My new friend, and a binding tutorial

I realized I still haven't finished up Katie's wall-hanging or any of your pot-holders, so I'd better get sewing!  This is what I did for the wall-hanging, just need to do the binding.

And on her purple pot-holder, I wanted to do some straight lines for the quilting.  The quilting machine is a wonderful invention, and I use it often; but it's fluidity makes it almost impossible to do straight lines.  There are 8 little wheels working together to make it do pretty swirls and loops easily, so when you want lines it becomes a pain.

So I used just a few pins for stability, and tried a walking foot that I've had for a long time but can't remember what in the world I used it for.  It's been sitting with all the other feet for at least 3 years, and now I am looking forward to using it more!

With lots of layers they all tend to shift, but somehow this magic little thing makes the layers not move.  And seriously, those 8 pins at the edges were all I used.  Now you can see the pattern on the back!

And the flying geese are outlined on the front.  I can see lots of different color variations with this in the near future.

Each of my pot-holders consists of 4 layers: 1. quilt square, 2. Insul-Bright insulating material, 3. Warm & White batting, and 4. backing fabric.  It's pretty bulky when quilting, but they are heat-resistant and you won't get burnt through them.

I cut a 2 1/2 inch strip for the binding, and iron it in half.  Sew it to the quilt at just over a 1/4 inch seam.

When you come to a corner, stop just over 1/4 inch from the end and angle your seam over to the corner.

Fold the binding up to cover the seam you just made.

Fold it back down and begin sewing at the edge.  When you open it up, the corners will look very nice.  By the way, this is not "the" way to do binding, just how I do it. 

Normally you would do a seam to make the binding ends meet  on one side of the quilt, but for hot-pads I often just start & stop at the corner.  When you get close to the end, use a pin to hold the start of your binding in place while you finish the other end.

Stitch right up to the end of the thickness, and backstitch a few stitches.

Clip the binding end to about 1/2 inch longer than the hot-pad.

The back side can be hand-sewn or machine-sewn, it all depends which project I'm working on.  Hand stitching is a nice thing to have in the car to work on, or while visiting.  Don't know how to explain it, maybe the following photo helps?

Hope I haven't completely confused you, but I did like the end result!  Oh yes, you can also make a loop at the end of the binding if you want to be able to hang it.

And the back.  I really like the way this one puffs.

Decided to post that since the kids were all sleeping, but I really do need sleep myself.  By the way, I had so much fun with the walking foot that I used it for the borders of Katie's wall-hanging too.  If you're having trouble with layers shifting, you should give it a try!

While Breanna was watching me sew, I told her "that" was called a walking foot.  After a few seconds she said "if you go really fast, you could call it a running foot!" 

And for those of you who left a comment to this post, I sure haven't seen any addresses coming in.  I'm also unsure on a few favorite colors, so email me if you are still interested.  I know there's a way to change your settings so your comments come to my email without saying "no-reply blogger", but I can't remember how I did it.  My email address is under the profile if you need it.