Originally Posted by
meyert
Thank you for your responses..... I recently started to do my binding just as explained. My issue is that when I sew to the back and fold over to the front the sew line on the front is not even close to the line sewn when the binding was sewn to the back. I cut my binding strips 2-1/2" wide. Then I fold in half and iron flat. This leaves me with a strip that is 1-1/4" wide. So when I sew the cut to the back with a 1/4" seam that leaves 1" to fold over. That leaves the binding to fold over way more than 1/4" on the front. On the quilts I worked on I did not have any batting in the layers. The back was fleece so I didn't think they needed batting. Maybe its the lack of the batting thickness that is causing the extra border that I am noticing. If I don't have batting in my layers maybe I need to start with a 1-1/2" strip and then fold in half to a 3/4" strip to bind with???
Generally speaking, it would be hard to plan it so that the final edge of the binding is lined up exactly on both top and back of the quilt. If it bothers you that the machine stitching that you might use on the front will not be properly lined up on the back, you may want to hand sew the final line of stitches all around, using an invisible stitch. In that case, you would usually machine sew the binding to the front and hand sew on the back.
Machine stitches will usually not land precisely on the binding on the back, or at least not consistently. Some people do the final sewing down of the binding with a wide decorative machine stitch that will tend to catch the binding on the back, but even that is usually not perfect.
You may have seen binding on factory made items, such as placemats, and wondered how they lined up the stitching so perfectly. The answer is with a bias binding foot. It feeds strips of bias into the machine, and binds something with one step, but the binding would have only one layer of fabric at the edge, and would not hold up well on a quilt. Also, I have never seen one of these feet designed to hold the thickness of a quilt, though I assume factory machines are designed to handle specialized tasks. I have never known anyone who could get those stitches lined up that perfectly without the foot, but again, it's not suitable for a quilt. For one thing, in order to do your miters on the corners, you have to stop, fold the corners in and restart. There's no way to feed the bias into the bias binding foot from a mitered corner, as far as I know.
Since you have a thin quilt with only 2 layers, you could experiment with a bias binding foot. Here's a tutorial, but as she says, it's not suitable for a quilt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91oM00_L28 You'll need to test it on a sample of the fabrics that you're using, keeping in mind that it may balk when you reach a seam. I have no idea how to do the mitered corners. To be honest, I think it would be easier to do the hand stitched finish.