Binding a quilt before the quilting is finished - why?

RoseMary left a comment in which she said she had never heard of binding a quilt before the quilting is finished. She wanted to know how and why this is done so I thought I would answer her question in today's post. I first wrote about how I quilt my quilts on April 23, 2013. I called it machine quilting on a domestic machine my way!

I’m a great believer in doing what works for you. When it comes to machine quilting what I usually do is a little different from how others do it but it works really well for me. Once my quilt top is ready to be quilted I have two goals. First, I want to get rid of the excess batting and backing  as soon as possible because they just get in my way AND second when I am finished quilting I want to be done! So here's what I do!

Step 1:  You need a well prepared quilt sandwich (quilt top, batting and backing). I pin baste my quilt sandwich making sure everything is smooth and flat. I like to lightly spray starch and press both the top and the back before pin basting.  To baste my quilt I clamp the quilt back to a table making sure it is flat, taut and smooth. In the picture below you can see I use office clips to clamp it to the table. You can read more about clamping and sandwiching the quit here.  I pin baste making sure my pins are spaced roughly every 4". I also try to ensure that the pins are not on the major seam lines because I will stitch in the ditch and if the pins are on those seams they will be in my way and slow down the quilting.

Step 2: Once this is done I like to use a technique described in Harriet Hargrave’s book “Heirloom Machine Quilting”. I stitch in the ditch on all the major seams. 

While Harriet uses her walking foot I prefer to use my darning foot (free motion quilting foot) and I anchor all the major seam lines vertical and horizontal excluding the border.If there is sashing I stitch both sides of the sashing, vertically and horizontally. If the blocks are pieced without sashing then I just stitch the seams. I generally use Bottom Line thread in a colour that blends well with the colours in the quilt top or I use invisible thread. I don't use a walking foot because it doesn't give me freedom of motion. 

When I make a quilt if something isn't perfect AND I can't live with it I fix it. If something isn't perfect and I CAN live with it I leave it. This means there are sometimes little wobbles in the quilt top. If I use a darning foot to stitch in the ditch I can work around them because I am free to move in any direction. This picture is a little wobble and I'll be able to stitch in the ditch around the wobble rather than through the wobble. 

Once I've quilted the seam lines, if there are borders I ditch quilt the border seams. My last step is to quilt the borders.

Step 3: Once the border is quilted I can bind the quilt. I've never seen anyone else do it this way but once everything is anchored with stitch in the ditch the quilt is stabilized I can quilt the border and bind the quilt. Importantly I never bind the quilt before the border is quilted.

Step 4: I now go back and quilt the rest of the quilt. Most of the pin basting is still in place because I don’t remove the pins until I am ready to quilt in that area so between the stitch in the ditch and the pins everything is stabilized. In the following picture you can see the ditch quilting (horizontal and vertical) on the back of the quilt.

My current quilt 81 has a large center panel with stars and hexagon flowers appliqued. There are no seams lines so instead what I did was quilt around each of the appliques starting in the center and working out to the edges of the first border. The quilt sandwich is layered so that it is flat and smooth and it was well pinned. There was no shifting and I'll be able to go back and quilt the background later.

I quilted around the inner edge of the striped border and then the outer edge. From there I again quilted around the stars and the hexagon flowers and the applique baskets in the four corners.

The diamonds in the outer border were quilted and now I am quilting the outside edges of the quilt so that the quilt can be bound. I'm almost ready to bind this quilt!

This method works well for me because I get to quilt the border earlier which means I can remove the excess batting and backing. This makes the quilt a little smaller and lighter which means it is easier to move under the sewing machine. Also I don’t get the extra batting or backing caught in the quilting! I hate when that happens and I have to remove the quilting in order to free the excess fabric! So there you have it - machine quilting my way on a domestic sewing machine!

Until I post again, happy sewing!

Karen H

Happy Birthday Mom (aka Anne H), Sweetpea's, lavender bottles and machine quilting recap

Loopers in the Sky with Diamonds, 2005 (Close-up of a block I call July6)

Happy birthday Mom (aka Anne H)! I made this block on Mom's birthday, July 6th,  many years ago so I call this block July 6!

Yesterday two friends and I took her to a lovely plant and gift store in Toronto, Sweetpea's. If you are in Toronto I recommend you drop by for a visit. There are so many lovely items from body care products from Bleu Lavende, unique cards, home dec items including a few locally made quilts, baby and child gift items, perennials for the garden and gorgeous one of a kind floral arrangements! If you've been there you know what a wonderful florist shop it is. It is in the running for best florist in NOW Toronto's Best of Toronto. If you would like to vote for Sweetpea's  you can do so here.

After Sweetpea's we sent for lunch and then to Len's Mills for fabric! What quilter doesn't want fabric on her birthday? Or any other day for that matter? I picked up these three pieces which will be great for fussy cutting.

Mom is out of her cast but in a brace. At least she has use of her elbow which means I can put her back to work! I went out in her garden and harvested a big bunch of lavender so she could make some lavender bottles. She managed to get three made before she had to give her arm a rest.

These are similar but not quite the same as those that I made. But they are equally pretty and they are every big as fragrant!

I've been writing about the way I quilt large quilts on my domestic sewing machine. At the moment I am quilting my Cherry Blossom quilt. There have been some questions about what I do so I thought I would recap my method for machine quilting a large quilt on a domestic machine. This method reduces the bulk of excess backing and backing making it easier to quilt the centre of the quilt.

1. I pin baste my quilt making sure to avoid pinning over major seam lines.
2. I attach a free motion foot and I use either invisible thread  (I use Monopoly) or a very light weight thread such as Superior's The Bottom Line on top and in the bobbin I use a light weight thread such as The Bottom Line, Decobob or Invisifil. I used a thread colour in the bobbin to match the top of the quilt for this step.
3. I stitch in the ditch on all major seams horizontally and vertically. I do not remove the pins from the quilt top. The stitch in the ditch stabilizes all of the blocks on the quilt top and it won't shift or move.
4. If my quilt has a single border I stitch in the ditch where the centre of the quilt meets the border and I do this all around the quilt. If there are multiple borders I stitch in the ditch for each border. Cherry Blossom has a 1/2" pink inner border so I stitched in the ditch on either side of the pink inner border. I do not stitch around the outside edge of the quilt.
5. Once the quilt top has been stabilized with stitch in the ditch I can quilt the border. Cherry Blossom has an 8" border with a vine so I drew the spine of the vine with a blue fabric marker, pinned very well on either side of the vine and then stitched the vine with invisible thread. I remove the pins that are close to the vine but leave all other pins in the border. I remove them as I quilt the leaves that sprouted off the vine.
6. Once the border is quilted I l trim the quilt to remove the excess batting and backing and I bind the quilt.
7. Finally I go back and quilt the body of the quilt. And since the border is quilted it is flatter which means that the bulk is reduced. Since the quilt is stabilized with the stitch in the ditch there is no problem with the quilt shifting!

The key is to make sure to stitch in the ditch of all major seams. In Cherry Blossom there is no sashing but if there were, I would have stitched in the ditch on either side of each sashing.

I hope that this information has answered your questions but if not feel free to ask! I am more than happy to share with you what I do and how I do it!

Phew! Too much writing! How about some pictures of the four blocks I am working on. They are the corners for the border of a quilt. The applique is going well and there isn't too much left to do. I've been working on this quilt off and on for a year. I'll keep you posted and the reveal will be in the next few weeks!

Finally don't forget to visit Quilting Gallery's Show and Tell. The theme this week is patriotic quilts and I am the guest judge! How am I going to decide? There are so many wonderful quilts! To see all of the quilts and vote for your four favourites go here!

Until I post again, happy sewing!