Making A Binding Statement

I like to think that all aspects of my quilt are interesting.....not just the blocks or pattern but the backs and the bindings too. I never could understand why people would just put any old thing on the back or binding. I as often have a quilt folded inside out on my couch as otherwise.

I just finished this quilt from The Chocolate Lollipops line by Anna Marie for Free Spirit (well most of the blocks are from that line) but when it came to backing and binding I used the strip from Paris Flea Market by Robin Pandolph. I was in a bit of a quandary for about a week because I wanted to use the dark brown that I sashed the quilt with for binding because I thought it would really effective but I only had about a third of the fabric that it would take to bind this giant quilt and the dark brown fabric was a really really old South Seas Fabric that their was no chance in hell of ever finding and it is such an odd brown I couldn't find anything that looked right.

After groaning and moaning and trying to figure out a solution I dug out the pieces of the stripe that were left after it came back from the quilter and I trimmed the edges. Of course I had purchased the last of the bolt of that fabric as well and had used all of it for the border and backing. But there was enough from trimming that I had four long length wise strips and that was when I discovered that by careful cutting I could actually make them work and work wonderfully. I was able to when I folded and attached the binding have it so the yellow stripe shows on the front of the quilt and the aqua portion of the quilt shows on the back. Let me tell you this was very exciting and I think it's my favorite binding that I've ever done in almost 30 years of quilting.

It is quite nice to know that there are still surprises out there for me that don't involve learning a new difficult quilting technique because this old dog likes to sew simple and easy blocks any more and "let the fabric do the talking" and this fabric fairly sang to me.