Victory Lap! A quilt top celebratory stitch!

Perform a victory lap on your quilt tops

You’ve stitched that final row on a quilt top together! Time to celebrate with a victory lap! A victory lap in quilting is when you stitch all the way around the perimeter of your quilt top. This keeps all of your seams from unraveling during the basting and quilting process.

A victory lap is especially helpful for quilt tops with a lot of seams, since those are more likely to pull on each other and cause unraveling at the edges. A victory lap is also a good idea anytime you’re sending your quilt out to a longarmer. You’re ensuring everything is as good as it can be to send to your longarmer so they don’t have any issues.

To perform one, stitch about 1/8″ away from the edge of your quilt top with a longer seam length (I like to use about 3.0). You’re essentially basting the edges of your quilt to prevent any unraveling. You want to keep your line of stitching about 1/8″ away from the edge of the quilt top so that your stitches will be hidden by the binding later on.

The Everglow quilt is a fun, modern pattern with many seams

A quilt with many seams benefits from performing a victory lap

You can also perform a victory lap once you’re done quilting your quilt. I like to do one before I trim the excess batting and backing off my quilt top. This helps keep all of my edges flat and makes stitching on binding a breeze. The same principle for a victory lap at this stage in quilting applies as above – make sure your line of stitching is about 1/8″ away from the edge of your quilt. This is so that when you stitch on the binding, your stitches will be hidden from your finished quilt.

This is such an easy way to keep from having headaches and frustrations later on. It takes very little time to zip your sewing machine around your quilt top or quilt, and it does a great job of keeping everything in its place. You’ve worked so hard on this quilt, this is such a great way to make sure your efforts turn out just the way you want them to!

Want to see this in action? Watch the video below! Love learning quilting tips? Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more!