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I am a huge fan of attaching binding to the back of a quilt and sewing it down on the front using a straight or decorative stitch. This works well for quilts, pillows and kitchen textiles that will be frequently laundered and heavily used. It’s also much easier on my wrists and hands. Not to worry, heirloom and show quilts always get the traditional method of attaching binding to the front and sewing it down by hand on the back.
Lately, several quilters on IG have demonstrated using an edgestitch or ditch quilting foot as a guide to help keep your stitching line straight and uniform when sewing the binding on the front. Janome has a snap-on “S” foot that’s available in both 5-7mm and 9mm sizes. It works well; however, a walking foot makes things even easier. No need for a hump jumper when turning corners. I typically attach and sew down binding on my Janome 8900 using the Accufeed foot with the 1/4″ and ditch quilting soles.
My Janome 8900 is currently set up for FMQ, so I decided to see how well an open toe walking foot with the Ditch Quilting Guide and Adjustable Quilting Guide Set worked on my Elnita EC30 (made by Janome).
Wonderful!
My binding strips were cut 2-1/2″ wide, so I used a 3/8″ seam allowance when attaching them to the back. I lined up the edge of the quilt with the edge of the walking foot and adjusted the needle position to achieve a 3/8″ seam allowance. My machine has a 5mm max stitch width. I found that a setting of SW = 4.0 works best. When sewing the binding to the front, I attached the ditch quilting arm and snugged it up all the way on the right side of the walking foot. I kept SW = 4.0 and lengthened the stitch to SL = 3.0. Normally, I glue baste binding, but did not for the small table runner I was working on.
Tip: you will have a line of stitching showing on the back of the quilt. Match your bobbin color to blend with the backing or use an all over busy print as your backing fabric to hide the line of stitching.
Here’s a video clip I found on YouTube that does an excellent job of demonstrating how to use the walking foot with the ditch accessory:
P.S. You can also use this foot to sew down binding attached to the front and folded to the back. I would strongly recommend glue basting on the backside because you won’t be able to see where the stitches lands on the backside until you’re through stitching. Your stitches will likely land only on the binding, so be sure to use a thread that blends with the binding.
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