Sewing Wilde: Susie's Magic Binding

This quilt has taken about 6 months to complete. Once I made the final design decision everything came together pretty fast. I needed to decide if I would add a black border before putting on the binding? I had decided already I wanted the pink stripe for the binding, if I didn't do a border my thought was it would just look like all the colors ran together.

The black would add a stop to the edge of the quilt then I remembered a recent blog post about a binding with two colors, it's just what the quilt needed. I used this tutorial just as printed, it was perfect and easy to do. The tutorial is Susie's Magic Binding found on the blog Aunt Marti's 52 Quilts Twelve Fourteen The original tutorial is fantastic so follow it step by step. I am showing what I did below to make it special for my quilt.

Sewing the stripe down the middle of the black to keep the pattern continuous

Normally I would cut the binding strips 2 1/2" wide, for this method the main color is cut 1 1/2" wide (pink stripe)

The accent color (black) is cut 1 3/4" wide and sewn into one long strip

Press

Then sew them side by side creating a 2 3/4" wide piece, fold it in half with the accent piece showing just a little. Pressing at this stage is VERY important

Fold and Press Again

Instead of stitching the binding to the front and hand stitching it to the back this method is opposite stitching it to the back and machine stitching to the front. So much easier