Binding Experiments

First of all, let me tell you that I am no longer getting email notifications for comments left. I looked for solutions but found that I am not alone, nevertheless there does not appear to be an answer. For now, I do check my comments and will reply to any queries on the blog itself. 

The last few weeks I have been preparing for an upcoming workshop on FMQ. As I could not visualise the size of the practice sandwiches I ended up stitching some things out myself. Good fun but then I also got into the binding, i.e. how to sew the binding on quickly and easily by machine.

Consulted the net and a binding booklet I had from Bethanne Nemesh.

First one

I used a 2in binding strip and sewed it to the back, then bringing it around to the front and stitching it on with a straight stitch. That looked incredibly easy to do but I struggled with that...in the end I glued my binding in place before stitching so that it would not move all over the place. That worked fine, but the glueing took a while!

Second sample

For this one I stitched my binding onto the front like I usually do. Again could not cope with pins or clips and ended up glueing it to the back. I found this incredibly laborious. This time I had used a 2-1/4in binding as suggested in BethanneNemesh' binding booklet. Initially I was going to stitch-in-the- ditch on the front through to the back but I did not like the lip that was left on the back, so I used a decorative stitch to secure the binding. That worked reasonably well, except for the time it took me to glue everything in place.

Third sample

That one was a bit of a disaster...stitched the binding onto the back, then brought it to the front and secured it with a decorative stitch again. Again used a 2-1/4in binding but did not glue it this time but basted it by hand in place. Also not very fast at all and the finish is somewhat hickledy-pickledy. Definitely not straight.

 

Fun little exercise, not sure I gained that much from it...I could have hand-sewed the binding on these three little pieces in no time at all. I think the method that could possibly work for me would be sample no. 2 where I sewed the binding to the front and then secured it with some sort of stitch. If I was to opt for a in-the-ditch stitch I would definitely make my binding 2in wide so the lip in the back would not be that large or I would opt again for a decorative stitch. Not sure though about the glueing everything into place...that took me a while even on such a small piece.

Karin

How clever is this!

Are you subscribing to the Aurifil blog (https://auribuzz.wordpress.com) ?

Have a look...apart from having super giveaways and segments on top designers they also have some great informative posts about various topics at times.

I came across a post recently, written by guest Aggy Burczyk called 'Thread Matters: Binding with a touch' in where Aggy uses her decorative stitches of her machine (Bernina) to beautify the binding.

Just had to try this...

See that faint white line...Aggy uses a distance of 5/8in to place her decorative stitch. On the Pfaff 4.2 and with the size of the decorative stitch I used 3/8in as a mark to align my sewing foot against. Also chose a very 'light' stitch as I was not sure how this would turn out ...in the photo above, this is the side of the binding that will be on top of the quilt. When attaching the binding you will turn your binding strip around to attach the binding with the wrong side up. This is important for the direction of the stitch...when stitching this, I chose the mirror function to turn my stitch around so when I folded the binding over it was the right way around.

I used Aurifil 50/2 both in the top and bottom  in my favourite blue colour.

And this is what it looks like when it is attached

How cool is that!

Must admit, I got very enthused when I was trying this and did not read the blog post to the end...haha, only to realise that I was not going to be able to close the binding in the normal way. In the end I just sewed the endings together as this quilt is fairly bulky with lots of puff, so that little bit of extra bulk will not be noticeable. Aggy does provide two different ways of working out the closure of the binding...very interesting.

Lots of possibilities!

Karin

Arghhh...stripes!

Had a bit of a hiccup with my binding.

This is a direct result of my impatience...did not line up the stripes when sewing the binding together and thought I would get away with it. When I had finished sewing the binding on and stepped back to look at it, I thought that the mismatched stripes were a real distraction (duh!).  One mismatch I could have probably gotten away with, but all of them really hurt my eyes.

So, off with the binding! Seems I am doing lots of things twice lately.

Karin

WIP: Colour Adventure Finished

Well, here is the completed quilt.

In retrospect I think that I should have done the feather border in purple and then in-lined with the light thread...I think that may have looked a bit better. But, never mind, I am happy with it how it is and quite amazed that I was able to produce this without major marking.

Yesterday I made brief mention of the binding and how I had tried something different...the reason for this was that for a while now I wanted to look at that as my mitres were not turning out the way they should. Acceptable overall, but it bit too rounded and always a bit wonky. Usually I use a double binding starting width of 2.5". I attach it to the edge of the quilt top but leave some excess batting and backing in place. When sewn on, I then trim the excess away to fill the binding. This produces a binding width of about 3/8 - 1/2".

For this quilt I tried to sew on the binding with a 3/8"of a seam, however the mistake I made initially was that I did not trim the excess away beforehand. Once it was on, I then tried to trim the excess away which became a bit of a nightmare as it produced an overstuffed binding...anyway, took it all off and started again...

There is certainly a lot of info on the net re attaching binding but also quite some variation as to how to sew the binding on and what width to use (and to cut). I ended up at About. com. Quilting with Janet Wickell, and used the following formula to work out the width of the doublefold binding strip to cut:

(2 times the finished binding width + Seam allowance) X 2

Now I wanted my binding to be 3/8", hence the formula read (2x3/8 +1/4)x2 which meant that I had to cut the strip 2" wide. I trimmed (and re-straightened) my quilt top and proceeded to attach the binding as per usual. The binding fitted absolutely perfectly and folding it over to the back was a dream...it covered my sewing line perfectly and was the same width as the front (for a change). Also changed how I sewed the binding to the back of the quilt...Usually I hold the binding with the quilt facing away from me, this time I had the quilt in my lap sewing the binding in place from the top with the quilt in front of me. This made the forming of the mitre much easier. My mitres turned out great!

Interesting...I had read somewhere before that it is better to sew the binding in place with the excess batting and backing in place to avoid wavy borders, hence that is how I had done it for years. Doing it this way with the excess batting and backing removed in line with the edge of the quilt did not produce any problems in terms of waviness for me and the end finish looked much better.

Dropping by at Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin