Monday, January 11, 2010

I won't give up, I won't give up ...

I worked through the entire Sharon Schamber video on her binding technique and followed it step-by-step.  You should have seen me running from room to room!  The computer is in the sewing room, the ironing board is in the great room, and the sewing machine is, of course, back in the sewing room.  So, I would watch a minute or two of the video, run to the ironing board with glue bottle in hand, follow the instructions, check back with the video to make sure I was doing it correctly, then drag the TLC quilt to the sewing machine and complete the sewing step.  All went well until sewing the second side of the binding.  I just can't seem to get this part right.  Here are pictures of the finished binding from the front and the back:




Can you see where the stitching in the back is not really right at the corner?  This drives me mad!

There are many parts of this technique that I like - especially how she does the mitered corners - but I'm certainly not happy with the total result.  Practice makes perfect, I suppose, but I am displeased with the number of places where the binding is not solidly stitched on both sides.  To be fair, Sharon's video ends with a detailed explanation of how she hand-sews the second side of her binding.  This is the part I was trying to avoid!  To satisfy finicky me, I will probably go back to doing the same.  What's the point of putting all that work into a nice project and then trashing it with the last step?

I'll probably try machine binding again on small projects.  I'll refer to this video for all the tips on glue-basting, ironing, etc., to get those crisp mitered corners.  But I haven't yet found the definitive way of machine binding a quilt that satisfies the perfectionist in me.

On a positive note, I took the finished quilt to my guild meeting this morning.  The gal who does all her bindings this way said mine looked very good, especially for a first timer.  Made me feel better!  She suggested trying 2 1/2" binding rather than the 2 1/4" suggested in the video.  I'm never going to enter quilt shows, so maybe I should relax my standards and be satisfied - not easy for a finicky Virgo to do.

I'd be better off concentrating on free motion quilting, right?

2 comments:

  1. Looks pretty good to me Marsha...:)

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  2. Thanks, Sandra. I'll keep trying ... thanks for your hints on how you do binding.

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