Ahhhh, it's nice to be normal. My philosophy is that if you can't see any problems at 20 miles an hour the quilt is perfect. As to hammering the bumpy seams to flatten them, I bought a dead-blow hammer just for that use. I nice big mallet type of hammer. Works great. My goal is to finish a quilt, not get obsessive about the matching of seams or points. I have been guilty of using fleece for the backing, it eliminate the batting. Horrors! As to binding by hand, no way! Machine sew baby, machine sew it down.