My two cents on this subject.....I'm a member of the square everything as you go club. ie, every block, every border, every section. It does take a little longer, but I am fixing any problems as I go. After I take it off the long arm, I use my ruler to line up my last borders and try to keep the same border width for the last outside border while trimming. Then I sew on my binding. I'm never totally perfectly square but I'm not usually off more than a half inch on a lap size or maybe an inch on a King. One of the keys is keeping it square on the long arm frame, and I have a very good eye for that. Having said that, I don't like pieced tops that don't have borders. It makes it too stressful for me trying to keep the stitched blocks square and together as I am quilting it, so a lot of patterns that are without borders as designed, will have one or more, when I get through sewing it.
I know the technical ways to do it, but I don't quilt for shows and my family cannot tell if it's off by an inch or two and don't care. And, by the time you wash it the first time, unless you square it up again, it is going to pull where it wants to anyway.
Last edited by Barb in Louisiana; 01-10-2015 at 06:30 AM.