How one binds a quilt top, batting and the backing is a fundamental for quilting, and there hundreds of ways to do it. Some take closely sew along or within the quilt top's pattern. Others disregard it and sew "all over."
On the Core Sound, a unique all-over pattern arose known as the "Core Sound Cross." Pam Morris with the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Islands details the pattern in this episode of History Here. While examining a feed sack quilt (a quilt in which the backing is literally an old feed sack), Morris describes the design as dividing a square into triangles and delicately sewing lines in different directions for each of the triangles. The point at which the triangles meet creates an "X" or cross, where the pattern gets its name.
