I'm sure this will sound crazy, but I don't even know how to hand sew...lol. I just started quilting almost a year ago, and I am completely self taught. Although, I have got great advice here on this board. I machine sew my binding down to the back of my quilts and then I machine sew the binding to the front with a decorative stitch. I really like it that way. I think it looks so neat. In the beginning, I was sewing it down on the front and then on the back, but you could always see that stitching on the front which looked messy to me, so that's why I started doing the decorative stitch.