The One with my Steam-a-Seam experiment

If you will recall, I ran out of time to bind a pillow, and had some Steam-a-Seam Lite on hand. I wondered what would happen if I machine stitched the binding down as normal, and then fused it over instead of hand-stitching.

Front of the pillow

Back of pillow, although it is shown upside-down

 All seemed well in my attempts!

 I think this method would take me a bit of practice, because I must place the Steam-a-Seam far enough down on the binding so that you can't pull it up and see the stitches, like you can in the above picture. Originally I cut lengths of the Steam-a-Seam at 1/4 of an inch thick, as that was my seam allowance for sewing the binding on. However, I think if I were to try this again I would cut them at 3/8".

This portion of the binding shows the Steam-a-Seam melted a little bit outside of the binding so that it can be seen, but that will wash away, and the binding can't be pulled up at all here.

And here's the finished product! The binding is holding perfectly fine. It would be interesting to know if it will hold up better over time than hand-stitching the binding down.

Quilting can be academic! Science and the arts can indeed mingle! More experiments in the future! :)