Machine Binding

Red Pepper Quilts Binding

99% of all quilt binding tutorials online involve creating your binding, machine sewing it to your quilt and then hand finishing. I just found the perfect tutorial on Red Pepper Quilts for a technique I am definately going to try.

The techniques described for joining the binding overlap leaves a much less bulky seam than other methods I have seen. It looks like it may be hard to work out the first time, but I am sure once you get the hang of it that it is an easy method.

The best part is the description of how to top stitch the binding with your machine. I have been worried about stitching through all those layers and coming up with a straight seam that catches both sides of the binding. This makes perfect sense and it should be relatively easy.

I had to read through this four times, so be patient with it. If you have a little more experience it might make perfect sense first time.

Once I have finished my Invaders design I am going to try this method of binding as I will be using black binding on black fabric so any little mistakes will not be noticeable.

Quilt Binding

Quilt Binding

The end is in sight! This is my first quilt binding, attached and ready for hand sewing. The picture I chose shows some of the quilting from the back. I quite like the pattern of the stitching.

I referred back to the instructions I posted earlier from Old Red Barn Co, but instead of trimming first, I stitched the binding on first and then used my rotary cutter to trim the excess off after. I don't know if this means that I will have a wobbly edge after. I hear there is no right way... and I trimmed before quilting so it seemed ok.

Thankyou everyone for your comments so far. Hearing that other people are having the same trials makes me more confident that I'm doing it right :)

Joining Batting

Joining Batting

While trimming my batting I accidently managed to cut a big sheet in half. Apparently measuring and double checking twice was still one time too few. Here is one very good reason why I should not try to sew while I'm sick! After a moment of dispair I decided that this must be fixable so I took the two pieces to my machine and used a broken zig zag stitch to join the pieces back together.

I fed the pieces through so that they butted together rather than overlap because I don't want to end up with a lump in the quilt. Once the pieces were joined the batting was relatively strong and this may even be a way to join together all the off cuts to save money in the future.