Steady Stiching

I enjoy sewing the binding by hand...its my finishing touch. An excuse to put my feet up and watch a movie too LOL

jaspersu

I got that "miters should be stitched" comment from judges on a quilt in a show, and I don't know what it means! I attended a juried quilt show last weekend and stared hard at a few quilt corners and I couldn't see if they were stitched it not!

sewNso

your wedding quilt is lovely., beautiful. i never sew my mitered corners. and some of my quilts at the grandkids houses have been washed and dried weekly in the machine for 5 yrs. they never come apart.

mycatsmom

I think that you did a beautiful job. Can you put a tutorial on how you did this?

Southern Judy

I never sew the corners down, and they wash just fine.

sewbizgirl

Just goes to show, you never know what kind of anal judge you may run up against. But my main concern was not with judging and shows, it was with whether the corners could come open and become a problem after many washings. It doesn't seem that it will... so I'm happy.

Thanks for all the input and ideas...!

sewbizgirl

This will have to suffice for a tutorial, for now... I posted this on another thread on binding:

The way I machine stitch a binding is to sew the doubled binding on the front side with a 1/4" seam. (I cut my bindings 2.5", btw...) Then I start near a corner and turn the corner first, to get it nice. I use a lot of pins, and pin the binding from the front, as that is the side I will be stitching from. I work out from the corners and turn and pin the binding every 6" or so. I look on the back and get the binding just past the first stitching line, hold it there, and then pin it from the front. My aim will be to catch just the least bit of the binding on the back-- not miss it, nor catch too much and have a "flap" sticking out. After pinning all the way around, making sure to pin the edge of the binding just over the first stitching line, I start stitching in the ditch from the front. I actually pull the front binding fabric back from the seam, so it will later relax back over the stitching and hide it. I use my eye judgement on how wide the binding should look from the front, plus feeling where the edge is with my fingers, as well as sometimes peeking to see where that edge is on the back. This is finesse... you get the feel for it and it gets better the more you do it. I usually have to go and pick a few spots where I missed the edge, or caught too much... no big deal. I don't think I've ever done one yet that I didn't have to pick a few spots and try again. Keep practicing. Good luck!

Oh, forgot to mention that I pin in the ditch from the front... and then look on back to see where that came out and adjust as needed. The pinning takes longer than the actual sewing but it's an important step you can't skip.

judykay

Great idea, I would love to see how to machine stitch both sides of the binding, my least favorite part of quilting.

QandE2010

I do sew mine shut, because I am a fanatic, however, yours looks fine. I believe it is a personal preference unless you want to enter the quilt in competition. BTW, I love the bright colors in your D9P