How to Add a Diagonal Stitch

If you are someone who struggles with folding your binding back as you're trying to miter the corners, adding a simple diagonal stitch off the edge of your quilt might help you make those a little bit nicer and cleaner. So if this is our little, tiny quilt sample that we wanna add a binding to, what I wanna do is actually mark where 1/4 inch from the edge is. So since I have such a small little sample here, I can do that using just my cutting mat. If you have a big, large quilt and you don't wanna try and wrangle it to lay it flat on your cutting mat, go ahead and just grab your ruler and you just wanna measure in 1/4 inch from the end and put a pin. Now, you do this on all four corners. I'm just gonna demonstrate on one corner here, but you wanna do that on all four of your corners. Now we're going to start attaching our binding. So, this is my little piece of binding here. So I'm gonna go ahead and just start stitching it right a little bit away as I'll leave my tail as if I was gonna do this as a standard binding, and I'm gonna stitch right along 1/4 of an inch away from the edge until I get to that pin. And then I'm going to stop with my needle down. So let me get this over onto the machine. So you have the edge of your binding lined up with the edge of your quilt. You're using your quarter-inch seam allowance. So either your 1/4-inch foot or you've marked it in some other way, but you're going to stitch down the edge of your quilt until you get to that pin. So as you approach the pin, make sure you're going nice and slow so you can stop right at that pin, one more stitch, with your needle down. Go ahead and remove your pin. Now comes the diagonal stitch part. So when you're folding your binding, you wanna be able to fold it up so you're creating that perfect 45 degree angle and sometimes that can be hard to do. So, you can actually take and stitch that. So you wanna rotate your work 45 degrees. So it might be hard to see on my machine. You're gonna be able to see it on yours. But the very corner of your quilt, so if this is my quilt, this is the corner, is right straight up from my needle. So I'm gonna take this diagonal stitch and stitch right off of the edge of my quilt. So just stitch right off the edge. Then you can go ahead and bring it out, trim your threads, and you will see your diagonal stitch. So here we go. We have our stitch, we've come right along the edge, diagonal stitch coming out. I'm gonna go ahead and flip it over real quick 'cause I have darker thread on the back. So you have your stitching coming right along, and that's a diagonal stitch at 45 degrees coming right off the edge of your quilt. Now, as you take it and fold your miter, you're going to fold this up. This is creating that 45 degree angle. And this is where sometimes you can get off a little bit if this isn't creating a perfect line. But if you pull this tight, or pull it taut really, you don't wanna pull it too hard, but just pull it so it lays nice and flat, it's gonna pull right up along that stitching you did, that diagonal stitch, so you know that you're gonna be right at that perfect 45 degree angle. I like to give it a little crease with my thumbnail. Then you can fold it back down along itself so you have this folded edge lined up perfectly here, raw edges lined up perfectly here, and the two layers of folded binding lined up perfectly there. I like to, once I have everything lined up, I wanna make sure nothing moves so I'm gonna go ahead and put a pin in. Now I'll take it back over to my machine and I can just continue stitching like normal. So you wanna start right at the edge and stitch. And I'll just stitch about halfway down so I can take this off and show you how to fold the miter back. So I'll go ahead and trim my threads, right like so. And now since we've done that really nice diagonal stitch in the corner, when you go to fold your miter back to the wrong side, you're gonna have perfect crisp corners right at that 45 degree angle so your binding is going to look nice every time. So if you're having a hard time folding that binding back, do that little diagonal stitch at a 45 degree angle and you're gonna have much better luck in binding your next quilt.