How You Bind :: The Nitty Gritty Results

Thanks to all of you who took the time to take the binding survey last week. If you don't have time to chat, feel free to click right on over to the results, where you can see the pie charts (also shown below) and all the added comments. I do have just a few comments of my own after you glance at the stats here.

Surprised where you fit in? Surprised at anything?? I was kind of surprised at how many folks secure their binding before they hand-stitch it down. I have never ever done that, so really had no idea it was such a thing. hmm

There were just a few comments that require some further action. First, someone asked, "Any chance you could research or do a tutorial on binding a quilt with the facing technique?" I know immediately what to suggest here: OPQuilt's tutorial, which I've used several times myself with great success.

Now here's where I need your help. Rather than do another survey right away, can you respond to one or more of the questions below in the comments? Hopefully those who asked will see this post and our responses.

1. How about a question about how gals like to do the miters, top on top or side on top? 
2. I'm curious, do people press their binding before sewing? After I machine sew it on, I press it away from the quilt top and then hand-wrap it around to the back to sew it on. I wonder what others do. 
3. I'd like to see you do a survey about HOW to sew binding to a quilt. I bet most quilters don't know that there's another way to attach binding than with folded mitered corners.

My answers: #1: I miter my corners going clockwise on the front, with the side I'm sewing into 'on top.' I'm pretty sure I'm traveling counter-clockwise when I'm stitching on the back. If there's a 'right' and 'wrong' way here, I'm clueless. Please enlighten me. #2: I didn't know till recently that this was a thing either, but now I do do it. #3: I know how to do a faced binding as mentioned above. Please do tell if you're thinking about a different method than that.

So there you go! I'd love to hear what you think about all this in the comments!

How You Bind :: The Results

Well that was fun! The How You Bind survey had a larger participation than I anticipated and it dawned on me a little late in the game that it was alot easier to 'read' the results with the multiple choice questions. Ie. with over 200 responses, it took a bit of perusing to get through the 'essay' questions. So for those, I'll summarize for you, then there is a link to all the responses for each of those questions, just in case you're inclined to check those out. So here's how we bind!

Q2  Do you have a 'go-to' binding? Dots, stripes, solids or ?

"No" was the most common response, or "depends on the project". Closely following was "stripes", though dots, stripes, and scrappy were mentioned plenty. Click for complete results

Q3  How wide do you cut your binding? 

Responses ranged from 1 1/4" - 3", with the top 3 responses being:

2" - 11

2.25" - 71

2.5" - 119

Q6. What is your favorite way to finish the binding? Ie. how do you join the ends together? If you have a favorite tutorial, please share it here.

Ok, the responses to this questions were overwhelming - there are SO many tutorials and techniques that are standbys for you. I did glean that a majority of you join binding strips at an angle. I'll definitely be reading through these results again and looking up some of the links you mention. Click for complete results

Q9. Have you ever made scrappy binding, striped binding, matched binding or any other special binding technique? Do tell!    

Scrappy was the overwhelming choice here. Click for complete results

Q10. Any last comments about binding? 

This section was fun to read, some of which was a repeat of the other questions. And of course there was "I hate binding!" right alongside "I love making it!". Click for complete results

Well thank you for participating in the survey! I certainly hope you enjoyed it, and maybe even found a tip to try or a variation to consider just for the fun of it. I think things were summed up really well with the statement, "I find that the right binding often is just the pizzazz needed to transform a 'pretty' quilt into a 'gorgeous' quilt!" I couldn't agree more.