Magic Machine Binding

I must admit that I am a high-tech quilter.  I design all my quilting in Electric Quilt.  I sew them all on a sewing machine (even the applique).  I quilt them all on my longarm (with the computerized Intelliquilter module).

When people ask what my least favorite part of quilting is, I usually respond "binding".  This is the one piece that I typically perform by hand as I really like the look of a nicely tacked hand binding.  While the look is great -- it is also time-consuming. 

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail with a link to site that had a new method of creating machine bindings.  This technique creates a flange on the front of the quilt and the entire binding is done by machine.  I am totally in awe of this technique and will be using it for all my donation quilts along with some of my own.  The first page of the post is below (to whet your interest):

Magic Binding Tutorial

I suggest reading the entire post by Aunt Marti. However here are a few of my observations after trying the technique.

• I typically make my bindings from 2-1/4 inch strips (which is a little narrower). So if you prefer the narrower binding, I suggest cutting the narrower width strips 1-1/4"s and the wider strips 1-1/2".
• The actual binding fabric is the narrower width strip; while the flange is the wider strip. (So the most visible fabric is actually the smaller of the strips). This wasn't intuitive to me and my original sample was done incorrectly. 

A Use for the Binding - Last weekend Maple Grove Quilters worked on boys and girls charity quilts.  Thanks for Stephanie for organizing this project.  For the boys quilts we all needed to bring in a number of 8 inch finished pinwheels.  For the girls quilts we needed to bring in 8 inch finished heart blocks.  We divvied up the completed blocks and turned them into lap quilts.  I think we managed to get at least six tops done on Saturday morning.  I took a couple of them home to quilt electing to go with a fairly simple edge to edge pattern.  Here is an example of one of the boys quilts that was quilted with a football pantograph (perfect for a young boy or man in your life):

Charity Boys Quilt with Football Pantograph

Magic Binding Close-up.

The flange is 1/8" and was stitched on top of the red.

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Happy quilting.

Kari