Binding a Quilt with Minky Fabric

Today, I'm gonna show you a really great technique. It's called the super quick and easy Minky binding, and I'm gonna show you a tool that we can use. You can use it for anything, whether it be Minky or regular cotton, but a lot of people are afraid of Minky. I'm gonna show you how not to be afraid of it. We're gonna be showing you how to make this sweet and easy little mitered corner, and then how to make your Minky lie flat as you're trying to sew it down whether it be by machine or by hand. So I'll lay this aside. This is tool that we'll be using. It's called the Quick and Easy Mitered Binding Tool. And it's a simple little tool that has the lines cut in where you're supposed to measure your quilt up to and then you'll be making a diagonal line. So here I have it all lined up. And I'm just going to use different color. And it doesn't matter what you use on Minky because it's not going to come through. You just want to make sure that you've got a line that will go. So I've got the purple line here, not a big deal that it's a little bit out of sorts and I'm going to take and I'm going to fold the corner in such a way that the point meets up and the edges are even. Now, when you sew, remember to take off the pins as you get to them. So that way you don't break your needle. Just take it over to little Ruby here. You don't really need to worry about solidifying your stitch. You can, by all means. And you're just going to sew exactly to where the line is. Now I didn't go all the way across. You only draw a line to where you want to go and that's going to determine how wide your binding is. I'm going to bring it back here and you can use a ruler if you want. If I'm using my mitered binding tool I usually will just set that down and I'll sort of eye my quarter inch. And if you see a lot of this little Minky shedding, a great way to avoid that is once you've cut your Minky, throw your Minky into a dryer for maybe five minutes and you can put it on low cycle, it doesn't matter. What we're trying to do is we're trying to get all of the shedding because it will shed quite a bit, you can see. We want that in the dryer, we don't want that on your working surface. Now you can take a pencil or scissors or whatever it is that you'd like and we're going to make that miter border come out. And the next step we're going to do is we're going to use Steam-A-Seam 2. Steam-A-Seam 2 is a really great tool. The reason it's called Steam-A-Seam 2 is it's sticky on both sides. What we're going to have to do first is take off the backing paper. And I've got to flip over my cutting board. You're going to need an ironing surface as well as a cutting surface for this. And I'm just going to iron this down in place. Now, Steam-A-Seam 2 is exactly that, it likes steam. If you are able to use steam with your iron that's the best bet because it will have it stay for probably eternity but make sure that you don't iron any onto your cutting surface or your ironing surface because it is really sticky and it won't come off. And you also want to be certain that you don't get it on the bottom of your iron. So there I've got it all set. And the next thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to peel it off and I leave behind, if you can see it, the stickiness. Now you don't do this before you sew. And the reason for that being is it will fold over on itself and you won't get the effect that you're looking for. Now, all I'm going to do is I'm just going to fold it in half. And because it's sticky, it stays upon itself. All the way down. And then I'm just going to flip it down and I'm going to pin it in place. And the nice thing about pinning it in place is if you can see, you can't even see that that darn pin except for the head and the bottom, it's because it's so furry that it's going to hide your stitches. It hides the pin so it's definitely gonna hide your stitches. You can do a nice little whip stitch, which is just, you know, basically going up and down. Go about a half an inch to a to a full inch because it's going to stay down. It's not like it's going to be, have a lot of wear and tear where you have to worry about it pulling on itself. Make sure you don't go through both layers. You only want to go through the top layer and then through the entire layer of Minky. Make sure you get the entire layer of Minky because there's a lot of fur here. The other thing you want to do is if you decide that you want to sew it down with your sewing machine, use a decorative stitch. There, see how pretty that looks. You want to make sure that you go far enough, have the side of your Minky far enough to the left of your walking foot. You want to use a walking foot on this because it's very slick and slippery. It will slip all over under your regular foot. It might even have problems feeding through a regular foot. So the walking foot is a great help but you want to make sure that this edge, as you're feeding it through is to the far left of your walking foot. There's so much fur here that you want to be certain that you're catching the actual Minky itself. So you've got all the tools you need. You're going to need a rotary cutter. You're going to need your easy mitered binding tool. You can also use a six and a half inch ruler but you're just going to have to be careful about making sure that it's even. And you're gonna need your sewing machine and an iron, a little Steam-A-Seam 2. So go forth and multiply quilts.