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It’s written in the binding! Bind a baby quilt with baby’s name

by Christine Baker

Yesterday, on QUILTsocial I showed you how great the Brother NQ900 is for piecing and machine quilting our Elephant Baby Quilt. Today, I’m going to use more of the machine’s decorative stitches to sew down the binding and make the label for the quilt.

The Brother NQ900 sewing machine.

Brother NQ900

Making the label

Back in November on QUILTsocial, I shared with you my new favorite way of making fast and easy permanent quilt labels. On that label, I just hand wrote the information with a permanent marker, but since this awesome machine can embroider letters, I decided to use the same method but make an embroidered label.

When I first looked at the character stitches on the Brother NQ900, I thought that I would stitch each letter individually, for example, I would set the machine to stitch an “F”, it would stitch, then I would set it for an “A” and it would stitch that letter. BUT, after reading the manual I realized that I can program up to 70 patterns or characters all at once!! So, using the stitch guide on the top of the machine, I programmed in the words “Welcome to the Family”. You can see that on the LCD screen, the machine shows the last six characters that will be stitched, so you can check your spelling, and the foot that you attach, the “N” foot.

The LCD display on the Brother NQ900 shows the character stitches selected for the label.

LCD display showing the character stitches selected

I drew lines on my label parallel to the folded edge, and used them to guide the machine as it stitched. The machine automatically stitches reinforcement stitches at the beginning and end of EACH letter, and leaves a thread in between the letters in the words.

The label for the quilt was embroidered using the character stitches on the Brother NQ900.

The embroidered label

I used small scissors to snip the threads between the letters stitched with the Brother NQ900.

Small scissors are used to snip the threads between the letters stitched with the Brother NQ900.

Snipping the threads between the letters

I pinned the label to the back of the quilt, as I showed in my QUILTsocial post last November.

The label is pinned to the back corner of the quilt before the binding is attached with the Brother NQ900.

Finished label

In order to use the decorative stitches on the Brother NQ900 to sew down the binding on the front of the quilt, I first sewed the binding to the back of the baby quilt, and then folded around to the front.

The binding is sewn to the back of the baby quilt and then folded to the front so that the Brother NQ900's decorative stitches can be used to stitch it down.

Folding the binding to the front of the quilt

Next, I selected a stitch to use for securing the folded edge of the binding. I decided on Utility stitch #68 which looks like one of the cross stitch designs. The LCD screen shows me to use the “N” foot.

The LCD display on the Brother NQ900 showing the stitch selection used for decorative stitches on the binding of the baby quilt.

Stitch selection for decorative stitches on the binding

After stitching that design for a while, I decided that I really wanted to use more than one stitch to go all the way around the quilt, so I checked out the stitch guide and picked Decorative Stitch #12 which looks like a snowflake.

The LCD display on the Brother NQ900 showing the stitch selection used for decorative stitches on the binding of the baby quilt.

More binding stitches

Here are the snowflakes stitched on the binding.

The snowflake decorative stitch #12 sewn on the baby quilt binding using the Brother NQ900 sewing machine.

The snowflake decorative stitch on the binding

I kept stitching my way around the quilt, changing the stitch every six inches or so, when all of a sudden I thought – “OMG – why am I not stitching WORDS onto the binding???”. Since I don’t know what the new baby’s name is going to be, I decided on the word “BABY” repeated over and over with a heart in between. Just think, if the baby had already been born, you could stitch his name, birth date and birth weight on the binding. How cool is THAT??

The Brother NQ900 character stitches can be used to do decorative stitching on the binding of a baby quilt.

Settings for the words stitched on binding

Here are the words that I stitched on the binding. I did find it a bit harder to keep everything lined up nicely when I was stitching the words, instead of just one of the other decorative stitches. But I found that if I stitched a bit slower and paid close attention it worked quite well!

The word "Baby" is stitched repeatedly on the binding of the baby quilt made with the Brother NQ900 sewing machine.

“Baby” stitched on the binding

So my baby quilt is all done and ready for the new addition. And I enjoyed using the Brother NQ900 so much this week that I asked if I can make it a new PERMANENT addition to my sewing room. Yes, I loved using it so much that I asked if I can buy it for myself!! Funny thing is that yesterday I was telling Jean Boyd, and she said that she was thinking of asking them the same thing!!

Thanks for hanging out with me this week! I think Spring is finally on its way, have a nice weekend and I’ll see you again in a few weeks!

The finished Elephant Baby Quilt shown with the Brother NQ900 sewing machine.

The finished Elephant Baby Quilt

This is part 5 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 4: Jumpstart your free motion quilting on this elephant baby quilt

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16 comments

Mary O. December 5, 2019 - 10:21 pm

Love the idea of names and words in the binding!

Reply
Wanda Bee April 9, 2017 - 10:05 pm

I just love the idea of stitching baby’s name into the binding. I will soooo be doing this!!!

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heather b April 7, 2017 - 4:07 pm

I absolutely love this idea!!

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Melody Lutz April 5, 2017 - 12:48 pm

I am finishing a baby quilt right now, this binding tip is Awesome, gotta play with my alphabet (for the 1st time).

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Catherine Lewis April 3, 2017 - 9:33 pm

I loved this idea! I have a new grandchild coming soon, and I’m going to do this! Thanks for the idea!

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Cathie Scanlon April 3, 2017 - 1:20 pm

What a great idea to use lettering for the binding! I’ve used decorative stitches before but this is going to be on my next gift quilt for the quilt club.

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DanaR April 2, 2017 - 9:45 am

What a wonderful and personal idea! It would become a family heirloom passed from generation to generation!
Love it!

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Christine Baker April 2, 2017 - 6:41 pm

Thanks Dana! I think you are right about it becoming a family heirloom!

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Laura S April 1, 2017 - 8:43 am

What a beautiful baby quilt. And I love how the word baby is stitched right in, such a cool idea. I always get so much inspiration from this site.

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Christine Baker April 2, 2017 - 6:44 pm

Thanks Laura! We are all so glad that you are finding the information helpful 🙂

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Brenda LaCroix March 31, 2017 - 6:05 pm

Oh this would be a fun machine to have! You make it look so easy!

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Christine Baker April 2, 2017 - 6:44 pm

It IS Brenda! I loved it so much I bought it!! Now I get to use it ALL the time 🙂

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Calvin F. March 31, 2017 - 2:48 pm

This is an awesome idea. Much easier now with machines.

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Christine Baker April 2, 2017 - 6:45 pm

Hi Calvin – yes, this machine makes it VERY easy to finish a quilt.

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Lori Smanski March 31, 2017 - 1:48 pm

such a sweet quilt. your tips are wonderful. thanks

Reply
Christine Baker April 2, 2017 - 6:46 pm

Thank you SO much Laura – I’m glad you like it!

Reply

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