Border question

Do whatever pleases you! THERE ARE NO QUILT POLICE!

Hmm. Well, I'm kindof a symmetrical gal, I don't like diagonal furniture, pictures must be straight, etc. Guess I'll have to do the math to make them even, if it has to please me. Sigh.

In the words of my sainted little mother, "What in the Sam Hill are you doing?" struggling with a border on the Back of a Quilt? just wondering. Polly

Replied privately.

oh sure, go on TL, take away all our vicarious fun by reply'n 'privately'. if its good enough for Sam Hill and Ms Polly, then surely its good enough for the rest of us. :)) i was wondering why you'd fuss over a border on the 'back' as well. boing boing or should that read boeing boeing, jeanne snorfle

Sorry, dear. It just has to be perfect, and I was explaining to Polly why that was. If'n y'er on line, I'll IM ya, and explain to you too.

I've just done a backing with borders and pinned it ready for quilting. Never again. I suddenly realised that the quilting on the front borders could look odd on the back ones if I'm not careful. The back was pieced because I hadn't got a large enough pice of fabric for the back, so used a central ready printed block surrounded by 4" assorted toning squares and then a border.

quilt. Do the top/bottom

Seaside~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~uk

When the long arm quilters talked to our guild about preparing quilts to hand over, they recommended *against* backs with detailed edges because it's so hard to get them centered and make them stay that way. I piece some of my backs through necessity, but now I plan them so that if they are a little cockeyed it won't matter. I nestle the most intricate pieces in the center and leaves the edges pretty plain so if it shift a bit it won't be noticable. Using all horizontal stripes works well, too, with nice big stripes at the top and & bottom

-- like 10 inches or more.

susan kraterfield see my quilts: members.cox.net/kratersge

Susan & Sally - this is good info. I hadn't thought of the centering problem. Hmm. Back to the drawing board, so to speak. Thanks for the help

Howdy!

Centering is not a problem. I put a big safety pin in the center of the backing, and another along the center, outer edge of each side, matching that up w/ the center points of the quilt top when sandwiching/layering the concoction. As I pin baste I check & re-check that the pins are lining up. So far this has resulted in a centered back, after the (hand)quilting.

Good luck!

R/Sandy

IMHO, no the borders do not need to be the same. In fact, I really like the looks of different size borders, top & bottom different than side. I also like the pillow tuck on quilts altho it does make it impossible to turn the quilt around so the bottom is at the top! :-)

Marsha in Ohio

Thanks, Sandy. Although this will be machine quilted, that's a great method of lining things up.

And thanks to everyone else, too. Tonight, I finally figured out a way to only put borders on the sides, still only use what was in the stash, and actually *use up* one whole half yard of green. Yay. Only 10 thousand or so more to go. (1/2 yds of green, that is). I'll post a pic if anyone is interested in the back of a quilt that has given me a headache for 3 days. It will be done in about an hour, and then I can get it ready to send to the quilter!!

Marsha - I'm relatively new to this quilting thing, so I don't know what the pillow tuck is that you are referring to. Educate me, please?

Howdy!

Lining up the front & back to center everything is do-able w/ the pins, whatever the quilting technique. I added the "(hand)quilting" 'cause I've been told too many times that handquilting & pin-basting don't go together. Oh, yeah? Then there's my other s-i-l, the new quilter, who informed me a couple of months ago that hardly anyone does handquilting anymore, and that I'd work faster w/ a good sewing machine. I didn't hit her (my big brother was standing there); I just asked, "What's the hurry?"

Pics? I wanna' see!

R/Sandy --handquilter ;-)

Sandy, I commend your restraint on not smacking your SIL!! Good grief!! Just because hand quilting makes my hands hurt doesn't mean you shouldn't do what suits you. So, color me clueless, but why wouldn't pin basting and hand quilting go together? That so seems reasonable to me. And as soon as my DH gets home to hold the back up for me, I'll take a pic and put it up on my webshots. I'm really rather pleased with it if I do say so myself.

Well, I think I posted a pic in the quilt album, named Quilt_back. However, my connection failed in the middle of things, so I really don't know if it's there or not. Sigh!