Wow, I am so sorry your mentor is one of the dreaded quilt police. Actually she is worse, she is the next level up in being a quilt Nazi as you said. My best advice to you is throw out every lesson she has taught you that contain the words "never" "always" or "ruined".
As a LAQ I have seen borders with more waves in them than Waikiki beach and guess what, I have managed to quilt them out or put in a carefully camouflaged pleat and the quilt turned out beautifully. One was so bad, I simply removed the border, re-measured it and the quilt, cut it down, reattached it, and guess what the quilt wasn't ruined!
I guess like any teacher, you have to use a filter with the lessons. Use what will help you, consider other things and throw out the inflexible rules of "never, always, and ruin". Already this woman has done damage to your quilting karma by giving you border phobia.
Having done quite a bit long arming and prior to that hand quilting I can confidently tell you there is nothing wrong with poly thread and poly batting. I’ve used plenty of both. In fact you are placing limits and constraints on your quilting by excluding ANYTHING, be it thread, batting or even fabric. There are some absolutely gorgeous poly threads on the market. In fact there are some major award winning LAQ out there that refuse to use cotton thread and will only use poly or silk. Look up quilts by Margaret Solomon Gunn, she is one that avoids cotton thread due to linting issues messing with her tension. I bet this woman is one of those old schoolers who believes and perpetuates the myth that poly thread will cut through cotton fibers. Not true. This has been debunked by Superior threads. They market both kinds of thread so have no reason to push one fiber over another.
As far as your borders are concerned… There is absolutely nothing wrong with sewing two borders together and attaching them to your quilt. In fact true masters do this on a regular basis. You just have to miter the corners (which I have seen judges seem to favor that in shows) and measure and pin. Same with a pre-printed border fabric. So please, lose the phobia because you aren’t going to ruin all your hard work with a mistake in the border. Let go of the perfectionism and spread your wings and fly. I think you will be much happier. No human is perfect only God is perfect.
Last edited by feline fanatic; 02-11-2015 at 06:57 AM.