Originally Posted by
janetter
"No problem, I thought. I’ll just sew and cut the pieces of the window, sashing and frame to fit. Although I’ve read multiple times, that you must know the size of your blocks and sash and cut your borders to the correct size. If you just sew them on, you’ll have extra fabric in your border. It’s a lap quilt, so how bad could it be? Bad enough to cause little tucks during the quilting."
I know this might sound nieve but can you explain this? I alway "sew to length" i guess is how I would describe it. I feel so silly, but it would explain one of my issues
When I learned to quilt from "The Complete Idiots Guide to Quilting", it was stressed that you didn't just cut a length of fabric for the border and pin it on to your quilt. But determine the length you need, add a couple more inches (if you are mitering the corners). Then start in the middle and measure and mark the border to the blocks. For example, if you had a quilt with 6-12" blocks and 7-3" sashes and you wanted the border to be 6 inches, you would cut a length of fabric (or create from several WOF) of about 109". Then, starting in the center of the border, mark out 1.5" each side. This would be for the center sashing. Then mark 12" to each side of this. Then sets of 3" and 12", etc. Now, when pinning the border, align the markings to the seam lines of the quilt. You would then have 8" on each end to make the mitered corner. (You should need only 6" but the extra is in case you didn't start exactly in the middle...)
I've always done this and the borders have laid flat and never had problems quilting. When I have multiple borders, I sew the borders together first, then attach to the quilt and mitered the corners. Except when I did a piano key for a baby quilt, Then I attached the sides and then the top and bottom. Still I measured and marked. This is the first time, since the blocks weren't a specific size, I just pinned fabric the the sides and then cut it to length. Did the same for top and bottom. Some how this process (for me) caused a little extra fabric. So where the side met the top there was a bit of a tuck. I did a little extra stitching at the edge of the tuck, making it part of the quilting design, so it would lay flat.
This is probably clear as mud.
My DH likes the idea of making it into a wall hanging. Looks like I'll be making him another quilt. I haven't used flannel before... wonder what type of mistakes would happened if I tried?