in a bind

Ok, so finally, after much procrastination and thinking about it, I got around to the binding on my quilt. It also took me a while to psych myself up for it. Above is a not-quite-finished shot of the one side that I have done so far. It is not quite finished in the sense that still I need to slip stitch the binding to the quilt back (the dusky rose).

I started by cutting out my strips of binding fabric - Essential Dots from Moda in sage green. I am delighted with this fabric, it is exactly what I envisioned when I thought, hmm, what binding does this quilt need? A good shade of sage green and the dots are not quite tan but maybe a light beige, instead of a stark white, which tones nicely with the quilt top.

And then I used my trusty 2" Clover bias strip maker to make miles and miles of binding. As the quilt is square I didn't actually make it on the bias but on the cross grain instead and where I sewed the strips together I took care to try and match the dots up.

Then the tricky bit - sewing the binding on. I always find myself doing a few mental gymnastics about how the binding should sit to do the first seam and inevitable end up having to place it down a couple of times. Anyway, the drill is that you enfold one edge of the tape and line the raw edge up with the ray edge of the quilt, right sides facing, and sew along the fold line. To get this:

I am thinking though that it might be advisable to line the raw edge of the binding up with the raw edge of the quilt, but slightly overlapping it. This is because the next step is to fold the binding on the seam and wrap it around the edge of the quilt to the other side and you want the edge of the binding to cover the stitches on the back of the quilt. I think that with a little coaxing mine will be fine.

That's one edge almost down, three to go. I am not going to mitre the corners of the binding on this one, just overlapping will suit it fine. So, I'm not actually in a bind about anything at was moment, it just the only title I could think of. It could have been 'the ties that bind' but then I would have ended up writing about my family's recent visit and that is a whole other story ...