an old tip....that I had forgotten

I've been doing it this way for years. I got tired of trying to remember if I had measured 68-3/8 or 86-3/4. (Yeah, I could write it down. Pigs could fly, too, if they wanted to badly enough. *grin*)

Of course, I got a lot of exercise the other way. Measure, get up off the floor, walk to cutting mat in the next room, scratch head trying to remember measurement, walk back to quilt, get down on floor, measure, repeat several times.

Well duh! Thumping my own head here- how shockingly obvious is this! Roberta in D, about to go forth and measure more efficiently

"KJ" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:YtAKh.20659$PF.15522@attbi_s21...

Well, then.........why didn't you remind us all of this???? I've done the whole exercise thing exactly how you've described it...more than I care to admit. But no more!

Are you psychic, too? I have a tape measure sitting on the corner of my table (because I haven't yet put it away!!!) from doing exactly what you describe! I will try to remember the tip, too. Now, we have somewhere (your cutting mat) to look under if we lose something; where can we 'put for safety' all these things we must remember? >g< . In message , KJ writes

Maybe I should write it down and put it under my cutting mat too! Gosh, I'm so glad I wasn't the only one in the world who wasn't measuring with the border strips! I had this fear of 100 messages of "I ALWAYS do it this way" "I've never used a measuring tape." etc. I almost didn't write it. There were at least three of us not doing it that way. So I don't feel so alone!

-- < I don't know how to get rid of those and make my siggie higher. I've edited my siggie file several times and it still come out that way. Wasted space! Kathyl (KJ) remove "nospam" before mchsi

actually this is what I was doing, without ever being told, or having read it. But then a teacher told me that I should measure and work out what I want the size to be, so it's ok if it's off from the original measurement, but I might then pick a measurement that has all the blocks being small by the same amount, this then stretches the quilt where necessary and has the opposite sides being the same. I've just done this for a quilt that had gone a little wonky, as it was pieced arcs, I decided I was going to force the finished blocks to be 7 7/8 (they were meant to be 8) and then marked that on the border fabric and pinned at those places, there were only one or two that had to be stretched to do that, but the top lies much better now.

Anne

Then there's the way I do it, sometimes anyway. I just sew a bunch of strips together and then sew that on the quilt, trim off the excess, sew on the other side, trim off the excess. Then I do the other two ends the same way. No measuring, no getting up and down and it gets done just as fast. :)

Hugs, Tigg

If you edges have stretched or stretch as you sew, you are more likely to get rippled edges that way. If you measure through the middle, you will have a single measurement to fit your edges to. But you can usually get away with your method if you've sewn pretty carefully and are extra careful as you sew those strips on.

Well, DUH! I never thought of that! Thanks a bunch, KJ! I think you just saved me many steps and lots of frustration.

Hey, at least you were measuring!

I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard a quilter say she never measures the borders and doesn't understand why they don't lay flat. One piecer spread out her very wavy quilt top and asked for suggestions. I started with my helpful lecture about pressing and measuring, and she cut me off by saying "I don't have to measure the borders because I have a really good sewing machine. I spent almost a hundred dollars on it!" :-S

Oh my gosh.....I bet you were speechless! It's difficult to know where to start when confronted with that.

my jaw drops! did she have blinkers on in the sewing machine shop? besides, a good sewing machine can only take up a little bit of the slack of poor usage, I wonder what on earth she was hoping would be the answer if it wasn't going to be anything about the sewing, or the measuring!

Anne

Elves? Space aliens? A warp in the space-time continuum? I didn't think I wanted to find out. :)

LOL!

Thanks, Kathy - best laugh I've had for a day or so!

Maybe she and the sewing machine were a hundred years old? . In message , Anne Rogers writes