Finishing It Up

Things have been a little crazy around here.  My poor Little Lady had croup this weekend.  It scared me half to death, but she got a dose of steroids and she's doing amazingly well now, so we're all doing a lot better.

Now that life is decidedly more calm and manageable I'm turning my attention to the last step of quilting.  I promised to give some information on how to bind a quilt for the ladies who have been attending my beginner's quilt classes.  I was going to do my own tutorial, but I've seen so many wonderful ones out there that I feel a little like it would be re-inventing the wheel.  So instead, I'm going to share with you a couple of different options and provide links for you, so you can decide what works best for you.

I personally like to hand bind my quilts and machine bind smaller projects such as table runners and doll quilts, but it's all a matter of personal preference.  A good beginner's guide on how to determine how much fabric you'll need and such can be found here. 

I like to change up what I do on a regular basis.  It keeps things interesting for me, but here are a couple of ideas when choosing fabric for your quilt:

When I make a baby quilt that has an inner border, I often match the binding with the inner border.

Sometimes, I like to use multiple fabrics that I used within the quilt itself.  I feel like this works particularly well with solids, but I've done it with patterned fabrics as well.

If it's a scrappy quilt I often like to make my binding scrappy as well:

A couple of other things to toss out there.  Think about whether or not you want your binding to stick out.  For example, sometimes I want my binding to blend in with the quilt, because it would take away the effect of the quilt, and sometimes it needs that bold framing to make the quilt fit together.  Here is an example of both:

If you like the idea of your binding blending in and matching the colors of your quilt, you should check out Debbie's really cool tutorial on lining up the fabrics to match.  Go here. 

A machine bound table runner

I typically cut my strips 2.5" wide when hand binding and 2.25" when machine binding, but that's also just personal preference.  There's a really good tutorial for hand binding that I recently saw on another friend's blog here and here's a couple of great machine binding tutorials here and here.  Just remember that there are so many different ways to bind, so if one doesn't seem to make sense to you, Google it and I'm sure you'll find another way that works for you.

An important reminder:  If you are hand binding your quilt, you will initially sew on the binding from the top of the quilt.  It is the exact opposite when machine quilting.  You attach the binding from the back of the quilt, so that when you fold it over your final machine stitch is on the front of the quilt.

One last great tutorial:  Amy gives great tips on getting the perfect corners when hand binding.  Go here for the tutorial.

I hope this is slightly helpful in getting your wheels turning and initial thoughts on binding your quilts.  If you have any questions please let me know.