Helping you create a home by hand.

How to Join Strips of Striped Fabric

How to Join Strips of Striped Fabric

While searching through and organizing my computer photo files, I came across pictures I had taken while joining the striped borders for the flying zebra baby and child-sized quilts.  At the time, I thought maybe others might like to see how I went about sewing the strips of border fabric together on the diagonal while at the same time matching up the stripes.

Now, I could have simply sewn the strips together by placing the strips right sides together and stitching across the end but I prefer the way the diagonal seam makes the seam almost disappear.

Joining the strips on the diagonal also has the advantage of reducing the bulk of that seam, This is especially important if the strip needs to be folded as would be the case if you’re using the striped fabric to make binding instead of a border. 

There may be other methods out there for matching up striped fabric, but this is the method I use.

How to Join Strips of Striped Fabric

First, place one strip of border fabric right side down on the ironing board.

Strip of striped fabric right side down on ironing board

Fold the upper right corner down to form a point, making sure that the two raw edges of fabric meet as pictured below.

Corner of the strip of fabric folded on the diagonal

Press well.

White iron pressing the corner on the diagonal

Next, with wrong side of the folded and pressed strip to the right side of a second strip of border fabric, carefully line up the stripes.

Lining up the stripes on the two strips of fabric

2nd photo of lining up the stripes on the strips of fabric

Open up the folded strip and pin to the second strip as shown.

Carefully opening the top strip of fabric to pin it in place

Fold the top strip back to make sure that it didn’t shift during the pinning process.

The two striped strips folded back to check they haven't shifted

Add more pins if you wish.

Adding the second pin to secure the two strips of striped fabric together

Sew along the pressed crease line to join the strips together.

Sewing along the pressed crease in the top strip of striped fabric

Trim the seam allowance.

Trimming the seam allowance of the joined strips of striped fabric

Press the seam open.

Iron pressing the seam allowance open

Turn the strip over and press again from the right side.

As you can see, the seam is almost invisible.

Almost invisible seam joining two strips of striped fabric with part of an iron pressing them

You’re now ready to join more strips, depending on how long you need to make your quilt border or binding.

 

If you found this tutorial helpful, you might also like to check out my tutorial for How to Match Prints When Piecing a Quilt Back.

 

 

Be sure to save this tutorial for How to Join Strips of Striped Fabric so you can find it when you need it again by clicking on the Pinterest button underneath this post.

And of course, I’d love it if you shared it on Facebook and Twitter as well. 🙂

Collage photo of stripes fabric strips begin joined

I would be so pleased if you chose to share by clicking on one of the buttons below!