Ideas for Using Leftover Quilt Binding

Whether you’ve just finished your first quilt or your hundredth, you’ve probably got some small pieces of leftover quilt binding laying around your sewing or quilting studio. Ashley Hough shows you how to turn those leftover pieces of binding strips into fun little blocks with this simple technique.

Leftover Quilt Binding

Whether you using single or double fold binding, the first step to this technique is to press the folded strips flat again. It doesn’t matter what width of strip you use, as when learning how to prepare your binding some are taught to use 2 ¼” strips while others are taught to use 2 ½”, what matters is that the two strips you sew together are the same width.

Ashley demonstrates how to sew together two leftover quilt binding strips using a ¼” seam and then press them. The next step is to measure the width of the two stitched strips. This step is what allows you to use this technique on any size of strip you want to use. Once you know what the width is, you will then cut squares from your stitched strips.

Ashley then shows how to take the square you have just cut and cut in again once diagonally down the center to create essentially two half square triangles. These triangles are then spun, rearranged and re-sewn back together to make a block. Ashley explains that when using this technique to use up those leftover quilt binding strips, it works best if you use two strips that contrast in color with one another. This way you can get two very different looking blocks from one simple technique.

Plus, she shows how to lay the blocks next to one another to get yet another fun look if you stitch the contrasting blocks together. For more fun ideas with binding, including quilt binding basics and how to make and apply quilting binding, check out more quilt binding tutorials.