Central Ohio Quilter

I am making a quilt right now on which I have been planning on making a braid for the border.

In the middle of the night last night it dawned on me that the edges/sides of the braid will be on the bias! Is this going to be a problem? Am I going to be sorry that I have the bias edges on my border? Have you done this? Any suggestions?

katier825

Use lots of starch and stay stitch the edges.

QuiltnNan

you'll have to be careful while you are constructing the top. but when the quilt is sandwiched, the quilting will help stabilize the bias border.

Deborahlees

STAY STITCH....STAY STITCH....and see how much it stretchs....if perhaps it is really bad, try perhaps some interfacing/stabilizer under it......You know thinking about it.....depending on how big your quilt is, I may suggest you just do the whole thing on stabilizer......that should reduce the potential problem to zero.

Scissor Queen

Could not agree more!!! If your quilt has bias edges do what ever it takes to stabilize those edges!! I made a Carpenter's Wheel and didn't border it and I took it to a long arm quilter. It was a real mess when I got it back because the edges stretched here and there. Stabilize it!!! If I was going to do a quilt that ends up with a bias edge again I might even use a very lightweight one sided fusible interfacing cut into strips and fuse them along the edges. You probably wouldn't need more than about half an inch along the edge. It would seriously save you a whooooooooooooooolo lotta headache down the road.

Tartan

I would starch and stay stitch the edge. I would also use straight of grain binding and that will help "hold" the bias edges. You might get a few ripples in the edge but you could also cut a narrow strip of iron on interfacing to put along the edge if you are worried.

MTS

What they all said.
And I always say you can never have too much starch. ;-)

I remember years ago a friend calling me in tears because she couldn't get the borders on her Blooming 9-Patch to lie flat .
(The quilt is made up of over 250 3-3/4" blocks on point)
Turns out she used HST's instead of QST's for the setting triangles, so the edges on the queen-size quilt were all really unstable.
As in psycho unstable.
It was a nightmare.

But we chuckled about it.
After.

So even if you plan on putting another border on after the braid, I'd still recommend you stay stitching the outside braid edge.

PaperPrincess

What everyone else said, plus when you attach it to the quilt, use lots of pins. Find the center of the border and the center of the quilt and pin that, along with both corners. Then keep halving the distance between the pins on both the quilt and border and continue to pin.
Try not to let the border hang, or the weight of the fabric will pull it out of shape

AliKat

Also, is it possible to rework the pattern so that you aren't dealing with the bias edge when applying the border?

ali

quiltsRfun

I used a bias border on one of the first quilts I made before I knew I should be worried about stretch. I didn't have any problems. In fact, it's one of my favorite quilts. Try the suggestions above, especially starch. You'll never know until you try.