Rhonda

Last lesson we discussed and looked at how to put a quilt block together my way. Now I want to show you how I finish my hotpads. There are always lots of ways to do anything in quilting. I am just showing you my favorite way.

Here is one for border idea. I like to sometimes add a thin border of the same background fabric. This gives you a sense of allowing the design to float. It pops the design out from the background and makes it stand out more.

First we are going to add a thin border. I like to use a wide strip to sew on and then trim it to the size I want. the wider your strip the easier it is to reuse the leftover strip.

Cut 2 strips a bit longer than one side. sew them on to opposite sides. Open and iron the seams open. This helps keep it flat.

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2 side borders added
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Trim the border to your prefered size. Here I trimmed it to 1/2"
Notice that we get a thin border but we didn't handle a narrow strip to accomplish this.
It is really easy to put on a thin border this way and more accurate than if you cut the finished size border first and then sewed it on.

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Now trim the ends
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Add the other two borders the same way
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and trim them the same way also.
So now you have a 1/2" border.
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