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Monday, March 26, 2012

How To Sew A Hanging Sleeve On A Quilt

I'm sure you're like me in this. Sometimes after I spend AGES on a quilt, I just want to stare at it for a little while. Or for a long while. And the best place for it is decorating a previously boring ole wall in my apartment. Attaching a super-fast hanging sleeve to the back makes it easy to hang your quilt with a standard curtain rod without having to damage the quilt with thumbtacks or (yikes!) nails. 

And since no one's ever going to see it, don't stress out - this is purely functional, y'all.

Once your quilt is quilted and trimmed but BEFORE it's bound:

1. Cut an 8-1/2" strip of fabric that measures the width of your quilt. 

2. Press the short ends of the strip under (to the wrong side) 1/4". Press under again so the raw edges are totally enclosed. Stitch the folds in place.

3. Press the strip in half lengthwise with wrong sides together.
Egads. I think I need a new ironing board cover . . .!

4. Align the raw edges of the strip with the top raw edge of your quilt back, centering the middle of the sleeve with the middle of the quilt.

5. With a long stitch, baste along the top edge of the quilt, about 1/8" in from the edge, securing the sleeve in place.

oooh look - a sleeve!  :-)
6. Sew on your binding as normal. When you stitch the binding to the back across the top of the quilt, simply stitch through the layers of the sleeve as well. This completely secures the binding and the hanging sleeve.


7. Hand stitch the bottom folded edge of the sleeve to the quilt using an invisible stitch (like what you use to hand stitch your binding to the back of the quilt).

8. Slide a curtain rod through the sleeve and hang!

Happy Stitching!

Kelly

3 comments:

  1. Needled MomMarch 26, 2012 at 9:48 AM

    Nice tutorial. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. KeyQuilterJune 22, 2012 at 8:19 PM

    I've found that If i REFOLD the bottom of the sleeve by rolling the previous crease up about a quarter inch, it creates a slack in the sleeve so that the bar or rod that hangs it doesn't have to pooch the quilt out on the front. Hard to describe. Maybe it's clearer to say that if the folded sleeve is 4.5" wide then it will be stitched 1st into the binding, and then about 3.75 inches down from that on the BACK side of the sleeve bcz we've rolled that crease up. Holler for picture.

    ReplyDelete
  3. KeyQuilterJune 22, 2012 at 8:21 PM

    sorry, it'd be 4.25 wide folded, huh. so you'd stitch about .25 inch up from the bottom sewing the back side of the sleeve to the quilt back.

    ReplyDelete