Nanny's dollface

I will acknowledge upfront that my idea is unconventional. I have a small quilt that was made with a panel and two borders. It may be 50”x 50”. Trying to come up with an alternative method of quilting it without a binding.
I thought perhaps I could place the flimsy on top of silk batting and free motion quilt it together. Then add a backing to it and “ birth” the quilt. Once “ birthed” I would sew 1/4 inch around the edges and stitch in the ditch ( all three layers) around the border of the panel. This method would eliminate a binding. Amy I crazy? Lol

Tartan

I am not really a fan of birthing a quilt. I can never get as smooth an end product as I can with binding. You might like facing your quilt. You quilt your quilt how you want it, then you sew 4 strips of fabric on all 4 sides. These strips are all turned to the backing and hand stitched in place. I like to match the strips to my backing fabric so they blend in but you don’t have to. Look up “ facing “ a quilt on YouTube.

Onebyone

I have a nice sewing room wall hanging that I machined quilted. The back didn't look good, I had thread issues. I fused a piece of fabric on the back and then bound it. As a bonus it gave the wall hanging the extra firmness it needed to hang better.

ekuw

Have you thought about using the "facing" method? This is a fabulous tutorial for the method.

https://thesillyboodilly.blogspot.co...y-to-face.html

SuzzyQ

I've been playing around "birthing" a quilt and so far am satisfied with this method. I wouldn't do it for a show quilt but for a wall-hanging or lap quilt, it seems to work fine. And once the quilting is done... it's done!

Nanny's dollface

Thankyou all for your responses! Never heard of facing a quilt. Will need to check that out. One learns new things all on time on QB.

notmorecraft

You could cut the backing larger, and fold to the front as binding.

Rose_P

Tartan and ekuw, I've never heard of facing a quilt, and wonder what door I was hiding behind when that was discovered. Thanks for the suggestion and the great link.

Jennifer23

What is your goal in trying this? Do you not want the look of binding, or do you not like the work of it?

The biggest problem I see with your plan is that the backing won't be well attached to the front and batting. If you attach a hanging sleeve to the backing, the quilt could sag and slump in unpredictable ways.


Other people have suggested facing, and folding the backing to the front as binding. I would probably go with a combination of the two, if your front is large enough: Cut the backing and batting about 2" smaller than the front, centre it so that the front sticks out by 1" on all sides, and quilt it. Then bind by folding the excess from the front to the back and stitching down. It will give you a nice, seamless look on the front, and save the work of a facing.

sewNso

I have a daugher that makes smaller quilts, lap or so, and she always does the 'birthing' method. that's what makes the quilting community so great. we all do our own thing, the end result is just 'to git 'er done'. ME, i always do bindings.