Tag Archive for art quilt finishing techniques

Tidying up the Sides – Adding the Binding (2)

A contemprary art quilt being blocked on a pinning boardThis posting completes the information on how I finish off the edges of an art quilt and deal with the binding. Back when quilts were designed to be used as bed covers, the binding was essential in order to keep the edges from unraveling. Now, some sort of edging has just become the norm just as frames are on many paintings. In the photo on the left. the binding has been sewn all around the edges of the quilt, but not folded under and sewn in place on the back yet. At this point, I like to pin the whole piece into place on a cardboard pinning board, following the grid lines to keep the piece rectangular. I block it by misting it with water from a spray bottle and let the piece dry over night. Then, I remove all of the pins and fold the binding under to cover the raw edges and stitch it into place on the back. The pinning board that I’m use is a cardboard one that has grid lines on it that I buy in a sewing store. It’s 72″ or 183 cm long, so as a section gets warped from being sprayed after blocking five or six quilts, I cut off the distorted section and still have enough room for more quilts. I’m not so concerned at this point which of the grid lines that I’m pinning into as much as that I’m pinning into a squared off section of the board. I put in a pin at least every inch or 2.5 cm, but if the ribbon binding is thin, I may need to put in pins more frequently so that there aren’t little peaks along the edge. When the ribbon is tuned over, it may not be wide enough to cover the stitches that fastened down the binding on the front of the quilt. If that’s the case, I may need to stitch an additional ribbon flat on the back to cover up the stitches from the front.

Contemporary, beaded art quilt "Circles of Black, Circles of White 7"Then, I add a 4″ or 10 cm wide sleeve on the top of the quilt for a hanging rod. As I was finishing this blog this morning, “Quilting Daily” had a brilliant posting about making one big long sleeve and cutting lengths as you need them. That makes so much sense, as there’s nothing more boring than making display sleeves for hanging a quilt. A signature patch is then sewn on the lower right of the back. It contains my name, the copyright ©, the year of completion, and the name of the piece.

As I said before, all of this finishing work is not particularly artistically rewarding, but is so necessary to give a quality finish to the piece. It is surprising how distracting to the eye being off as little as 1/2 ” or 1.75 cm can be and then the viewer spends a lot of time thinking”Wow! that quilt sure is crooked!”, rather than “Look at how amazing that quilt is!”. Somehow, I would like to think that the latter thoughts are being voiced after all of the work that I put in.

Have you ever finished an art project and realized that there was some mistake, such as a crooked edge? What did you do to “correct” it besides ripping it out or starting over? 

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