Tutorial: Fold-Over Edge Finish

Hi all -

Today I thought I'd share an edge finish method that Leni Wiener demonstrated on a recent episode of Quilting Arts. I've been wanting to explore more edge finishes for wallhangings so I decided to use this on my latest quilt, Puppy Love. This edge finish is just like the traditional edge finish where you fold extra backing fabric over the edge of the quilt and sew it to the front, except that this method pulls the edges of the quilt over to the back. I did my edge following Leni's instructions, except that I changed the measurements and I did the sewing from the back rather than the front.

You really need to plan ahead when using this edge finish because you need to make your quilt top larger than the desired finished size. I didn't decide to use this until after the quilt was partially quilted, so I ended up making the quilt a little smaller than I had originally planned. If you are using my measurements, you'll want to make your quilt top 3/4" larger on all sides than the desired finished size. You also need to leave the edges of the quilt unquilted until after finishing them.

Here is my quilt before I started finishing the edges:

 The center of the quilt is quilted but the border is still loose. The first step is to trim all of the edges even with the top of the quilt. As mentioned above, this will be about 3/4" bigger on each edge than the final quilt will be.

Now you pull back the border on each edge of the quilt and trim the batting and backing an additional 3/4".

Once all four sides have been trimmed, the quilt looks like this from the back:

On one side, fold the extra fabric from the top in half, with the raw edge touching the raw edge of the quilt back:

Now fold the folded edge to the back of the quilt and hold it in place with glue, pins or clips. I love Wonder Clips for things like this:

Do the same on the opposite side:

On the remaining sides, fold the corners at a 45 degree angle:

Then fold the sides over twice like you did with the first two sides:

Folding the corners in this manner will give you a miter-looking corner. Once all of the sides are secured, you're ready to sew:

I sewed from the back so that I could make sure that the folded edge was caught in the stitching. With the width of the binding, the 3/4" edge gave me an approximate 1/4" edge:

This edge has a really clean look on the front:

The corners were okay but not perfect:

Once the edge was finished, I went back and did the quilting on the border. I decided to quilt it up to the stitching line:

Overall, I like the clean look and ease of this edge finish. When I use it again, I'll probably play around with other ways to do the corners to see if I can remove some of the bulk and make them a little more square.

Nancy