Handwoven Baby Blankets, part 3

I promised to show you the four handwoven baby blankets when I finally had the binding on them.

The pink hearts have a pale pink binding, the blue hearts a pale blue binding, and the cranberry & aqua have white binding. I did get these up on my website, as this is the time of the year that I tend to get more orders for or sales of my handwoven baby blankets. (I do realize that the blue & aqua look pretty similar in the photo, but they’re not so much in real life. The aqua has much more green in it.)

In addition to the four heart blankies, I also wove three cotton flannel baby blankets in a variegated yarn. These were really popular last time I had them. The cotton flannel is so very soft, and the colors are just right for baby.

I wove these blankets in doubleweave, since I wanted them to be wider than either of my looms would accommodate. I’ve done this before on my sweet, little counterbalance loom without difficulty. But I’d just finished the heart blankets, which required all 8 harnesses of my Macomber, and so decided to do the doubleweave on the Mac, too, even though I only needed 4 harnesses. I knew I’d get a better shed, and it would just make my job easier.

I admit it, I’m getting used to the Mac. I still love my counterbalance, and hope that it remains my favorite; only time will tell, I guess.

Back to the topic I wanted to talk about – binding these baby blankets. I admit it: I hate sewing on the binding. Previously, I’ve sewed it on and then taken it all off and re-done it. I’ve lived with binding that looked less-than-professional, reducing the overall look of my carefully woven blanket. At my show last weekend, I even tried to get one of the other women there, whose product is handsewn purses and bags, to do the binding for me. She wasn’t having any of that. So I wasn’t looking forward to the task of binding 7 blankets. YUCK!

I did one each of the hearts and the cotton flannel prior to the show. I hated it as much as I’d anticipated. And I still had 5 more blankets to go.

Then I got a brainstorm: I can’t be the only one who has difficulty with this slippery fabric. I looked online, and found lots of places where people asked the question of how to do this without pulling your hair out. Several of the sites didn’t offer me any helpful insights, but a few did. I’m going to pass on to you the information I found useful.

First and foremost, blanket binding has an top and a bottom. For me, with the narrow binding (1″) that I’m using for my baby blankets, the top of the binding is a scant 1/16″ narrower than the bottom. So little difference I’d never noticed it before. Trust me when I tell you this was the most important hint I got! Putting that ever-so-slightly-narrower edge on the top of the blanket as I pinned & sewed completely eliminated the likelihood of missing the edge of the bottom portion of the binding. I can’t believe that it made so much of a difference, but it did.

Second, don’t worry about ‘filling up’ that binding. If you leave a little bit of space at the top of the binding, it’s okay, and gives you a little room to fool around with as you machine stitch.

Third, pull the binding really tight as you pin. (Or baste, if you’re a baster. I’m not.) That way it’ll be tight when you sew and not bunch up.

Not from hints online, I also did three other things.

• I used a layer of tissue paper underneath the binding as I sewed – between the feed dogs and the presser foot. This helped ensure that I wouldn’t have slippage there, and the tissue rips off cleanly when you’re done sewing.
• I used a sort of long stitch length – a bit higher than the middle of my stitch length options on my machine. I also sewed sort of slowly, not at my usual get-‘er-done speed.
• I pulled the blanket-and-binding combination rather tightly both in front of and behind the presser foot. My goal was to maintain the same tension as I did with my pinning.

The result? The binding on those 5 blankets went on like a dream! Not a snag, not a bunch, not a curse word while sewing on 10 ends. Yippee! I’ve apparently found the magic combination of techniques to make this once-horrible task not bad at all. I’m really pleased with the results. If I was a bit more obsessive than I am, I’d rip the binding off those first two blankets and redo them. (You can see how much smoother the binding is on the heart blankets than on that cotton flannel.) But I won’t. I may be crazy, but not that crazy.

Your turn: have you used online tips to make your life easier?