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How to Make a Quilt Border: Cutting and Measuring
Diane HarrisDescription
Diane Harris talks about the problematic process of measuring and cutting borders. She teaches you a method that is fast, easy, and accurate, especially on large quilts. As an added benefit, it will help your quilt hang flat without wobbling borders.
The process of measuring and cutting quilt borders to the proper length can be problematic, especially if you're working on a very large quilt. To measure and cut borders for a quilt, I use a method that's fast, easy, and accurate. The bonus to this little technique is that it will help your quilt to lie or hang very flat without the dreaded wobbling borders. So today we'll use this small quilt top. It's a pattern called 'Asterisk' from Quilt Maker, to demonstrate how you measure and cut borders to the proper lengths. So first we'll measure and cut the side borders. So I have my two side border strips here. Each one is different. And I want to lay them across the center of the quilt, one right on top of the other. And if you were working on a very large quilt, you might actually be doing this down on your living room floor. And so a smaller cutting mat is helpful. And what you want to do is just slide the cutting mat underneath that edge of the quilt, and with a rotary cutter and ruler, you'll line the ruler up with the edges of the quilt center and you just slice that off. And then I want to make sure that everything's laying nice and smooth all the way across, and I'm going to do the same thing on the other end. I've slid my mat underneath this end, everything's all lined up and laying smooth, and I'm going to do the same thing on this end, and slice that off. So let's talk a little bit about how we would prepare to add these side borders to the quilt. You never want to just slap it on to the side and start sewing. You need a little more preparation than that. So an easy way to get everything distributed evenly is to find the center of a border. And that's easily done by just folding the border in half and making a crease with my fingernail. And then I'm going to lay the border right here on the side and we have an even number of blocks. So I know that the center is right here. And so I'll match the center seam line with that little crease that I just made and I'll match each end. And then I'll pin at the center, and at each end and at several places in between. Now this little quilt is working pretty well. The border is the same length as the side but it won't always be that way. Sometimes you'll have a little bit of either border or quilt center to ease into that scene. But the thing to remember is that when you go to the sewing machine and sew it on, whichever part is longer and needs to be eased in, it has some extra fullness that needs to be taken up. That is the part that you want to put on the bottom nearest the feed dogs of your sewing machine. So now we'll take this to the sewing machine and we'll add these side borders to the quilt in order to do the next step. So we're back from the sewing machine and we've added the side borders to the quilt and we've also pressed them nice and flat so that the seam allowances point toward the outside of the quilt. And now it's time to measure and cut the top and bottom borders. And so we want to, again, work in the center part of the quilt and we'll lay this across just like we did before, smooth it out real nicely and lay the other one right on top of it. And the reason you don't do this any sooner is because, of course you want to include the width of these two new borders in the cut length of the top and bottom borders. So I've got everything lined up nicely. And again, I just slide my small mat underneath here, and use my ruler and rotary cutter to slice this off. Then I'm gonna just move on over to the other side and I'll transfer my mat slide this under here. Similar system, double check that everything's laying nice and smooth, line up my ruler and slice these off. So now I have top and bottom borders that are the same width as the horizontal center of the quilt. And I'll use the same method where I will find the center of one of the border strips by folding in the middle and making a little crease. And here I have an odd number of blocks. So I know that the center point is going to be right at the center of the middle block. So my little crease goes right on top of there. And I'm going to pin just like I did before. And then I'll take this to the sewing machine to add the top and bottom borders to the quilt. So now you can see that we've added the top and the bottom borders to the quilt, and everything fits nicely. Everything lays flat, the borders aren't waving or wobbling. If I were to attach a sleeve to this quilt it would hang flat against the wall which is exactly what you want in your finished project. So this simple technique of measuring across one center first, trimming, adding the first two borders, then measuring across the other center, and adding the last two borders gives you a quilt with the sides, and the top, and the bottom, the same exact lengths as the vertical centers and horizontal center of your quilt. So from now on, when you use this method your quilts can lay perfectly flat.
I loved this video. I actually used this process today and it worked wonderfully.
You have such a smooth and calming voice. Thank you for easy to understand directions. Beautiful fabrics in the quilt! I've never thought to use different color borders on sides or top/bottom--very pretty!
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Why not attach border to quilt and trim at the end? Much faster without a need for a center.
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I learned some good things, but when the instructor put the border pieces across the quilt to cut, the border pieces were crooked in relation to the top/bottom. She did it with both top/bottom borders and sides.
I noticed that when you laid your strip down the center of the quilt, it did not lay "straight" accross the blocks (one end is higher on the reference block than the other by about 1-2") - does this make a difference?
There are times when my quilt measured longer from side to side on the top than from side to side in the middle of the quilt. How do I fix that?
Why bias seams on the border? As a long arm quilter, I find they are very problematic. They stretch and make the border ripple or wave. If there is concern about seeing a straight seam line, once quilted the line becomes unnoticeable. Your thoughts please?
The presenter should use good safety practices and close!!! The rotary cutter each time she cuts.