I'm putting together a very simple quilt from Christmas fabrics. As I wanted to use up all the fabric, the design has 2 main borders and because of the colours, I needed to space them out with 2 narrow borders. The fabric is very busy, so I think quilting will be just what is necessary to hold it together, not as an additional part of the quilt, so I wondered about basting the centre with enough batting and backing all around, then adding the borders through all layers with a walking foot. I figured it would save me going around all those long seams again SITD. The one possible problem I can think of is will the seams press as crisp, I don't want to feel like I've created mushy borders. Has anyone done this? any tips to offer?
adding borders after basting
Dec 02, 2007
7 Replies
That's a common way to add borders- thru the batting and backing. Trying to miter the corners would be tough, tho, so you'd prolly want to use straight overlapping borders. As far as 'crispy' goes, are you using 100% cotton batting? If so, you can press/iron the borders. If not, use some stern finger pressing and it will help. Good luck.
I just did a quilt this way. Measure for the borders before you quilt, because a lot of quilting will shrink the top dimensions a little. Roberta in D
"Anne Rogers" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:gsWdncOShOPnf8_anZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com...
Help me here, Roberta. I'm not following you. Since the dimensions will surely change, why would you measure before you quilt? Befuddled old minds need to understand, speaking for myself, of course. Polly
"Roberta Zollner" I just did a quilt this way. Measure for the borders before you quilt,
Because the piece of fabric you are sewing the border to is the same length it was before quilting the center. You have to match the length of the border to the length of the piece you are sewing it to. It's easier to measure before quilting. (BTDT)
Julia > Help me here, Roberta. I'm not following you. Since the dimensions will
I very carefully pin baste the center and then sew on the borders- if you quilt the center and then add the borders (with this method) you are asking for trouble with the shrinkage the quilting will create. Adding the borders before quilting will eliminate that problem. IMO
Leslie, Missy & The Furbabies in MO.
Wasn't planning on mitres, they did enter the plan at one point, but I worked out I didn't have quite enough fabric and would have had to reduce the rest of the quilt quite significantly to accomodate. I haven't rummaged around yet to see if I have batting, if I do it will be cotton! (I've a couple of packages that aren't, but they have specific tops to be basted to!).
Anne
That was what I was planning to do, not that it's going to be a heavily quilted project, I'll just stitch in the ditch, partly in the interests of speed and partly because the fabrics are so busy that very detailed quilting would be lost.
Anne
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