Handsewing the binding...
 

So - how long does it take you? I naively thought I could reach a pace of 1-1.5 inches/minute. Not so much as it turns out. Taking out the time spent purely socializing, at came to about 0.5 inches per minute - which meant 8 hours this weekend putting on a binding for our show. We have to turn in the quilts tonight, so it had to get done - unfortunately in one long weekend.

Hopefully over time, it will get easier for me. I've not done a lot of bindings yet. I did find that after finishing a lethal margarita at the hockey team pool party yesterday that I became much less critical of my work...

This quilt will be display only. I need a new thimble as I wore out the leather thimble - though I may try adding a leather patch to it to get a little more use out of it. By midnight, I was turning the thimble in odd directions (it is one designed for those of us with longer fingernails).

Cheers, K

I use to be able to sew 5 feet in an hour. It is like hand quilting. You need to be able to rock your needle and get it in the correct location. Everything in life takes practice.

When I do a binding by hand, I lock myself in my room or have no one over and try to make all phone calls quick. That was a while back. Have couple coming up that are small.

Bought 2 new thimbles at JoAnn's Saturday. DH said "You paid how much for that?" My reply was "And you paid how much for that one screw?". LOL!!

Yep, sounds familiar. It takes me eons to hand stitch a binding, but I much prefer the way it looks compared to machine stitching it.

My goal, now that the show deadline is met is to be able to bring quilts with me to hockey practice and games and bind at a leisurely pace. I am paying the price for this weekend... my shoulder is inflamed again (the reason I was so far behind with the quilting in the first place) and I'm stiff. But I did get some variety - ice rink, swim party, in the car, and of course at home...

Cheers, K

I've never really timed myself. I do break it up and usually do it in the evening when I'm watching TV or when I know I'm going to have some sitting time somewhere. I tried doing it in the car - relax I was the passenger - but there was too much jiggling to do it well. It's actually one of my favorite parts of the process but I like fussy stuff to do.

I agree with everything citruscountry said! I love the hand work, too. I'm still putting channels on the back of some of the quilts for our guild show coming up in Sept. Don't enjoy that as much, but it has to be done.

It used to take me quite a while to do my bindings but now, generally I can do the hand stitching part on a queen sized quilt in 2-3 hours. With practice you get faster and better as with most things. It is my favorite part because when its done so is a new quilt :-)