Halfway Around

I don't know how anyone else does binding. Truth be told, I have never taken a quilting class and have had very little exposure to other people's quilts except in museums or shows and more in museums. So when I first started quilting I had no clue what I was doing. I had sewed for years, made my own clothing, even made some sport jackets for my husband (despite flunking the sewing unit in home ec in junior high). But quilting, like most endeavors, has its own vocabulary and its own expectations.

All of my knowledge of quilting came originally from magazine articles that used to be more common decades ago. So when the instructions said that the binding needed to feel well stuffed, I thought stuffed meant what it normally means and my first several bindings were as fat as cording with me patiently stuffing fiber fill inside the small space that binding provided. It's no wonder that I ended up despising binding. I did learn that well stuffed only meant that the binding needed to fit the cut edge of the quilt nicely.

Then there was the whole continuous binding debacle. At least it was a debacle for me. Continuous binding is still a very commonly taught and accepted technique but after several years of knowing that my bindings were just that little bit askew, I decided to start making bias strips and proceeding from there. It takes more fabric but it makes an enormous difference in the end result. I should add that I am the person who complains to the museum that their painting is 1/16 inch out of true so continuous cut binding would never be right for me.

So I cut 2 inch strips on the bias and sew them by hand to assure myself that everything is straight and smooth in both the binding and in the end product. Since I have started that, my bindings end up straighter, better, and my quilts end up hanging straighter as well. I should have known this from the start because men's tailoring depends on the most intricate hand sewing that is never visible but has a huge impact in the finished product.

This is only my second quilt with a scalloped edge though I have done a few with a wavy edge. Halfway around I am satisfied that everything was measured correctly and that everything was given the proper amount of tug around those curved and biased edges. We'll see when it's done if that is true.