A tip for piecing bindings

I apologize for the long radio silence–I’ve been finishing up my dissertation, and the last-minute revisions have eaten up all the time I’d rather have spent quilting! But it’s over now, and I promise that new quilt pictures are coming soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a tip for piecing bindings that I came up with the other day. If you’re lazy like me, drawing the diagonal guidelines to sew on when piecing strips together is altogether too much work. You can save yourself that time with nothing other than a strip of washi tape or a few post-it notes!

Lift your presser foot, and line up a ruler with the lines on your stitch plate, with the edge centered right under the needle:

Use a ruler that extends to the edge of the sewing table you’re using:

Now take a piece of washi tape and line it up with that edge. It will be most accurate if you put it on top of the sewing table, but since my extension table is clear I decided to put mine on the bottom–a little less accurate, but this doesn’t have to be perfect.

Now when you go to piece your binding strips, line up the edges as you normally would:

Then align the top corner with your needle…

And the bottom corner with the edge of your strip of washi tape (just make sure you align it with the correct edge of the tape!). The corner is just sticking out here:

Start sewing, making sure to keep that corner on the edge of the tape.

This makes nice straight seams, no marking needed!

I hope that helps you piece your bindings a little faster!

Edited to add: You can also use a few post-its, or masking/painter’s tape to do this. The washi tape is just prettier!