Life wasn't meant to be easy

or several sub-titles spring to mind:
"You can learn something from every quilt you make"
"Don't try new techniques when you are trying to finish something quickly - or late at night when you are tired"
The story goes:
I found this fantastic new binding idea - see my previous post here.
I wanted to try it and have it done so I could show others at both of my sewing groups - one of them last weekend - and I wanted to do it on something I planned to finish off very soon to meet the Sew its Finished deadline of 31st May.
(Can you feel the pressure growing yet??)
So I tried it on a small Christmas wall hanging. I made the binding by joining a few short strips together and carefully not matching any of the joins to reduce the bulk.  I sewed it on - and as with any small quilt you don't have the luxury of having a BIG gap to fiddle with the ends.  It was late - my sewing room was disrupted because my daughter and husband were staying and I was tired.  It didn't join up easily - so I just did one side of finishing the binding so I could take it along last Saturday.  All good, although I didn't really like the "invisible" thread - no dramas, I used a longer stitch so it should be easy to unpick.

Monday night - time to finish it off.  It took a bit of fiddling but I got it all pinned together and realised that if I used some bull dog clips - pretty pink ones - that it would hold the quilt in a bit so it was easier to match the ends.  Otherwise I find that it tends to spring back flat when I am twisting and turning the ends of the binding.  (So using clips is one of the things I learnt) 

Things seem to match up pretty well - so I stitched it - I did it by hand - in case - and laid it down, ready to stitch  . . .mmm  something wrong here.

So I ironed it - to keep the lines where I needed to sew and unpicked it - tried again and now its fine. 

 Maybe not perfect but OK  and I used red embroidery thread this time.

Now just to sew on a little star button and a label (of course) and its done.  A picture next time.


Generally I am really happy with this binding idea.  I found the corners folded in well and I like the idea of not having a lot of hand sewing later on.  And an easy way to introduce a peeper. 

AND

It's not too late to let me know you want to come to the Blog Meet on Sunday.  Leave a comment here if you want to come along.