Incidental Learning

I taught a couple of beginner Quilting classes at the Neighbourhood House this year. My friend L was one of the students. Since then she's ventured out on her own and is nearly up to binding her "Bugs in Bottles" quilt. Now binding is one of those 3-dimensional tasks that take a bit of mental gymnastics, so when I dropped in to the office yesterday we took the opportunity for bit of revision.

I tore binding strips from bits of scrap paper to demonstrate:
The top strip shows the bias seam which is used to join lengths of binding as inconspicuously as possible. The folded strip of paper hanging over the top of my notes is a double fold binding. Calculating the width of fabric to cut for these is tricky--you can see my diagram for calculating it--the formula is (3 x binding width plus allowance for quilt thickness) x 2. After snapping this photo with my phone, I left L with the bits of paper to fiddle with. I'll be keen to see how she gets on.