Binding, Being Stubborn, and Admitting Mistakes

I was really inspired yesterday to finish a table topper that will be in the August 2011 issue of Quilter's World magazine. I was so pleased with how the quilting turned out -- I even quilted traditional feathers in the corners.

Today I tackled the binding. First of course, I had to decide what fabric to use. Normally I don't have a problem deciding, but this one required a second opinion and several possibilities. Finally, a fabric was chosen (and of course it was the one I originally thought of). I already had a roll of binding prepared for another project so I decided to use some of it for the table topper. It was striaght grain binding.

I should have known better. I even told myself that I needed to use bias binding but I can be thick-headed sometimes AND the binding was cut already, which mad eit that much easier.

Sigh......that much easier to screw up. I carefully pinned the binding in place (I don't normally do this but this project had inside angles and outside points. It looks great on the project, but I didn't take into consideration how difficult it would be to bind, apparently. Anyway, I finally began sewing the binding on by machine. I held my breath at the inside points, checking and re-checking. I wasn't completely satisfied so I would rip out a few stitches and then resew it. It still wasn't perfect, but I thought it would get better.

It didn't.

About halfway through the binding, I decided to stop and rip off the binding before I ruined the whole quilt. Tomorrow I will make bias binding -- this is what I should have done to begin with.

I guess the point of this little story is that we really need to listen to our instincts -- if they say what you're doing is wrong, chances are it's wrong. I also wanted to show that even published quilt designers make mistakes...A LOT. The important thing is that we all learn from our mistakes.

Or, sew buttons over them.