Binding Trials

Lately I’ve been testing various ways to machine-finish bindings on my own quilts. Occasionally, on a special quilt or a small quilt, I’ll still do them by hand, but charity quilts, gift quilts and some customer quilts are finished by machine. My goal is to have a binding that is attractive on both sides.

Here are a few results:

Sew binding to the back, and then pin to the front side and machine stitch down. The quilt I tested this on had a pieced outer edge, and just the thickness of those additional seams gave too much variance to the finished width of the binding. This technique can be a bit messy on the back side.

Sew binding to the front, and then use a button-hole stitch from the front. This catches the binding readily on the back side, and looks tidy from the front. I had to do some testing with my studio machine, as it doesn’t mirror stitches, so not all options were easy to use on a binding. Some of the likely stitches had multiple stitches in the straight section (more decorative, also takes longer to stitch and uses more thread.)

Stitch the binding to the front, then wrap and pin, and use an edge-stitch foot instead of the walking foot on the top. End result is pretty, though there is some bunching because of not using a walking foot.

Zig-zag – this is a nice strong option for charity quilts and graduation quilts. I’ve thought about using a twin needle, which would give a zig-zag just on the back side, but I find the price of these special needles a consideration.

Fixing a sloppy wrap: though I usually test the wrap on each binding by stitching a few inches and adjusting the needle position to fit, a recently finished project had excess binding flapping on the back side. It had been stitched through the binding from the top, rather than in the ditch. I solved this by stitching a second time in the ditch.

I’ve tried various ways to use an edge guide for stitch-in-the-ditch, and haven’t been very happy with the consistency of the results. My best solution has been to use an additional, position able light on my machine and just visually align the needle with the edge of the binding. Along with the testing of the needle position at the start of the quilt, this gives me a clean look on both the top and back of the quilt, though I check for occasional gaps on the back where the binding wasn't caught.