Binding

This is a follow up post on being a quilt mentor (or in my case, not being a quilt mentor).

A couple of posts ago I talked about the irresponsibility of just handing a block to a beginning quilter and telling her to applique and not really giving any instructions.  I brought my thoughts to Mrs. Furui and we reevaluated our patchwork group promising ourselves to teach more and encourage excellence.  OK.  We will try to do better.

On the other hand though, this day that our patchwork group was getting together, the purpose was to put binding on the applique quilt we've been working on and also to help one of our members put binding on a baby quilt she has been making for her grandson.  I had seen this friend/member a week before while she was still quilting (and I put in a few stitches for her while we had tea) and I said she was doing a fine job and that she should bring the quilted baby quilt on Friday and that we would all help her put on binding.

When this friend showed up on Friday with her baby quilt (after I'd just had the above discussion with Mrs. Furui) I was surprised and disconcerted to find that she had started putting on the binding herself... She had cut the binding strips widths and lengths she thought appropriate, sewn the strips on by machine and then tried to turn the binding under by finger-turn...  making sort of a mess... and she had eight strip ends flapping that were either too long or too short.  Sigh.  Mrs. Furui and I looked at each other.  The baby quilt owner looked panicked.

"I know, I know.  You told me to wait.  But I really want to take this to my daughter tomorrow and I thought if I got a head start on applying the binding that I'd be able to get the quilt finished faster.  But now I don't know what to do.  It's too hard to turn under the edges.  I don't know what to do with all the ends!  Help!"

So Mrs. Furui and I went into repair mode.  And to our defense, we have sewn bindings on with this friend before on many other previous quilts.  It just goes to show that "doing" something and "learning" something is different.  Some members are quite eager to help and do the tedious sewing but they don't really pay attention to the technique or put it into their own heads.  I do this all the time when computer glitches show up.  Tell me how to fix this!  But a week later I won't be able to do it again because I didn't really try to "learn" the method...  I just wanted to get things going again...

Mrs. Furui and I squared off the quilt edges (binding and all).  We ripped back all of the ends and re-cut and re-sewed.  We ironed a crease in the binding strips making it easier to turn the binding (not the way either of us would normally put on binding... we like double binding).  We even tacked the folded back edges so that the sewing would go much faster.

As we worked, even Mrs. Furui and I realized that though we are both veteran quilters, we don't put binding on the same.  We both like one long piece of binding (instead of four strips) but we sew our corners differently.  On this day I was on the sewing machine and so we sewed the corners my way.  I use Elmer's craft glue on my own bindings when I tack but Mrs. Furui uses fusible thread.  We did it her way as I hadn't brought Elmer's glue with me.

Finally we handed the quilt back to our friend to do the final hand sewing.  I'm pretty sure that she was able to finish up her quilt that night and take it to her daughter the next day.  She kept apologizing and apologizing for all the extra work she had made by trying to put on the binding herself but I said I admired her initiative (some quilters preface every new technique with "I'll never be able to do that.  Would you do it for me?") and pointed out that even Mrs. Furui and I have different ways of putting on binding and she could think of HER way as her way.

"Yeah!  After you've just spent two hours fixing the binding that I put on in MY don't-know-how way!"

It's true... if she'd just waited as we'd suggested, we could have taught her and she could have had a much easier time of it. 

My grandfather often said that just having the right tools for a job made it all that much easier.  I would add, learning a tried and true technique makes the job a lot easier too!