My modern baby quilt has been finished for almost two months except for having the quilt label made and sewn on the back of the quilt. Part of the reason I haven’t blogged about it is because I have been very busy with other projects the past two months, but probably the bigger reason is that I’m not happy with how the binding turned out. I made this quilt in a beginning quilting class I took with a friend who wanted to learn how to quilt. I definitely learned things in this class. The most valuable lesson was using two rulers to cut my fabric on the right side of the fabric because I can’t walk around my cutting table to cut the other side of the fabric. See my 2015 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop post for photos of this ruler tip and a better explanation.
Our instructor offered to teach us how to machine sew the binding to the front of the quilt using a regular quarter-inch seam and mitering the corners (which I’ve done with all my previous projects) and then machine sew the binding to the back of the quilt using a decorative stitch. I’m glad to have learned this technique, but I just didn’t do it very well the first time I tried it on the Modern Baby Quilt. The binding ended up narrow in parts and significantly wider in other parts, and the sewing looks mediocre. One thing I know for sure is that I should not have started to sew the binding down to the back of the quilt after having a frustrating day at work and being tired. I flat out DO NOT do my best work in the evening or at night. I know many of my online quilt friends kick ass at night, but I’m much more of an early morning quilter, sometimes as early as 4:00 a.m!
I’ve used this technique of sewing down the binding with a decorative stitch on the last two projects I finished, Morning Coffee and Cream Quilt and Japanese Quilt, with much more success. I decided to use two-inch binding strips with the Japanese quilt rather than the 2 1/2 inch strips I’ve used for all my other projects, and that was a little more difficult, but I was happy with how it turned out. I especially like sturdiness of the decorative stitching on the binding and feel these quilts will wear better than the quilts where I have stitched down the binding by hand.
So I am not planning to give this quilt to any human baby, but as you can tell from the photo above, my feline babies are literally all over this quilt! Most of the time that makes me smile, and I forget that I’m less than satisfied with the binding.
This is my third finish for Finish-Along-4th Quarter.
Linking up with Show-Off Saturday.
Quilting is in my Blood 
Nice blog on a fine quilt! The kitties know!
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I am glad that you continued using the technique and feel confident using it on other quilts. Would you consider removing the stitching and re-doing that side of the binding OR simply re-binding the quilt with a wider (say, 3″ wide) binding to cover it up entirely? I made a very large quilt as a wedding gift to my husband, and the binding wore out after about 10 years. Instead of removing the binding, I just used a 3″ wide double fold to cover the tattered original binding. If it needs redone again I might finally have to suck it up and remove at least one of the bindings. 🙂
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Human babies loose, feline ones win! Practice always helps with a new technique – I will have to give it a try! Thank you for participating in the FAL, on behalf of the 2016 global FAL hosts.
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I “tripped” over your blog today thanks to WordPress putting those little “extras” at the bottom of the page when you view a blog in the READER format. I am glad I clicked. I have enjoyed wandering around seeing what you are up to and discovered this post about your binding. I’ve been there/done that with the decorative stitch binding, and like your kitty baby quilt, was less than satisfied. Like all things, it takes practice. For the last 3+ years, I have been using a technique called “Susie’s Magic Binding” ( http://www.52quilts.com/2015/02/susies-magic-binding-video-tutorial.html ) or “Binding with a Flange” (https://youtu.be/qOd26fzU4jY ) Essentially these are both the same method, the 2nd video by Margo Clabo, expands on things that might give you trouble. I took a class at the Houston quilt show from another instructor teaching the same process. I have been VERY successful using this method, and if you pop around my blog, you will see lots of instances where I finish my quilts using this binding. It adds an extra element to the quilt and there is nothing better than a FINISHED project. 🙂
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