At last, a finish!

The Quilts for Kids charity quilt got finished last night.  It took three nights for me to get the quilting done and label put on, binding made and attached; last night the binding was stitched down and the little quilt got its bath.  Here's my method for machine applying binding on a quilt that I know is going to be washed a lot.

After making the binding and ironing it in half lengthwise, I accordion pleat it like so:




 
 
 

Then I put it into a drawer of my sewing desk (ignore the chipped paint and missing handle--this is mid century metal furniture I inherited from Grant, who had it since he was a kid) and close it almost all the way, leaving the tail ready to be pulled up to my machine.
 
 
 
 
 
 
     
 I stitch the binding to the back of the quilt, following a line of basting sewn a scant 1/4" from the edge of the quilt top. I do this after I complete the machine quilting. The binding is sewn on in the traditional fashion, turning the corners and joining the tails diagonally.

After trimming away the excess batting and backing, I turn the binding to the front.  The only thing I pin are the corners, as I come to them.  I have long fingers so I can hold down a good section of the binding as I sew.







This is a three-step zig zag stitch and as you can see, it holds down the binding very securely and looks good. 

For the machine quilting, I just did simple diagnoal "cross hatch" with a wavy line (no marking needed), outlined the border, and did a couple of wavy lines in the border.  I called my quilt "Spotbot's Day Out", as there is a little robot dog on a leash held by one of the robots in the print.  Now the hard part will be getting this in the mail!