Bree123

The strength of the "seam" is a reflection of the size & quality of the stitches, not whether they were done by hand or machine. That is the reason why places like Quilts for Kids require everything to be machine quilted. If you look at hand stitched bindings in a guild of 100 quilters, you will see a wide variation in size & quality of the stitches. Some are large & loose, others are tiny and secure. As long as you take your time & aim for something around 3/16" for your stitch length (I prefer a ladder stitch, but I've also used an applique stitch and that also works, just isn't quite as smooth of a finish for my bindings), hand quilting is fine. I have made plenty of baby quilts, quilted changing pads & other items where I finished the binding my hand. They have been washed hundreds of times & there is no indication of any change in the binding -- not so much as a loose stitch.

QuiltNama

I do all my bindings by machine, the more you do the better they get. No one I have ever given a quilt to has known the difference and bindings get done much sooner (for me anyway as they are not my favorite part).

terriamn

I ended up doing the back of latest one by hand but will make some practice sandwiches and try sewing both sides

Mariposa

I sew my bindings on by machine. I sew it to the back first, then bring over to the front. Wears better-IMHO. And I want my quilts done! No hand stitching for me.
Sometimes I just do straight stitch, other times, a decorative one. Depends on my inclination and time~~

BluegrassGurl

I had no clue that bias binding is more 'durable'??? I know bias binding hugs curves better, but had no clue that it is more durable. Can someone explain?

Bree123

If you cut the binding on the straight of grain, that means that you have a single long thread running across the crease of the binding. Since many children like to drag their quilts around everywhere, more stress is typically put on the binding than with a standard adult bed quilt. With that stress, a thread can snap. With SOG, that snapped thread runs the length of the binding and will unravel to leave a long gap. Once that space is there, it puts additional pressure on the other lengthwise threads & eventually other threads start to snap & unravel as well.

With bias, there aren't any long runs of a single thread anywhere on the binding. In addition, bias has more give to help it stretch and relax a bit before snapping. But even if you were to have one thread snap on the bias, it would have a much smaller impact on the remaining threads since they are running equally 2 directions & not primarily straight along the edge of the binding.

Sync

When I first started quilting ..... many years ago ..... I made baby quilts for my nephew and a few years later my niece. These quilts were hand pieced and I did sew the binding down by hand. They were well used quilts and back then my sister was a cleaning fanatic so those quilts were washed often. The quilts are now 32 and 27 years old .... I can tell you that the binding is still going strong.

jmoore

I used to sew them by hand but I just finished my first one (a crib quilt) with a machine sewn binding. I did it front to back using wonder clips and pressing extremely well and it turned out fine, but I always like suggestions from members so I will try back to front on my next kids quilt...