Machine binding?!

I'd promised Emily a Nook holder for years now, but finally got around to it this week. She loves camo and pink. The sequins are because I like shiny things.  I used the Moda Bake Shop 'Bookkeeper' tutorial, but rotated it so that it was longer than wider and added the sequined elastic.

I used flannel on the inside so the screen wouldn't scratch. I even used my machine to sew on the sequined elastic. Everything went great till it was time to put on the 'binding'. I decided to machine bind it. I should have hand stitched; it wasn't a lot and I should have sucked it up. NIGHTMARE! I have a tendency to have wider binding on one side; I pull further over one side to hide the sew-on-the-binding stitching. That doesn't work for machine binding. I ended up using a zig-zag and turning it into kind of a flange by stitching in the middle of the front binding so it stayed on the edge of the back binding. This is my second time with machine binding and my corners turned out a bit better than last time. I used a suggestion from a blog that said when you stop a quarter inch from the corner, sew off the edge. That helped get beautiful mitered corners on the back which means it would work great when hand sewing. The other problem I ran into is since the binding didn't run all the way around, I had to start at the end of one strip. I couldn't get it started. I kept getting caught and stitching in place. There was also differences in bulk through the project so my zig-zag is of inconsistent length. Any suggestions on what to do? 

Seems like I didn't enjoy the process, but I did. Again, it is because it is going to a friend. I hope she likes it.