Bias Binding and A Birthday

The finished product.
  I did go a little crazy with this and rework some of the seams so the stripes were evenly spaced.

I've been working on some bias binding for a project that I quilted recently. The black and white stripe on the bias should look great with the bright stars and the white background fabric. I'll find out tonight when I put the binding on! 

Getting ready to mark lines for cutting the continuous strip with the help of a yardstick.

 A continuous strip of bias binding is something I've done before, but I had to read the directions again, and again, and again as I went along. Two different sets of directions. I'm not sure if using two different sets of directions helped me or hurt me.  It was one of those things I couldn't exactly picture by just reading the directions alone. I had to read the directions as I went through the process to understand how it was supposed to work, even thought it's not that complicated, just hard to picture.  I'm cutting myself a little slack because it's been a long time!  

WRONG! ........but I didn't realize it when I took the picture.
Only when I got to the next step did I see my mistake.

In the picture above I didn't offset the fabric like I should have so it would create one continuous strip when I did the cutting. I took the picture to show a few parts of the process, not knowing I was taking a picture of a mistake!  I'm glad I noticed before it was too late! 

This is the way it should be!

Here you can see the way it should be, with the edges offset and the vertical lines that I drew......they are very faint in the picture.......matching up. I started cutting with scissors, not a rotary cutter, on the bottom right corner, not at the tip, but where the straight edge meets the triangular section.  This is actually a tube of fabric at this point, so using a rotary cutter would be a bad, bad idea. I say this because in my mind that is what I was going to use until I remembered how the cutting worked.  Another  picture would have been good here, but I didn't take one. Anyway,  I wound up with a continuous length of bias binding! This was not really meant to be a tutorial. I just thought I'd show a few steps of the process, including where I messed up! Maybe the next time you make some bias binding you'll remember my troubles and that will make it easier for you.

Delicious!!!!

On a different note, yesterday was my birthday! I was treated to a relaxing day of quilting and fun with my family! We ate Chicago style pizza from our favorite pizza place and the boys surprised me with an ice cream cake after dinner. Yummy frosting with vanilla ice cream on the top layer, those delicious cookie crunchies in the middle, and of course tasty chocolate ice cream on the bottom.  It doesn't get much better than that! Thank you boys for the wonderful day :-)

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy lots of sewing time!