Binding...

There always seems to be one step in the quilting process that holds us up from completing a quilt! I love to do the cutting and the piecing, and I've solved the quilting part for myself and my customers, leaving just the binding as the big hold-up!

I know hand bindings are probably best and a must for heirloom and show quilts, but a machine binding can be more durable for quilts that will get heavy use and are certainly quicker to accomplish
- So recently I've been on a quest to find a good method for machine binding a quilt. Thanks to recommendations from Sudi-Laura at Thimble Pleasures, I've come across a couple of fine tutorials on the internet. Rita Hodge from Melbourne, Australia, writes the Red Pepper Quilts Blog. She has an excellent binding tutorial, all done by machine. You can find her website tutorial HERE. Rita partially follows "a binding tutorial" posted on Crazy Mom Quilts by Amanda. Check out Amanda's excellent instructions HERE. Amanda finishes her binding by hand, but has some great tips on getting the binding prepared and attached. They both use a narrow binding starting with a 2.25" strip of cross-grain fabric. It seems that it is actually easier to do a narrow binding this way, likely because you can't see deviations in a narrow space as easily as you can in a wider space.

I recently finished quilting and binding a cute little quilt made by Carolyn (before I found these binding tutorials, of course). I love the colors in this quilt, and I'm wild about the backing fabric!

  For this binding I used a 2.5" strip, folded it in half, ironed it well, then stitched it to the back of the quilt with a 3/8" seam. Next I ironed/steamed it well to set the stitches, folded it and ironed it to the front, then topstitched it on the front of the quilt with another 3/8" seam.

 It worked well and looked great on the front, but was not perfect on the back in all places. Next time I'll try Rita's method above, stitching to the front, folding over to the back and pinning well, then stitching in the ditch on the front to catch the back fabric.