Originally Posted by
cherriot
To cut the top/bottom border, I take the width of the quilt top x the desired width of the finished border plus .5 for seam allowance. The sides totally confuse me because of the seam allowances.
Your formula doesn't make sense to me. You said width of quilt top x desired width of finished border plus half an inch for seam allowance. So if your top was 50" and the border was 6", you would ADD, not multiply.
Let's say you're going to sew borders onto the sides (east and west) of your top.
border + quilt + border = 6 + 50 + 6 = 62".
Now, all the plus signs (+) in the above equation are where there are seam allowances. If you're sewing quarter inch seams, that means the seam is taking in half an inch (.25 for the border fabric and .25 for the quilt top, which equals half an inch). There are 2 pluses in the equation, half an inch for each one, for a total of 1 inch. So after sewing on both borders, the finished width of the quilt should be 61".
Now you add the borders to the top and bottom (north and south) sides of your top.
6 + 61 + 6 = 73"
Your top & bottom borders should be cut at 73" long.
Does that help?