Why Not to Press Binding in Half -
 

I don't Press my binding in half because the pressed in crease is not where the final fold ends up.
I do baste the raw edges together to keep them even and prevent puckering because I use bias binding.

The red and orange represent the two sides of a folded piece of binding.

The orange has to make four "outside curves" while the red one has a shorter distance to travel.

Hence - letting the fabric find its own "half" works out better for me.

Drawing is exaggerated.

I saw the light some time ago and stopped pressing my binding. It was very liberating!

i press mine. the fold always stays in the same place for me

I have been making some small things and practicing my binding. I usually press my binding and have noticed that when I am sewing down the back, the crease is not always the place it wants to meet the backing. Then I tried [I]very lightly [I] pressing that crease and had much more success. But on these small things, I have been folding and just lightly finger pressing and it has worked very well. Not sure if I would fold and baste before trying this on a large item. Shall have to think about it.

I quit ironing the binding based on a tip from someone on the board. It works well for me.

never happened to me, I always press!

I always press my binding in half. Once I sew it on the front, I press it to the outside, then I use hair clip to hold it to the backing all the way around. I have not had any problems this way.
Not sure how it would work without pressing it in half.
Mike

I too used to always press my binding til I too read somewhere that the fold is a forced fold and not the true fold, so since then I've not been pressing it; works much better for me too; think it 'fill's the binding better instead of leaving the outer edges rather on the thin side.

I do this, too. This step does help.

The bottom line - whatever works for you.

For me, because I prefer bias binding - I've found that if I lay the binding out on the ironing board, fold it to make sure that it is laying smoothly , pin the edges together, and then machine baste it about 1/8 inch from the edge with a longish, shallow zig-zag stitch is worth the effort to me. Sometimes I have to do a bit of "smoothing" to get the areas where the joins are to lay the way I want them to.

When I skipped this step, sometimes one layer would creep ahead of the other layer - even with a walking foot - and I did not care for the wrinkles/puckers that occurred in the binding. I also sew the edges of the quilt sandwich together about 1/8 inch from the edge.

That way I only have to worry about "matching" "two" sets of edges.

Maybe I am making way too much work for myself - but I am pleased with how my bindings turn out.