are going to need. So just measure your panel. And this is going to be about 42 ¾ (forty two and three quarters)’s long and, let’s see how wide it is. It is 23 inches wide.

So I cut 4 inner strips, inner border strips, 2 inches by the width of the fabric. I have my piping fabric which is an inch and a half 1 ½, and I have my outside border which is 4 ½ inches wide, again, by width of the fabric. And again, this is just strips that I am cutting, and I’m going to re-measure every time I add my borders, just like you normally would when adding borders to a quilt. What I want to show is, a trick on putting the binding on if you don’t have a piping foot, what I want to show you is, how to use your appliqué foot to get the same effect. So let’s go ahead and go on to our sewing machine.

So the trick here is, to try and get the seam as close to the edge so that we can make that piping on the edge of your fabric. So we’ve taken; and this is actually a 1 inch strip and I pressed it in half, and we now have our chording inside, and I have folded my fabric again wrong sides together. The chording is in there. And if you can zoom in on the foot, I am using an appliqué foot. And the neat thing about the appliqué foot is that it has this little red guide, and if you can use that to go along the edge of where the chording is, then your stitching will be right on the other side of the chording, and that’s gonna encase that chording.

My biggest hint on this is – do not watch your needle going up and down. Make sure that your eye is focused on that little red guide, so that you keep the edge right on the edge of that foot or the edge of that red line. Again, we’re not out here. We are right inside that foot. And again, I have also dropped my stitch to a 2.0, I like small stitches. And you’re going to go all the way to the end of the strip. And you’re going to do this three times. Your top and bottom, you’ll get out of one strip. Your sides, you will definitely need two full lengths, which is 45 inches. So we’re going to go ahead and do that all the way down till the end, and we’ll be right back.

So once you’ve sewn the chording into the fabric, it’s time to trim it. Now, the ruler has a ½ inch seam and a ¼ inch. So you want to make sure that you’re using the ¼, and we’re going to trim it down to a ¼. And this is very important, it’s just as equally important that your seam on your sewing machine be exactly a ¼ inch. Once you have trimmed all the way down, then you’re ready to pin your piping to your outside border. So let’s go to the ironing board and get that pinned.

So I’ve pinned this at both ends, and you can see that there’s my back, my piping, and my outside border. Now, I’ve already sewn my sides, and we’re getting ready to sew the top and bottom now. When you start sewing, make sure that all your raw edges are even, and you can feel where that piping is. So make sure that when you are stitching; and if you can get close with the camera, right here; here’s my piping and here’s my needle, right in here. So it’s going to catch it right on the edge, and again, that’s just a ¼ inch away.

Take your time stitching, keep your needle down and readjust yourself. And I’m always feeling for that quarter or for the piping rather, making sure that I do have a quarter, but most importantly, that I can feel that piping in there, so that when you turn it over. And I’m going to show you; when you turn that over, it’s going to be right on the edge, and you’re not going to see, or you’re not going to have anything but, just the piping on there. And that’s it! Just continue on until you’ve got all four sides completed.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this. This is just another Piping Hot Binding video, ‘Adding Pizzazz to your Panels.’