Wednesday Words - More options
While my turkey is defrosting in the kitchen, I'll update you on something that occurred to me as I was posting last week about binding options...you can read that post here. And why, you may be wondering, am I spending so much time with bindings.My first question has to do with the size of the project being quilted. All of the quilts shown in last week's post are decent size...you can get a decent length tail on any of those shown, and regardless of which binding you make, the construction techniques of all of them are the same in that you join them together with a mitred joint. But what happens if your project is smaller...much smaller?
Like a mug rug? My guild is doing a mug rug style swap next month, and as I pondered the possibilites as I dug through my Christmas scrap bin looking for what would work together - I know you have the same bin! I wound up with a 4 patch of coordinated fabrics that when sewn together, make a quilt that's about 7 and a half inches wide. A quick search of binding methods on Pinterest yielded me the perfect solution. In this case, I used the backing of the quilted rug as the binding, simply by cutting it. This isn't something I had ever done, but with a small project, I thought this was the perfect application to try it.It's pretty straight forward...you layer your top, batting and backing together and quilt it, as you wish - in any way that you would like. This becomes interesting when you trim the piece - you're going to trim each of the 4 sides twice. In the first round, after you fold the backing back as far on itself as you can, you're going to trim the top and the batting flush with one another. Once all four sides are done, you unfold the back, and then trim that, leaving a 1" margin on each of the four sides.
Once that's done, you fold the once inch sides on itself, then folding it again onto the top of the piece. This is a great job for wonderclips. You're going to continue doing all four sides at once, making a mitre on each edge, until you have them perfectly placed. Take the piece to the sewing machine, and then sew around the binding edge once, removing the clips as you go. 
An hour (start to finish) later, you have one...and then another. I made the second one to test out whether doubling the batting had had an effect on the result...it did (that was option #1). Option #2 has a single batt, and a much cleaner finish.The red and blue option (Christmas? same scrap pile!) has the single batt, and the cleaner finish. Now, onto the second question - why so much work around binding? I've been working on a class in bindings, and I'll be teaching it at Dragonfly's Quilt Shop in Bellingham Mass on December 8th. It's an all day class, and it's called The Devil is in the Details. The fee is $50, and it's going to cover a variety of the techniques covered in these two blog posts, plus a lot of other techniques for binding your quilts.If you've have a pile of quilts you need to bind and are dreading it, come and spend the day with me and get a new perspective on options you have. Let's get those UFOs out the door.Gotta run, the turkey is calling me. Have a wonderful turkey day!