There is a moment, right at the end of a quilt, where you have to make a decision. The binding is attached to the front. Now it has to be secured to the back.
You can run it through the machine in twenty minutes. Or you can sit down with a needle and give it an evening.
I know which one I am going to recommend, but let me actually make the case.
What Machine Binding Is Genuinely Good For
Let us be fair before I get enthusiastic. Machine binding is the right choice more often than purists admit.
A baby quilt that will be washed weekly for three years? Machine bind it. That stitching is stronger and it needs to be. A charity quilt on a deadline? Machine bind it, and make two more with the time you saved.
Anyone who tells you machine binding is cheating has never made a quilt for a toddler.
Why Hand Binding Still Wins For The Special Ones
Two reasons, and the second is the real one.
The first is simply how it looks. Hand binding gives you a clean edge with no visible stitching line on the front. On a quilt that took you eight months, that finish is worth an evening.
The second reason is that hand binding is the only part of quilt-making where you hold the entire finished thing in your lap.
The Part Nobody Puts In The Tutorials
Every other stage of a quilt happens in pieces. You handle blocks, then rows, then a top on a table, then a sandwich under a machine. You never actually experience the whole quilt.
Hand binding is different. It sits across your knees, warm, finished, complete. You work your way slowly around the edge and you pass every single block you made. You will remember choosing that fabric. You will find the block you unpicked twice. You will notice the one seam that never quite behaved and you will not care in the slightest.
That is not sewing. That is a lap of honour, and it is the most satisfying evening in the whole process.
How To Make The Evening Comfortable
If you are going to do it, set yourself up properly rather than hunching under a lamp getting a sore neck.
- Use a shorter needle than you think you need. A between or a milliner's needle. A long needle fights you on this job.
- Thread to match the BINDING, not the backing. That is where your stitches land.
- Clips rather than pins. Pins will find you, every time, and always in the same finger.
- Work in sections of about a foot. Clip a section, stitch it, move on. Clipping the whole quilt at once just means fighting a hedgehog all evening.
- Sit somewhere comfortable with good light and something on in the background. This is not a job for a hard chair.
How Long It Actually Takes
Honest numbers, because vague answers put people off. A lap quilt is roughly two comfortable evenings. A queen sized quilt is more like four or five.
That is not a lot in the life of a quilt that took you the better part of a year, and you will not resent a single one of those evenings.
Put The Kettle On
Get your mug ~ Quilting Where Dreams are Sewin is the one I reach for on a binding night ~ find your comfortable chair, and take your lap of honour.
(Penny regards a quilt spread across a lap as a gift specifically prepared for her. There is no way around this. Factor her in.)
You made a whole quilt. Go and enjoy the last bit of it properly.
Written by CHIC QUILTER. Thanks for reading.