Self Binding

Continuing on with my up-cycled jeans quilt, I began to tackle the binding this afternoon. The fabric I chose for the backing is a gorgeous soft checkered flannelette which really compliments the texture of the denim.

During the week I laid and pinned it all out with my usual bamboo blend batting as the middle of the sandwich and stitched many rows, stitching in the ditch along the length of the strips. It was quite tricky as it is a chunky thing to put through my sewing machine so the flannelette isn't the flattest it could be but I'm quite pleased with it.

I decided not to do a more traditional binding (having strips stitched on as seperate pieces), and instead using the backing fabric, cut larger than the quilt top, turned it over to the front like in this tutorial from The Quilt Ladies blog.

Lots and lots of pinning later, I stitched all the way around, stretching the fabric to ease up any little folds...and voila...!

I am super chuffed with this quilt- so chuffed in fact that I immediately rushed out to photograph it without cutting off all of the little bits of thread (I was worried it would rain and get dark before I finished so I wouldn't be able to photograph it).

Some of my corners were a little hit and miss, something for me to practice on for my next blanket. But some were much better!

The backing fabric isn't too rumpled and crumpled and is super soft and lovely.

I would certainly try something like this again!! It was really quick to put together the top and I haven't done anything fancy with the actual quilting of it or the border, and I think it looks pretty good considering that last week it was three pairs of holey jeans that nearly made it on to the rubbish pile!!