A friend asked for help. She does hand quilting and assembled some embroidered blocks into a quilt as per customer's request. Did the hand quilting and bound the quilt. The customer was thrilled.....until she put it on the Queen size bed.
It did not fit! She wants 8 inches added to each side.

How would you solve this problem? Would the strip added to each side have to be 3 layers? and quilted. Would you remove the binding? or would you find another way to attach it to the quilt. The owner is buying fabric to make the extensions.

My solution was to tell the customer to make a dust ruffle to tuck between the mattress and box springs. Perhaps there is another solution.

Ok, let's hear your solution to this problem.

June in Cincinnati
for Joyce in Missouri

I like to use a dust ruffle & have the quilt come just down to the ruffle. If they get extra fabric, the dust ruffle would be coordinated & should look great.

I use a dust ruffle!

i would put a "ruffle" on three sides of the quilt maybe. it might look cute. otherwise I would take off the binding and add the extra fabric in all three layers. in maybe a round about quilt as you go fashion maybe?

She could make this quilt a wall hanging and make a different larger quilt for her bed.

lots of work, but you could........ remove the binding and use quilt as you go technique to add a border.

Use it on a smaller bed!

I vote for the dust ruffle! Yikes, adding to it would all a whole bunch more time on your part.

I'll have to check into the quilt as you go method. I have a wallhanging that needs to be a lap quilt.

Hi June and Joyce,

I would tell the customer to get and use a dust ruffle when using this quilt. Since it appears that you made the quilt according to the customer's instructions you did what was requested. In this case though the customer did not have clear instructions. She should have included a total size of the quilt for you before you started. You could have clearly determined then that additional width would be needed for sashing and the borders.

This is a case where the customer should learn by her lack of thought prior to having the quilt assembled and hand quilted. She should have made sure she was going to have enough of the quilt to hang down on each side of the bed for what she desired. This she clearly did not do. I would ask her did she measure any of her other quilts or bedspreads?

Hand quilting the assembled quilt and binding has been a lot of dedicated work to complete. I'm not sure what you charged if anything but having to undo the binding and increase the size of the quilt is also an enormous task. I'm not sure I would want to tackle the job. I would want to determine if adding the additional borders all around the quilt top would in the end look like a second thought to the quilt. It can be done but doing so would need to be your decision alone.

If you are not sure that you can remove the binding and add to the quilt and still have the quilt look and still keep the integrity of your previous work then I would probably not attempt the task.

Good luck as you make your decision.

Pam M