How to Hang a Quilt on a Wall

Now, I don't know about you but when I'm done making a quilt, the last thing I wanna do is bind it and then put a hanging sleeve on it. So this is a quick way to be able to hang small art quilts or wall hangings without having to do that sleeve. And the best part is you do it while you do the binding. So it's kinda two techniques in one. And I learned this technique from Ami Simms, who's the founder and president of the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative, which is a phenomenal charity effort. And I took a workshop with her, made a couple of quilts for that organization, and she taught us how to do this. So anytime we quilters can learn a way to save steps, we grab on and teach it to others. So this is what it looks like when it's done. And it's just sewing two triangles into the binding and use a dowel rod that's cut to size. And that slips right in there. Another benefit of this technique is that with the sleeve, you have to have a rod that's long enough, and then you have to have two points where you can hang the quilt. One on either side of the quilt. This way you can just have one hanging system, one nail in the wall, one hook in the wall, and you're good to go. And as you can see, when you hang it, that top edge, that dowel rod holds that top edge nice and straight. So here's a little quilt that I made, and it's just a nice piece of fabric that I quilted. So I can show you the technique. This is already quilted and trimmed to 12 by 18. So I'm gonna flip it over and because it's 18 inches wide, I divided that by four and that gives you four and a half inches. So I cut two, four and a half inch squares. And the next step after that is to fold those squares in half diagonally and press them so that they're gonna fit right up into the corners of the top edge of that quilt. And the next step is to baste that you're gonna wanna use a walking foot and along straight stitch, and take about an eighth of an inch seam allowance and baste those triangles in place. So now you can see I've gone ahead and baste the two triangles to the top edges of the quilt, the two corners of the back of the quilt. And I've used an eighth of an inch seam and a long running stitch. And the eighth inch seam is really important because it's gonna be hidden underneath the binding, which is gonna be a quarter inch seam allowance. So the next step is to flip the quilt over and I've got my binding already to go. These are the two corners with the triangles baste it in place, and I'm gonna start pinning my bindings along that first side of the quilt. And it's just a regular binding you can see I've got the first and all ready to go. And I'm gonna just pin every three inches or so. And the important thing sometimes pin my binding but for this technique, I like to pin the binding, especially along the edges where those triangles are basted, because you really wanna make sure that you've caught all the edges of those triangles and that all those raw edges are even, and you don't have any bunching or pleading or little tucks or anything that are gonna cause a problem for you later when you're ready to finish the quilt top. So I'm gonna go ahead and stitch that binding in place now. I've got my binding stitch down to the front of the quilt now, and it's, as I said before, just a regular binding, I've got my corners all set to miter, and I've got the end of the binding tucked into the beginning of the binding there. And, now you can see on the back that the stitching line for the binding is outside the basting line for the triangles and that's what we were after. So the next step is to go ahead and pull the binding around to the back of the quilt enhanced stitch it again, just like you would normally do a regular binding and making sure those hand stitches go through the sleeve and the backing of the quilt. But of course not to the front of the quilt, because you don't want those invisible stitches to show. And when you get to a corner and you just kinda pinch it in place and pull the next side over and make a nice miter and you'll hide those triangles very dandy. And it'll look a little bit like this when you're done, you can see this one's already been hand-stitched down and little secret for you. I really think I made these triangles too big. There wasn't much of a need to have such large triangles because there's a lot of fabric play going on right here. It still hangs beautifully once the dowel is in place, but that's one reason live and learn why I started dividing that finished width by four. This won't work for really, really big quilts, but again for small art quilts or wall hangings, it's a wonderful technique and very easy to cut that dowel rod right to size and hang it up and you'll be all set to go.