Binding Parade

Hi Everyone,

Edited:  I was having some problems with photos and I hopefully have them corrected thanks to my computer-savvy husband.  It is a good thing it is Saturday and he is home!


Thanks so much for sharing your fun bindings!  Going to my email mailbox and finding your photos was every bit as much fun as going to the real mailbox and finding a fun treat. 

First up are these wonderful examples from Linda.  She is an RN and says she is too busy for a blog.  I believe it--when I worked I barely even had time to quilt.

I love how she has trimmed this tree skirt with giant ric rac!

Next is her photo of charity baby blankets where she sewed leftover strips together for the binding.  I love this because I have sewn longer strips together, but I love how the shorter bits look.

 

 

Next up, Karen from Moose Bay Muses share a few of her striped bindings.  The first one, on her dynamite version of "A Bountiful Life," features a very subtle stripe.

 

 

 

 

And this one has a lovely tone-on-tone stripe.

 

Norece sent some nice pictures and mentioned that she no longer has some good examples, and I discovered that was true for me, too.  I know I have photos somewhere, but I recently took most of my older pictures off the computer and I have no huge desire to load them back on.  Anyway, it is no surprise that I love this patriotic-striped binding.



 

 

 

 

Here is a nice plaid one:





 

I have to point out that Norece used the serpentine stitch to sew her binding down just like I did on those charity baby quilts.  This must be a popular technique for quilters.

 

 

 

And here is her final submission--this cool Halloween stripe.  Stripes are so versatile! 

 

 

Michele from Island Life Quilts sent me these two pictures of striped bindings: 

 

This black one is so perfect for the fabrics!

 

 

 

And a bias striped binding on a Christmas quilt always looks like candy canes!

 

 I also heard from Marti from 52 quilts who shared this tutorial for a wonderful binding with a flange.  I'm going to have to try this!  You can see the tutorial here and this is a photo of how it looks:

 

Isn't it cool?

 

 

Way back in the beginning days of my blog, I shared my own tutorial of how I matched the stripes while sewing the binding strips together for my Roll Roll Cotton Bole Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt. Here is a photo so you can get the general idea and then you can click the link for more information. 

 

 

I looked through my quilts to see what other interesting bindings I had and came up with these:

 

Another stripe, cut on the bias for the diagonal effect



I love the look of a homespun plaid cut on the bias as well.  Perfect for an old-fashioned scrap quilt.

 

 

Probably my most "interesting" one.  This is my Doc Schnibble.  I used a fancy stripe for the binding.

 

 

Thanks again to everyone who shared!  This was a really fun post to do.  Come back tomorrow to find out the winner of my Celebration.  The deadline was last night at midnight and I've already drawn the winner, but she will have to wait until tomorrow to find out!

 

Have a great weekend!

JoAnne

 

How Would You Like to Share?

Hi Everyone,

I got many comments on my post on Sunday about using binding made of checks, plaids, and stripes.  It seems that I am not the only person who likes those types of fabrics as bindings.  I thought it would be fun to showcase some of mine as well as some of your favorite bindings.  They don't necessarily have to be plaid, check, or stipe, but if you have a picture of a creative binding and would like to share it, I would love to have a parade of bindings!  Just email me a photo or two at patrioticquilter@gmail.com by a week from Friday.  I will plan the post to be on Saturday, April 27. 


Meanwhile, this package arrived.  A large box and lots of packing material--all that was in it was a quilt book.

 

The book is totally awesome, by the way.  The Blue and The Gray by the Country Threads ladies, Mary Etherington and Connie Tesene

Thanks for sharing!
JoAnne

In a bind

I currently have 7 quilts piled on my loveseat waiting to have the binding handstitched down!  This has been the month of finishes.  Earlier, I got a box with three large quilts back from my longarmer and the good news is that all of them are completely done!  I have a new project that I am excited about so I made myself finish up some of the projects that have been sitting around--many of those were sandwiched, waiting to be machine quilted, so I have been busy doing them.  Once I'm "in the groove" with free motion quilting, it is easier to keep doing it, so I have really been having fun.  For me, free motion quilting is almost "zen like."  I become one with the quilt!  Needless to say, it is not the time for audiobooks.

I"m hoping to have a week's worth of blog posts about some of these finished quilts, so stay tuned!

First I would like to talk about the binding on my Roll Roll Cotton Boll quilt.  It is one I got back in the mail and was the largest of the three, and way heavy, so I procrastinated doing the binding.  RRCB was a mystery quilt featured on the quiltville.com website.  Bonnie designed it with pinks, greens, browns, red, and creams, but I decided to do mine in an Americana color scheme, so it is in reds, golds, med blues, navy, and creams.  I think I was planning on using navy blue for the binding, but one day while browsing the online quilt shops, I happened upon a red, blue, cream, and gold stripe by Jo Morton that looked perfect for my quilt, so I got a yard to use for binding.  I love playing with stripes and plaids for bindings.  The stripes were printed on the fabric at a 45 degree angle, so when I cut them on the bias, they were running perpendicular to the length of the binding.

The first thing I noticed when I tried to sew them together was that the pattern was directional.  The stripes would only match up one way.  Okay....

I figured that out and then tried to match them up and they were not lining up nicely.  Sewing on the diagonal and matching stripes just doesn't work too well, so I went on to Plan B

I pressed under one end of a strip.

And then laid it down on top of another strip, matching the stripes.  You can sort of see it in the photo above.

I folded the strip back...

Applied a small amount of fabric glue, and unfolded the strip once more, making sure that it lined back up again.  When the glue dried,

I opened it out again and took it to the machine...

And stitched, taking care to sew exactly in the folded crease.

So maybe the didn't come out absolutely perfect, but it worked well.

 All that was left was to stitch it to the quilt.

A whole lot of it...

And then hand stitch it down.  I like to do the corners first, and then the long sides.

Here is the finished quilt on my bed.  It isn't for my bed, but I have it there to see how it looks. 

This is a closeup of a finished corner.  Actually, it looks good, but I wish I'd used navy strips after all, because the stripe seems really busy to me.  But, I'm not going to redo it, and you don't notice the binding too much when it is on a bed anyway. 

Now I'm off to do more hand stitching.  Netflix is a good thing!

Aloha,
JoAnne