Binding the Quilts and Binding Tips

Oh the binding!  Now there are six quilts to bind - that's a lot of binding.  I figured if I didn't do it as I went along, I'd get too overwhelmed, so at the end of last week I jumped into the task.  I squared all six of the quilts, cut all the bindings, and sewed the first side down by machine. The sewing down part was quite a task since I'm binding challenged.  Even when I have a perfectly square quilt, I end up with it wavy after I've put on the binding.  I've been asking everyone I know how they put on their bindings hoping I'd stumble across something that would help.  Talk about a happy ending...........I think I finally have it figured out. The things I think made all the difference:

-I took the advice of my friend MaryG (thank you Mary!) and got out my acrylic extended sewing machine table.  Now I have a nice flat surface to work on.  I've been using a plastic machine slanting system and it's been causing too much drag.  I think this change alone made the most difference.

-This is time consuming, but during my remediation period I decided to measure the side of the quilt as I sew each side of the binding on, and make the binding and top measurement the same length.  It was surprising to me how much this has helped.  Even though it takes extra time, I think I'll keep doing it.  I really, really want a nice flat quilt and figure after I've put all of this time, effort, and money into making a quilt, I may as well put in the little bit of extra time to get it right........and to be happy with it when it's all finished.  I know I sure wasn't happy with my quilts when they got wavy due to the binding the way I was doing it previously.
 
-Early last week I happened to stumble across a binding tutorial on QuitersTV.com done by Hollis Turnbow. Here's a link if you're interested - http://www.quilterstv.com/channel/video/264?item=3 . Some things clicked on that for me.  One tip I especially liked was clipping the corners (clip carefully - just through the raw pieces of fabric in the corner not the folded fabric that makes the miter - you can guess how I found that one out).

Over the weekend I got three of the bindings hand sewn to the back of three of my quilts.

Don't they look pretty!  It feels soooooooo good to get these quilts completely finished.