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I started sewing on the binding for the quilt this morning, and completed two long and one short side before pausing to look at what exactly Diane Gaudinski says about sewing on bindings. Result: I was doing the binding correctly, but I hadn't straightened the quilt out correctly when I was blocking it, and my marked line wasn't an even distance from the inner border. After some soul-searching (who's going to notice anyway? do I really want to rip out all that stitching?), I decided to rip out all that stitching (thank goodness I used a long stitch length!) and wet and reblock the quilt.

I was worried about the weather - it was getting overcast, and the quilt would need to dry. But the sun came out again and I could go ahead. I now know the meaning of "blocking". I used my quilt rulers to push and pull and squish the damp quilt into shape, making sure the borders were even all around. Once it was dry, I marked my cutting line right again, this time marking it exactly the same distance from the inner pink border right around.

The second round of sewing on the binding went smoothly and I felt happy with my decision to redo it. The corners have been mitered and the beginning and end joined invisibly at the top of the quilt (off-centre). The final step was to trim the backing, batting and extra bits of quilt to an even quarter-inch right around the quilt (without cutting right through the corner mitres like I did on my test quilt!)Now all that remains is to handstitch the binding to the back of the quilt, and make and attach the label (I am thinking of an applique heart to match the front).