My long Armer sews a straight seam around the quilt before giving it back to me for binding.....

I stitch around the edges of a top if it has lots or pieces in it. That anchors the stitches in the edge pieces so that they don't come apart while quilting.

Binding - after trimming the quilted quilt, I just put the binding on. No special stitching to hold the sandwich together are needed. However, in the case of tying or very loose quilting, it might be a good idea to do what you suggest.

I LA my quilts, so I sew 1/4" around the edge. I tried zig-zagging once, but didn't like how it made the binding look flat. The batting fills the binding, and zig-zag flattens the batting too much for me.

Never thought about sewing a zig zag around the quilt before binding. I use a fairly flat batting (80 / 20 ususally) and have never had an issue w/ keeping the edges of the quilt and binding even. I sew my binding to the back and machine finish the binding on the front. Maybe if I ever had a quilt I wanted to enter in a show or something I might hand sew the binding down.

I always sew around my quilt before I put the binding on. It's one less thing that I have to keep in check when I'm sewing the binding on since I'm only having to consider the binding and the quilt and not the three layers of the quilt plus the binding. I also stay stitch anything that has many seams like piano keep borders or quilts that have many pieces on the edge.

I often sew a long basting stitch all the way around.

Vicki1212,
I zig zag around the edges of my quilt before I bind it, I've never found that it makes it stiffer. I like that I don't have to worry that the backing isn't where it belongs when I'm sewing the binding on.
Sharon in Texas

I have never "serged" or "stay-stitched" the edges of a quilt and my reason for it is this: My serger has cutters that trim the edges of the fabric fed into the machine. Unless you can absolutely keep the fabric edges straight, the cutters on the machine can cut off any fabric, no matter whether it's fed into the serger straight or not. Stay-stitching does compress the fabric and batting, too. I square up my quilts to make certain each quilt is square. To then use a serger (and the resulting trimming by the serger's cutters) defeats the purpose of squaring up the quilt. I either pin or clip my binding to the quilt to hold it all together while stitching it on with my machine. In my opinion, any time you add stitching or zig-zagging at or near the edge, you add bulk, making the edges stiffer. This is just what I do and it works for me. Each one of us should do what works for them, unless one finds something else that works better. JMHO!

Though if I am not going to quilt or finish a quilt I will do a longer stay stitching - almost a basting stitch.

For those who don't trim before adding the binding, when do you square your quilt? I was taught to square my quilt after the quilting but before adding the binding.