Binding Confession

What my binding used to look like.

I hate sewing binding on quilts. I really hate it. It's my least favorite part of the whole process and one I constantly have to remind myself "do it right or pay the price"*. It is normal for me to have a stack of quilts laying around waiting to be bound. If I was rich, I would pay someone to sew the bindings. One of my many mental blocks, as evident in the picture above, it the thickness of the binding. Up until about 2 months ago, I was making really thick binding. I don't know why. Maybe I was worried that it wouldn't wrap all the way around the quilt? Who knows. It looks fine, there's just a wide strip of binding on the back of all my quilts.

This is what my binding looks line now.

 So, then I realized I could make my binding thinner and it would take less fabric and look much cleaner on the back of the quilt. But I still hated sewing binding. It all has to be done by hand, and I was using a slip stitch, which takes forever and shows tiny little stitches.
It reached a point yesterday where I did something that I wish I hadn't. I machine sewed a binding. Ugh. As I was doing it, I thought two things: 1. This is going so fast. Yay! and 2. This feels wrong. I shouldn't be doing this.

Machine sewn binding (front of the quilt).

 But then, last night at quilt guild, I learned something that may change my life forever. Our president Jacquie (of Tallgrass Prairie Studio) showed us how she sews bindings that are invisible and much faster than the slip stitch. It's called the "Invisible Ladder Stitch". There is a great tutorial at Turning*Turning with pictures and instructions. This weekend I plan to tackle my stack of quilts and see how I do with the magic ladder stitch. 

*I just finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and started my own happiness project that I call "Kim's grow the f*** up project" and one of my personal commandments is "Do it right or pay the price" (which really means don't take shortcuts). If you don't know the book, go buy it or check it out at the library. I was a little put off by it at first because I feel like I already know everything she recommends doing. The hard part is actually doing everything. Once I stopped judging and being negative about it, I realized that I could definitely benefit from a lot of her ideas. One of my other commandments is "Don't be negative. Ever. About anything.".

Pillows!

A couple of weeks ago I made three pillows with some of my shibori fabric that had been sitting around. The fabric was originally meant to be used in quilts, but none of them came out quite right and I was feeling less than enthusiastic about making the quilts. I was still excited about the fabric and decided pillows were the answer.

 They are each 16" x 16" and are lined and quilted in a pattern that compliments the shibori pattern.

There is an envelope style closure on the back so the covers can be removed and washed if they get icky (you know, spilled on or used as a cat bed).

Aren't they cute? I think so. It was a fun project and while I was making them I kept thinking "I could make a ton of these" but so far there are only the three.