Originally Posted by PaperPrincess

You often stay stitch the perimeter of a quilt that has a lot of pieces in the border or the border is not cut on the grain but this is often done after the border is attached. As far as avoiding wavy borders, the best thing you can do is measure your quilt, cut the border to size & apply. Cutting it long, then sewing it on & whacking off the excess is not a good practice. Many people measure the quilt in the center, and both edges, then average the 3 measurements to get the border size.