Sunday 26 August 2007

Machine binding

Having tried Ricky Tims method with the piping which I love but which isn't always suitable in a quilt and Sharon Schamber's where she stitches it down on the front and then stitches in the ditch to hold it down on the back, I thought I'd try and find a third way. If this doesn't make sense go to her website and all will become clear.

I cut my binding at 2¼" on the bias, starched it then folded it in half. I then stitched it to the back of the quilt , bought it to the front and used invisible machine appliqué to stitch it down. I pinned it to cover the original line of stitch. I use stitch 45 on my Bernina Aurora. It's the stitch which goes one stitch forward and one to the side. I have to mirror image it on my machine and had to do the same on my old 1260. I can't work out what the use would be without the mirroring.

Using this stitch, I have the one stitch forward in the ditch, and the one to the right just catches the binding. I have the stitch length quite long and the stitch width just less than half of one. (If you are using this for the first time, practice with a wider stitch and then go as narrow as you can whilst still managing to catch the binding.)
I love this stitch for IVA as it looks like it's hand done. There is another stitch which is the same but with a double pass, this one is great if you widen it up and lengthen even more. It is almost indistinguishable from hand sewn blanket stitch.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for this tip! I'll try it next time I do binding. What thread do you use for this?

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