I use the Martelli system as well. It works great on quilt sized objects and has saved me a ton of work over the years. The last quilt I bound was oversized double and using the Martelli system I managed to cut the fabric, machine stitch the binding to the front side and then machine stitch it down to the back (from the ditch on front side) in a little under 3 hours.
It doesn't work for me on placemats sized objects or smaller. For those, I machine stitch the binding to the front, then hand stitch to the back.
Rob