Mitered Corners Tutorial

Miter your corners folks!  It's awesome and easy.  Here's my tutorial on how to do it... 

 If you want to see a video on how to miter corners that is excellent,  it's by Piper's Quilts Mitered Quilt Tutorial.  Check it out, you won't regret it, it's life transforming!  Start by sewing on your binding.  See my tutorial on how to cut and sew binding.  Remember, don't iron your binding strip in half.  you just need to watch as you sew that all your raw-edges are aligned with the edge of your quilt.

When you are a few inches away from the end, you need to start prepping the corner.  First you fold your binding strip over itself to the right.  It's important to make sure that your lines are straight.  You want the bottom of the binding to line up with the bottom of the quilt and you want the top fold of the binding to make a nice straight "L" shape.

Now, you are going to fold the binding back over itself.  Take your binding and fold it back to the left, making sure that the vertical edges are still lined up.  This will make you a flap of binding.  This is important because you need to move the flap depending on what side of the quilt you are sewing the binding onto.

See... a flap.  You need to fold it down from it's original position so that it lays straight along the bottom of your quilt.  In this position you can continue sewing the binding down to the bottom on the side you are working on.

Stop sewing and back stitch once you get almost all the way to the bottom. 

There will be a diagonal crease where the flap moves back and forth. You want to stop before you sew the crease down.  It will be approximately 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch away from the bottom.

Now after you've back stitched, cut your threads and flip the flap (haha I like that, flip the flap) so that it is going back the other direction.  Turn your quilt and begin sewing the next side. Back stitch a couple at the beginning.   Again, make sure you avoid sewing on the flap's crease, you want to sew just after the crease.  And then sew, sew, sew until you get to the next corner and repeat.  When you sew the binding onto the other side, you will be amazed at how easy the corners fold and look nice.  If you notice that you have sewn the crease, you'll just need to unpick a little bit so that it folds without a pucker.  No biggie.

Once you have sewn all your binding onto the front of your quilt with your sewing machine, you move onto the hand sewing portion on the underside of your quilt.  Sew until you get to the corner.  Carefully fold down the corner flap on the opposite side from the one that you are tacking down, making sure that that both sides meet in the middle (hopefully at a perfect angle).  I always stitch up the fold to make sure that it lays nice and flat and there are no unfortunate gaps.  Continue on down the other side until you reach the next corner.  Just make sure to always meet up both sides in the middle of your corner and they will look beautiful and tidy.