Great advice, mpspeedy :D I tear also. I'm also becoming very partial to the idea of bias binding after reading an article about how binding wears - straight of grain binding has wear along essentially one thread. That made a lot of sense to me, having seen worn binding look like it was almost cut in half. Bias binding spreads the wear along many threads, so understandingly wears longer.
Luckily, I just bought a new bottle of starch! ;)