Victoria + That Binding

Goodness, time has just done quite a job of getting away from me lately! It's been over two weeks since I had the pleasure of presenting a trunk show to MQG Victoria, which was alot of fun! What a friendly bunch they are.

It was good to see what other guilds do - they happened to be celebrating their birthday as a guild with a fabric challenge, and it was a delight to see so much of their beautiful work! I also met a few long-time friends on social media, plus of course some new ones!

After the meeting, there was opportunity to gather round all of the (30!) quilts I'd brought, look up close, and of course, ask questions and chat about what they'd seen and heard. There was one prevalent inquiry and that was about the quilts that had faced bindings.

So I wanted to share the tutorials I've used for this technique - all come highly recommended, yet each has unique differences that may make one your favorite over another. And of course, that's ok!

Faced Binding by Elizabeth/OPQuilt
This was the first tutorial I tried, and it worked lovely, and pretty perfect with mitered corners and all.

Facing Finish by Terry/Terry Aske Art Quilt Studio
Terry's tutorial is an alternative to the mitered method, and really focuses on reducing bulk and controlling the 'squareness' of the corners.

Knife Edge Binding by Anita/Bloomin' Workshop
A bit of a simplified version of the previous technique, here's the one I personally use most often. Call it my go-to.

Non-Binding Binding by Victoria/The Silly BooDilly
I haven't actually used this one, but it's unique in that it's single-fold, but it might suit your project just fine, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

So hope that's helpful! A faced binding is a really lovely way to finish off certain quilts. The one thing about it, is that is needs to be finished by hand on the back side. So a bit of a different method, but not really any more difficult or time consuming than 'regular' binding. Consider trying it sometime so at least you have it in your quilty 'toolkit' when you need it!

Spiraled Underground

Nearly 3 months ago, I posted my Big Batch HST tutorial, created as I was starting on my latest Spiraled quilt with its massive amount of hst's. Needless to say, it took a while to bring this one to completion, but I kinda gave it a push over last weekend, knowing my 3rd quarter Finish-A-Long report would be pitiful without it.

The objective in making this pattern again, was to see how it looked less scrappy. And I like it! {If you haven't seen the original Spiraled or Spiraled Jungle, click the links. They are basically the same 34"x36" design, with tweaks.} Another reason was that once I got my hands on yardage of the "Underground Route" print from Sara Lawson's Jungle Ave. line, I really wanted to see how it looked as a complete background. Again - I like! I chose the super pink "Word on the Street" text print for the spirals because I wanted them to be bold, and I just plain like it!

Quilting was done very similarly to what I did on my mini Swoon, basically using a few of the spirals as inspiration and then echoing using my walking foot as a guide. Overall, it gives a sort of willy nilly effect, but there was a rhyme and reason, and resulted in great texture, even before a wash. I used my super-sized cone of Aurifil 50wt #2021 (Natural White), which made me ridiculously happy. And then, I hit a stumbling block.

I had planned all along to use the black and white "Dotted Boulevard" as the border, topping it off with some matched binding. And though I was more than pleased with the border, after I'd sewn on a good quarter of the binding, I realized that I wasn't really happy with how the border and binding dots looked side by side. After a day of mulling, I removed the binding I'd stitched on and began auditioning other choices.

Except that I didn't like anything I tried! What to do? Then all at once I knew that to preserve that dotted border 'just so', I'd need to do a faced binding. So I turned again to OPQuilt's tutorial, which had served me well in the past. And yes, that was the look I'd been after.

For backing, I used a single piece of "urban sprawl" by Alexander Henry, one of those random stash purchases that I think was destined for this quilt.

So I'm really pleased with this new version of Spiraled, and I'm already thinking of another version I may need to try. Another day.