First off, I've GOT to figure out how to get all of these pages under one heading, but for now, here's the Border Tutorial.
Hey everyone. Pumpkin decided that this was too boring to post for, so she's told me that I must do the tutorial on my own. She said she trusts me to not mess it up. Wow, I never thought I'd need approval from a cat to make a blog post!
Anyway, I want to talk to you all about applying borders properly. This isn't going to be a long, drawn out tutorial. It doesn't need to be. However, this is something that is SO important when it comes to quilting...either on a domestic or longarm, although longarms feel it more when a border is out of whack. So, here we go.
I'm like a lot of people and sometimes buy premade kits because they're quick and easy to make most of the time. The problem with these kits is that they give you a number of inches of a material to cut for each border, but this amount isn't always accurate. In fact, it rarely is. We all have our own 1/4 inch seam allowance, even when using wonderful tools like Guidelines Precision Tool to make sure that we've marked a clear, scant 1/4 inch on our machines, we still often have differing sized 1/4 inches. They can be off a thread or two in the woven fabric and, believe me, that adds up over the surface of the quilt and by the time you add the border, you can have a quilt that doesn't come out the dimensions listed on the pattern or kit. So, what to do?
Well, this is the first step. We'll use an example of a capped border, as I call them.
1. Once the quilt top is finished and ready to apply the outer border, make sure to measure THROUGH THE CENTER of the quilt, both vertically for the side borders and horizontally for the top and bottom borders. This is the most crucial part to me. This gives you a true idea of what size you need to cut the border length.
It's also a good idea to measure near the edge of he borders just to see if there's a large discrepancy. If there is, I take the number and add them to together and then average them out to find out what size to cut my borders. For example:
Say you have a quilt that measures 56 1/4 inches vertically, but it looks wonky, so you measure the left side edge and it's measurement is 57 1/2 and the right side edge is 57. Well you add the three numbers together to get 170.75. Then you would divide the this number by 3 (the number of measurement taken) and that would give you what size you should cut your border. In this case, the number comes out to a really whacky number (56.916) , so I find that I have to sometimes fudge the number to fit into eighths or sixteenths.
Once you have your correct border measurements, go ahead and cut your border fabric. Now, step number two:
2. When you are ready to apply your border, the first thing you want to do is fold the side border (using the example from above) in half and carefully mark it with a pin or safety pin. Do this on both sides. Now take the borders you cut for your sides and fold them in half and carefully pin that spot as well.
Step three: Pinning.
3. A lot of people don't like pinning when they sew, but I find that it saves a lot of time correcting errors to take the time to pin before sewing fabric together, especially when applying borders or sashing. This is why. You have to match those pinned quilt sides to the borders pins and, well, pin them together. Then you go out to each end of the border and match the edge to the edge of the quilt and pin it there. Then you can break it down further and work your way on each side of the center pin dividing each side continually until you have enough pins to hold it securely. Sometimes you might find that you have too much fabric. In that case, if you cut accurately (double check your border length if this happens) and it's not a large amount (I'm talking an 1/8 of an inch or less here), you can ease the fabric in. This could cause a small bit of a wave when the border is applied, but it's not something that can't be worked with when quilted. Now take your quilt to the machine and sew on the borders.
You would do the same for the top and bottom border. The only difference would be that, if you're applying cornerstone borders, it's imperative that you make those border seams intersect where the cornerstones are accurately. Usually, you apply your cornerstone to one border set (usually the top and bottom) and then you would just treat the whole as one border. That's easy, but to get the correct sized border on the cornerstone side is a little bit trickier.
So, let's look at that. First off, you would still measure and average the quilt as listed above, but here's the tricky part. You have to SUBTRACT the size of the cornerstone, including seam allowance, from the length of the border you would normally cut if there were no cornerstones. That would be the size border you would cut, but MAKE SURE YOU LEAVE enough for a seam allowance on the ends of the border to attach to the cornerstones. You would then sew the cornerstones on and then attach the border to the quilt, matching the seams so you have a clean, crisp corner where the cornterstone meets the body of the quilt. As Kim Brunner says, it's "easy, peasey pie."
In fact, it's actually taken me more time to write this than to actually do it, believe it or not. I CANNOT express how important it is to follow these steps when applying outer borders...or ANY borders (say you have a quilt with two or three borders). In fact, I've found that using this technique when applying block borders or sashing to my quilt makes my quilts turn out wonderfully flat and the corner meets are crisp and true.
So next time you're getting ready to apply a border, try these methods and see if your border doesn't look a whole lot better when you lay your quilt out to inspect it prior to either quilting it yourself or sending it out to a longarm quilter to get it done.
So, that's all for now. Pumpkin has arrived to inspect what I've written. She seems pleased, which is a good thing because she's can be a harsh task master sometimes.
So, as she says...
Paws are best used for quilting!
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