There are two techniques I have been working on, and I just so happen to be doing (almost) twin quilts, so I have been practicing on these. They are machine binding and machine appliqué. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the machine binding went with careful placement of the binding. I made my own 1 inch straight grain binding tape from 2 inch strips:
I pressed it as it came out of the binding tool.
I looked up how to miter the corners on the internet. And I used pins to hold the mitered corners, clover clips to hold the rest. They worked well to make certain the front and back were lined up correctly as the front and black of Clover clips are of the same length.
I sewed it into place. I forgot to change the bobbin thread, which matched the backing to a darker brown to match the binding, but was 1/4 done when I noticed, so I decided the complementary thread was an excellent “design choice”. 🙂
With the appliqué, I used the same binding, made in the same way. I used a spray bottle of water when I was ironing it to get very good creases. Then I pinned into place and will top stitch very close to the edge.
I will be doing the stitching this morning and hope to finish the quilt entirely today. You may notice from the photo that this quilt has already been quilted and bound. I decided to add the appliqué as it just didn’t seem finished. the complementary top stitching just didn’t stand out that much and I wanted to add a little more color to the negative space of the quilt.
These quilts were done entirely with walking foot straight quilting. More pictures of both will follow later.
Happy Wednesday to you all! See more WIPs at Freshly Pieced!
Creature Comfort Quilts 
Making your own fabric tape can be addictive. I usually make bias tape so I can round curves better. Also, I find using spray starch after I pull the fabric strips through the tape maker helps get really flat tape. Recently I recycled some men’s shirts into tape and found my 1/4 inch tape just wouldn’t lay flat until I starched it.
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Great advice! I will try the starch next time.
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I love it when ‘mistakes’ become excellent design choices! That aside, I machine bound (binded?) a quilt ONE time. It’s actually a frequently used quilt around here, but every time I look at the binding, I cringe! It looks completely terrible…Yours, on the other hand, looks amazing!
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Thank you so much, I have hand finished about 20 quilts so far, and I think that practice and just going slowly helped me a lot. It’s not perfect, but not bad.
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I call these types of things Design Elements 😉 I’m impressed how close and straight you were able to stitch the edge of the binding down on the front AND back! That is quite tricky.
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Thank you! I placed the clips very carefully, went slowly, redid any errors, and photographed the best spots. Those are my secrets!
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Love those zig-zaggy appliqued strips that complement your stitching. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.
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Thanks, Shelly! I finished it, along with its twin. I’m pleased with how they turned out. Sadly, I can’t post them until July, since they are going to gifted to my siblings and their spouses when I go back home for the holiday! I think my sister, and my sister-in-law follow my blog, so I’m going to try to keep them a surprise. I’m pretty sure they don’t read the comments, so we are safe talking about it here! 🙂
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Barbara, this machine binding sounds perfect. I will try to find it here. The mitered corner it is still dificult for me. Hugs.
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I learned about this technique from a book by Weeks Ringle. I suspect there must be Youtube videos on it. Basically, one makes the single fold binding, which I did with the clover tool (easier than I thought it would be), then fold it around the raw cut quilt edge. Clip in place and sew. For the corners, you hand pin the miter first on the front, then the back, then sew it down just continuing the stitching and pivoting at the corner. Good luck. I checked every few inches to be certain that I was not missing stitches or way off on the precision of stitching. Just slow go and it should go well. I’ll see if I can find the link for the mitered corners that helped me and send to you.
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Here is a link to a binding tutorial. This is not the exact method that I used, but has links to multiple other methods at the bottom. http://swimbikequilt.com/2011/10/machine-binding-tutorial.html
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