2 GREAT Tips for Attaching Your Quilt Binding!

Last weekend I was working on attaching the binding to a quilt and thought it might be helpful for you to see my setup for doing this. I also had a few ah ha! moments to share.

First ah ha!:  Tip #1: Use one of those folding TV table trays to rest most of the quilt. I usually drag over another chair, but that really puts the quilt too low so it drags and pulls as I'm sewing. Duh, I had one of these in the other room. And it's slippery so the quilt moves better. yeah!

And what's this?

The 2nd ah ha! And a huge one for me. I'm so glad I thought of it! Tip #2: use one of those stand alone vertical spool holders to contain your ununattached binding! That big roll of purple is about 9 yards of binding being held neatly by the thread spindle of my vertical thread holder. Now the extra binding doesn't escape and fall on the floor. I've tried holding it in my lap, piling it in the middle of the quilt, putting it in an open drawer beside me and nothing has worked as well as this. Another woohoo!

My machine-sewn binding setup

So above you can see how the binding just spools off the spool holder - how neat is that!

Have I mentioned that I hate hand sewing? I always attach the binding to the back of the quilt and then use the edge joining (or stitch in the ditch) foot to attach it to the front. That works just fine for me. I've tried sewing to the front first and then sewing in the ditch on the front to catch the binding in the back but I always seem to miss big sections and I'm not really into 20,000 pins!

How do you attach quilt binding?  Want more info or other pictures?  I did actually hand sew the label which I'll show after this quilt has been given to the lovely recipient.