Friday, February 18, 2011

Binding...you are not my favorite

Binding is one of those things that I sort of just...figured out how to do on the fly. I realized early on that I don't enjoy doing it. And while I wouldn't say that my binding skills are awful, they're certainly not on par with some of the other work I've seen online. After I bound and packaged the mug rugs I made for the Scrappy Mug Rug swap, I started really paying attention to the bindings on other people's stuff and realized that I might benefit from learning how to do it right. 

Today I made a small mug rug out of the rainbow strips leftover from my doll quilt, and decided this was the perfect small-scaled opportunity to try it out. I read the tutorial on single binding from verykerryberry and proceeded.

It went well, and the result is so very pleasing. But I still don't enjoy it. And though it's very pretty, I don't see myself hand-stitching binding on a full size quilt. It's just too time consuming for a blanket in my opinion. For a mug rug, or a doll quilt that could be possibly hanging on a wall, it's perfect. But for every day quilting...eh. I don't think so. 

rainbow mug rug

Still...look at those pretty edges! Mmmmm. Nice. I think I'm keeping this one. Maybe.

4 comments:

Rachel at Stitched in Color said...

It's very cute! And, yes, the binding does look great. I'm still a machine binder all the way. I hope that the magazine that I'm making the quilt for won't mind my binding!

Coffeebean's Dailies said...

Hi. Did not leave a comment in Flickr as I jumped right on your blog button! I love this! I'm gonna copy it! I myself don't like hand binding but do like the end result. i haven't tried machine binding yet and will give it a try but most importantly, I like a clean finish! All the best!

Wendy said...

I am loving your style! Love the colours you choose... The binding looks fab to me. I'm going to be doing binding for the first time this weekend and I know I'll mess it up!

verykerryberry said...

Your binding looks wonderful! I must say I only hand sew for mini quilts and smaller- any single bound items basically. All my quilts are machine bound every time!