Directions? -- My Cheater Binding

So, here is the finished top, ready to be trimmed to size and bound.

Now, I could do a proper French binding, cut on the bias and folded in half, you know, just like they do it in the proper quilting books. I've done it before and it has always turned out great. But, given the rather chaotic approach I've been using for this quilt, I think you'll agree, it's a bit late for that now.

So, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm trusting that you will keep this just amongst us girls. If the Quilt Police ever find out ...

First, I ripped 4 1" strips from some of my leftover backing fabric. Then I tore off the selvedges and pressed them in half. Because it's a hand dyed fabric, there wasn't any right side or wrong side to worry about. But if there were, I'd have pressed it wrong sides together.

Then, I cut the 1st strip to size, opened it up and put the edge of the trimmed quilt top. Using the walking foot, I sewed it down with a scant 1/4" seam allowance.

Then, I folded over the strip to encase the raw edge of the quilt, and sewed it down with a decorative stitch down the centre of the strip.

And I did it to all four sides ... long sides first, then short sides. And it ends up looking like this, first the front:

And the back:
It ends up with some lovely raw edges which fridges a bit when you pull off the odd threads. This goes well with the front which ended up with lots of threads from the rough handling that the raw edges get as I finished the quilting and binding. Fragile and delicate quilts wouldn't last too long at my house.

If I'd had time, I'd loved to have tossed it into the washer just to see what happened. But I'm working to a deadline here and will have to save that for later.

I dropped this off at the Guild office on Friday morning and just now realised that I didn't take a photo of the finished quilt. Bummer.