Select the perfect decorative stitch for machine sewn binding

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I used my NQ900 from Brother to sew perfect little pockets to hold all the needle packages in my needle roll. Today I’ll use this awesome machine to make binding, and complete the embroidered needle roll I’ve been working on for months!

NQ900 from Brother

Make the binding

1. Cut four 2½” strips from your fat quarter of binding fabric (or two 2½” x width of fabric strips from yardage). Sew them together with a mitered (diagonal) join.

Sew binding strips together with a mitered join.

2.Cut off the excess fabric, press the seams open and fold the binding strip, wrong sides together; press along its length. If you’d like more detailed instructions on how to make binding, check out my QUILTsocial post – Do You Know How to Bind a Quilt?.

3.Sew the binding to the front of the needle roll using a ⅜” seam.

Sew binding to front of needle roll

4. Fold the binding around to the inside of the needle roll and clip the binding in place using UNIQUE quilting Clever Clips. When clipping, make sure to pull the binding tight so the folded edge of the binding covers the stitching line. Clip all the way around.

Fold binding to the inside of the roll and clip in place.

5. Choose a top thread that will look nice on the outside of the needle roll, and a bobbin thread that blends nicely with the inside fabric and the binding.

Clip all the way around.

6. Select the stitch you want to use to secure the binding from the many stitches available on the Brother NQ900. You can use pretty much any decorative or straight stitch for this, but if you use a straight stitch you need to be careful that your stitches catch the binding on the inside of the roll. If you use a wider decorative stitch, you can be pretty sure that at least one part of the stitch will catch the binding.

The lid of the NQ900 shows the variety of available stitches.

I’ll use the Shell Tuck edge stitch since I want it to be wide enough to catch the binding, but not too decorative that it competes with my embroidery stitches. On my NQ900, this stitch is #39 in the Utility Stitch grouping (the left most group shown on the lid of the machine). The screen on the machine shows which stitch had been selected and that I should be using pressor foot J.

Select Utility Stitch #39

Here is a close up of what the stitch looks like from the outside of the needle roll:

The shell stitch on the binding on the outside of the needle roll.

See how the stitch shows on the inside of the needle roll in the photo below. Since one part of the stitch extends onto the binding, you can see it’s still secure even at the lower corner, where the straight stitches didn’t quite catch the folded edge of the binding.

The Shell Stitch on the inside of the needle roll binding.

And now…..we’re finished! Here’s what the inside of the needle roll looks like with a few of my many packs of needles tucked inside:

The inside of the needle roll.

The next image shows the needle roll rolled up and tied with the rick rack. I really love how it turned out and I hope you do too! It’s the perfect size to tuck into my embroidery bag and will store a ton of needles!

The rolled and tied up needle roll.

Thanks for joining me this week as I worked on my Brother NQ900 and used some awesome sewing supplies, including the UNIQUE quilting Clever Clips, to make this project. Hopefully, this little storage case will help you (and me) keep all our hand embroidery needles safe, secure, and organized. I really love doing hand embroidery and I hope this project has piqued your interest in trying hand embroidery, too. See you next time!

This is part 5 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 4: 7 essential steps to sew together a needle roll

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