It only took a few hours over a couple of days to stitch down the binding by hand on my Piece of Cake 3 quilt. I love the control I have over the finished look when I sew the binding by hand but of course, it does take me longer than by machine. I tried a couple of new things this time around, including a gadget to get the perfect miter and those straw needles favoured by Joanna Figueroa.
As I stitch down the binding on the front of a quilt and get to a corner I usually stop a 1/4" from the end, back stitch, and then break thread. I fold the binding up along the next side and then fold it down upon itself and start stitching again to make the miter. This time I tried the Perfect Binding Miter by Glenna, a little piece of plastic that has a diagonal slot on each corner to mark various angles. The idea is to stitch off the quilt and binding at the angle to make a perfect miter at the corners. I found it didn't really work for me. I ended up with a bit of overlap and thought it was more trouble really than it was worth. I might give it another try and it only cost a couple of bucks to add to my order. I think the concept is good especially if you usually use this technique on your bindings - I've just always done it the other way with the folding method.
One of my twitter followers was frustrated with the results where she joined her binding ends and I had to reply that I felt her pain. I've used the Binding Tool a couple of times and always ended up with a pleat where the two ends meet. My usual method is from The Complete Guide to Quilting and it is pretty easy now that I know how. With this quilt I ended up with a perfectly seamed join; no pleats or puckers! That is always a triumphant feeling. While I love a good quilting notion, often doing things the simple way, sans gadget, is still the fastest, most successful, and easiest.
Once I sat down to hand-sew with my Goody Goody binding kit at hand, I decided the worst part of the job was loading the needle with thread. Instead of working with one needle, I prepared about 5 different needles with a length of thread at the ready. One of those was the Size 11 straw needles I picked up at the quilt show. While it did easily glide through the fabric I found it much too short for my fingers and the eye was microscopic. My Clover needle threader didn't really work well with that style of needle. I tried some different embroidery needles as well as alternate sizes of milliners needles. I didn't like the long ones or the thick ones and came back to my favourite needle, a mid-size milliners. It is most comfortable in my hands, the right length for me to easily get even, 1/4" stitches, and just the right amount of flexibility. It also works with the threader and I'm just going to stick with it from now on. The experiment proves to me that it's great to be open to try new ways of doing things with new tools and notions but of course, in the end, it is always a matter of personal preference. Don't rely on someone else's recommendations while denying what works and feels comfortable for you personally.
Now it's time to add my label. I typically print off a computer-typed label onto Printed Treasures fabric and then hand sew it on to the back of the quilt. I am always looking for new ideas though and have had Stephanie Palmer's quilt label method bookmarked for a while. Stephanie uses a craft tag as a template for the shape of her fabric and then writes the details on with a pen. This is such a cute idea and I am definitely going to explore that option. I love the addition of embellishing the label with decorative stitches and a cute button. Sometimes I need to feed off someone else's creativity to get inspired and think outside the basics. Once that label is on, the Piece of Cake 3 quit is finito!
Here is the quilt all bound. I might just called it The Icing on the Cake (with the subtitle Piece of Cake 3) because the clamshell quilting looks a little like the decorative piped icing swirls on the side of a cake...
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