Tackling the Borders
The day has come, we are ready to finish this. Start by cutting your inner and outer border strips. In my case I need to piece them on the diagonal to make the required lengths. At this point I always add an extras few inches more than I need. The quilts dimensions have probably shifted slightly compared to the pattern’s diagram, so I like sewing longer strips than I need and then trim to the corner.
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Sew the inner borders on first – that’s right, just the border fabric, no batting. Should be a pretty easy join, but pin if you feel it’s necessary. Trim the excess length off. Once the inner borders are on, sew on the outer borders. Press the seams away from the batting or towards the darker fabrics.
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Now you have the whole top made. The majority of it is already quilted. The borders are flimsy with no batting behind them yet. Give the top a nice pressing along the border and everything ship shape.
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Now cut strips of batting about 1” wider than the inner and outer border combined. About 8” in my case. I folded the batting up so I could cut long strips easily. I would never cut fabric this way, but for our purposes here, no big deal if the strips are a little wonky. Cut enough to go all the way around the quilt.
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Clean off the dining room table. Plan on eating out tonight. We need a large space to lay this out. Flip the quilt right side down and start laying the batting strips behind the borders. Butt up the strips with the batting in the already quilted blocks.
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If you are having a hard time keeping those batting strips lined up, try using some fusible tape overlapping the seam. Just go along the where it the batting butts up with the quilt and secure. I try not to use the tape myself - mainly because I feel the quilt needs to shift around a little when quilting the boards and the fusible tape gives me the puckers. That being said, this part is gonna be kinda aggravating anyways.
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Now for the backing fabric. This quilt is rather large, and I had to piece the backing fabric together to get it to cover the back. You know what? Piecing backing fabric is pretty liberating. I could care less about a straight seam back there. By the time I’m done, my seam allowance may be a good 5”! Who cares - I’m almost done! Plus, nobody besides another quilter is going to look at the back, They won’t even notice because they will be in awe that there is NO QUILTING lines on the back. That’s right, the quilting lines don’t show. Did you have tension problems while free motion quilting? No worries, they are hidden. Did you get a few squirrel nests knotted up back there? Don’t even think about breaking out the seam ripper – no one is going to see it! Sure it’s fun to see the quilting lines, but I can be such a slacker. I’d rather have all my mistakes hidden.
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Continued in next post...