Border question
 

I'm making a mitered border for a large quilt. I will be using 2 borders and I plan on sewing the two borders together and then attaching them to the quilt.

Because my border lengths will measure 111" to accommodate the borders, I will have to piece both the inner and outer border - I don't have enough LOF to cut them in one hit.

Question ... should I "match" the seams of the borders (where it is pieced), or put the seams in two different places?

I like the staggered look because with my OCD the seams would have to match on the vertical and horizontal, across from each other that would make it just too hard......

I always try to separate my seams by as much as possible. Like calla, my matching would have to be perfect to make me happy, so I make it intentionally mismatched :) Also, I think the longer seam would tend to draw the eye, whereas the broken seams hide better.

In my humble opinion, it would depend on the colors of the two borders. How well do they match in color or pattern, and could you match them so perfectly as to have a straight line? I guess it really depends on you and what looks right. I think I would probably stagger them. But maybe someone will stop by with a better idea.

I always seam my border and bindings with a bias seam and the seams are not very obvious at all. I also stagger my seams. Rarely do I have a border that doesn't have a seam.

When I do multiple borders I sew them on one at a time rather than make my borders in layers and then sew them on. I measure the middle of my quilt and take this measurement to cut the length and then make my quilt fit that length, sometimes having to ease my quilt in a bit to fit. My quilts always lay flat and are square when I do this. I'm curious as to how you measure a the length of a border with multiple layers and still keep it from stretching. I'd like to know how others do it.

I always put the seams in different places.

I would stagger the border seams, they will not be noticed when attached and quilted. And, to answer. (Citrus county quilter).....when adding multiple mitered borders the borders are often stitched together then added to the quilt. The measuring does not change, other than you have to add the extra to form the mitered corners. If you are perhaps going to have (3) borders, like a 4" wide, then a 1 1/2" wide, then a 6" outer --the 3 borders would be sewn together into one unit, generally when mitering the corners you need the length of the quilt plus the width of the borders on both ends plus a bit extra for forming the miter, which is trimmed off when you do your miter. It is much, much easier to miter the (3 border unit) as one unit than to try to line up each one individually, when you do them all at once they automatically are lined up with each other.

I don't measure the borders. (Well, ok, I measure to ensure I have cut it to a generous length). I lay a strip out, and carefully place the next right sides together on top, marking the middle. Starting from the middle, I gently smooth the two fabrics out, being careful not to stretch either one, and pin about every 4-6 inches. Then sew, relying on the pins to prevent uneven stretching.

When it comes to attaching borders to the quilt top, I do similar to you - find the average (or expected) length. I usually then hedge my bets, cut the border slightly longer and do as above - lay border on quilt, pin at defined intervals and ease/stretch the quilt as necessary to fit. By "defined intervals" I mean that I mark the border at each block length and use that as a guide for pinning. The border is cut slightly long for those few cases where it's just not possible to smoothly ease everything in.

I think I'd make myself crazy if I tried to match the seams in the two borders! They would just have to fall where they may unless it was really close to a corner then I would probably try to move it by a couple of inches.