Edging with Piping

Now a complicated little sample, inserting piping with cord into the edging. We have used flat binding on a couple of our projects i.e. the small wall hanging and recently the placemats. This is similar but the piping has cord inserted so it stands proud and is more noticeable.

But first assemble your materials.  Using the 6" sample square again for illustration you need a top layer, wadding and a backing layer.  Also four 1" strips of fabric to encase the 4 pieces of piping cord, both  just a little longer than the 6"sides. 

You will also need continuous binding 2" wide.  Join your binding pieces in the same way as shown previously for mitred corners.  You can see in the photo the orange coloured strips at right angles and pinned at the intersection.  Sew this seam and trim to 1/4" as before.


First the piping: fold the 1" strips right sides together lengthways and lay the cord inside at the folded edge.

Put your zipper foot on the sewing machine and move your needle right up against the cord so that as you sew along the strip you are capturing the cord close against the folded edge and keeping the raw edges of your fabric level..

When you have sewn all four piping strips place the first two on opposite sides of the layered square with raw edges together. Tack them in place by hand and trim off the excess pieces as shown. 

Next place the two remaining strips on the two remaining edges overlapping the ones already tacked down and tack them in place as well.

At this point Puzzle got very bored and went to sleep.

Now for the binding.  This is a repeat of the method shown earlier for the squares with mitred corners so I won't repeat it here.  However you may remember it is necessary to stop sewing before reaching the corner, the same distance away as the width of the seam.  In this example the sewing has to stop at the outside corner of the piping, just in the angle where the two strips of piping cross over.  In the picture the placement is indicated with a yellow headed pin.

Because you will be sewing next to the piping the zipper foot will be necessary again and it is also helpful to move your needle up against the edge of the cord.   You are sewing along the outside edge close to the piping so that when the binding is in place it will form a frame around the square with the piping just inside.

After reaching the corner and fastening off you may remember how the binding is folded up and back down as shown in this image and then you start sewing again along the second side.

After sewing on the binding around most of the square you must join the two ends as described a couple of posts ago - please look back if you have forgotten, it's in the mitred corners post - turn the binding to the back and sew by hand, folding neat corners as you do so.

Please ask me to demonstrate any of this if it is not clear.

Finally press the edges of your work.

To follow:  several different ways to hang a wall quilt, a label for the quilt, and various decorative edges.