Tippy

OK.. now I know that many of you want borders and are saying.. yah... but I want borders..... Here is where my "creative" math comes in.. and I frequently rely on little diagrams for my own use.
OK.. for the 5" border request I had .. here goes. I like my borders cut from the lengthwise grain of the fabric when I can. For purposes of this tute.. we're going with that.
Going back to our original assumption of 40" of "working" fabric across we're going to need 4 strips of whichever fabric you want for your border.. We are going to say we're using color B for the border..so the total length of the quilt is going to be ... at the most... and that's the best way to figure.. better to have a little left over than not quite enough... 13.5" (size of finished block after cutting, spinning and re-stitching) times 7 blocks long.. or 94.5" PLUS.. 9.5" (borders less 1/4" seam allowance on each) or 104"
This is where I take a couple of shortcuts.. and I have to tell you .. I don't mind having a little fabric left over.. you still have to bind this quilt.. and can use the leftovers in a pieced back.
We know for a fact our longest border needs to be 104"
You need that off the side of the "usable yardage".. so that 4 of those 5" border strips are going to reduce our usable width from 40" to 20"..
out of 104" x 20" usable piece of fabric we can get 84 squares.. I got that by figuring how many rows (5" squares into 104" piece of fabric equals 21 (ok so it has to be 105" long)... then take that times 4 squares across which is 5" square into 20" width of usable fabric. multiply the number of rows we have by the number of squares across and voila.. you have 84 squares. OK so far?
Now we know that we still need 168 squares of this fabric.. so just take 84 from 168 and we need 84 more squares.. Back to method #1.. we can get 8 squares across the full 40" so we divide 8 into 84 and get 10.5 and once again rounding that up.. we need 11 rows of squares.. since we don't want to piece them.. so 11 x 5" will be an additional 55" of fabric.
Adding the 2 yardages needed we find that we need a total of 160" of color B or 160 divided by 36.. you would need 4 yards and 16 inches of that color.. might as well say 4.5 yards..
To summarize you need
Color A: 3 yards
Color B: 4.5 yards
Color C: 1 yard.
I hope this is understandable.. as I said.. I make no pretense of being a Math person.. but it works for me.
Other border sizes can be calculated in a similar fashion. If you need individual help just give me a shout.. this pattern is pretty easy to figure.. I'm not sure I'd be as comfortable to calculate for more complicated patterns for anyone else.