Bias binding questions
 

I have a stripe that I plan to use for the binding of a small quilt. I want to use the bias of the fabric. (I love that look, so I will probably use it over and over.)

I've watched several videos on cutting the fabric. One was Laura Coir (Sew very easy), who just folds the fabric and cuts it with a rotary cutter. The other is the continuous binding. I've watched several of those. Does one work better than the other or is it just a matter of choice?

How do you know how much fabric to start with? My measurement is about 240" (haven't squared yet). On one of the continuous binding videos, she (Jenny Doan) used a 1/2 yard of fabric to get 200" of binding. If I need about 260" total, would it make sense to use a 3/4 yard piece?

Is there some kind of measurement standard to determine how much fabric you will need for bias binding?

bkay

This is the tutorial I used to learn bias binding. it's the best I've found and has the least amount of waste. She also gives you yardage requirements for different widths of binding.
http://piraterodgers.com/tutorials/cbt/index.htm

And here's her tutorial on joining the ends of your binding.
http://piraterodgers.com/tutorials/e...ding/index.htm

It only seems hard the first time you do it. Just take it one step at a time and it's really pretty easy. Striped bias binding is now sort of my signature thing, my favorite part of making a quilt is finding just the right stripe for each quilt.

Cari

I always make my bias binding using this tutorial http://piraterodgers.com/tutorials/cbt/index.htm as mentioned by Cari. This one is easy and makes sense. I had tried so many before finding this gem. I love stripy bindings and usually use a piece of fabric 28.5" long as this measurement makes well over 400" of 2.5" binding which is enough for any King sized quilt. To know how much fabric you will need for binding, figure on one 2.5" WOF strip yielding approximately 40" of binding. A 25.5" length of fabric would give you about 400" of binding.

chevron fabric is real popular in the modern section these days, and the bindings always turn out "strippy". Yep, its a good look.

Bkay, I recently used bias binding for a quilt. I tried to do it Jenny Doan's way but it didn't work out. I did something wrong.
Sharon Schamber has an excellent tutorial on bias binding on Youtube. It's really long though. But my binding came out great.
Forgot to mention- I only needed about half a yard and the quilt is 60X60

Thanks so much for the links. I read through it. At the end, she states to cut it now on the lines. Does she mean with scissors? Surely she does not mean to lay it down and cut it with the rotary cutter !!?

I haven't read the tutorial but I cut mine with scissors.

I tried the continuous method once but it seemed like a lot of extra work that created a lot of extra joins in the binding. I prefer to cut yardage on the bias to get more long strips and fewer joins. I don’t mind using a bigger piece of fabric to do this because I use the scraps for other quilts.

When joining the sides of your piece to cut continuous bias, consider the stripe repeat, especially if it is an uneven stripe. you may not want one section mis-matched from the adjacent section of binding.
The width you cut the binding also, of course, affects the yardage!