I'm getting ready to finish some quilts I've made for my young grandchildren. All have flannel backing (prewashed). Typically I trim my backing even with the quilt top when I bind it. Since I know these quilts will be washed a lot and as flannel frays so much, I am hesitant to only have one-quarter or three-eighths of an inch of flannel within the seam allowance on the back side where I'll be hand sewing the binding to the backing. I can just picture the flannel fraying back to the hand-stitching. I haven't trimmed the flannel off yet; is there something I can do with the excess to make the flannel edge sturdier?

You could wrap the flannel around the seam allowance to the front and zig-zag along the edge to hold it in place. As long as you trim the flannel beyond the stitching line for the binding, it won't show on the front. After zig-zagging, you could even fold the flannel back again towards the edge and perhaps machine baste it in place. As long as you keep the width of your zigzag within the seam allowance, the extra flannel inside the binding won't show.

You could also cut your binding 1/2" wider and sew it on with a 1/2" seam allowance instead of 1/4". You also could sew a zig zag stitch all around the outside too.

Good suggestions. I've done a fair amount of quilts with flannel backing, and not had a problem with having the flannel ravel out. Maybe I have just been lucky, as I have not done anything special to them.

Thanks for the suggestions. Maybe I'm just being paranoid and the flannel won't unravel the way I expect it to.

I haven't backed my quilts in flannel but I make a lot of flannel pj's for chritmas and I use my serger to run around each pattern piece before sewing together. It is the same idea as zig zagging but if you have a serger it's a really quick and very neat job.