Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Binding Blues

Well.  I am here to tell you that binding ANYTHING, whether it is a napkin or a quilt is NOT my favorite thing to do. However, after searching the internet from stem to stern, watching about a dozen binding videos, and applying myself rigorously to learn how to do this - since I love piecing things together and they have to be finished somehow - I have cobbled together a binding for my runner.

After all my research, I decided that bias cut was the only way to go.  I worked furiously on Sunday to cut, piece together, and press mountains of binding:



And then thanks to Julie, over at Jaybirdquilts.com, I picked up the following fabulous tip:



Hair clips to hold everything together!  Here's another shot:



Feeling pretty smug with the clip trick, I began sewing the binding to the back...after which I brought it around to the front and machine stitched it close to the edge to finish...I am NOT into hand stitching anything.  What resulted was a roller-coaster edge, wavy and just ugly.  So, rip out, press again, and start over.  After two rounds of that battle, I wound up using Steam-A-Seam to attach it to the front.  Nothing I did would remove the waviness, and it is still slightly wavy (although pretty) on my dining room table.  I've resolved to go with straight cut seam binding from now on - I think it was too stretchy from being cut on the bias!

Here's a link to Julie's tutorial on binding:     Binding tutorial at Jaybird Quilts

Now, back to the workroom!

2 comments:

M said...

How funny-- I'm OK with a sewing machine but love hand stitching things! Probably because I haven't used a sewing machine since middle school home ec...

Linda McMullan said...

Grandma Cornelius always hand-sewed everything, even her clothing. Tiny little stitches, just perfect. She taught me to embroider and I loved that, but I never got the hang of making those intimate little stitches like hers...give me a motorized needle and a zippy pedal and off I go!

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...