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.
Fold the upper right corner down to form a point, making sure that the two raw edges of fabric meet as pictured below.
Press well.
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.
Open up the folded strip and pin to the second strip as shown.
Fold the top strip back to make sure that it didn’t shift during the pinning process.
Add more pins if you wish.
Sew along the pressed crease line to join the strips together.
Trim the seam allowance.
Press the seam open.
Turn the strip over and press again from the right side.
As you can see, the seam is almost invisible.
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.
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