How do I quilt small (skinny) borders?
 

So, how do I quilt small borders ( one is about 1 inch the next one is about 2 inches). I am new at longarm quilting - I am about to quilt my french rose quilt. I will outline around the flowers, but not sure what to do with these borders? Do they even need quilting? I thought I might use my domestic machine and just do stitch in the ditch after I take it off the frame. Any ideas? What do you do on small borders. I have not mastered the feathers yet, mostly just do random - large stipple pattern .

I've see lots of little figure 8's, or a simple serpentine looks good, X's running down the sash, connecting leaf shapes

You don't necessarily have to quilt each border separately. You can do a design that incorporates both borders.

A single cable, egg and dart, simple loop, parallel lines, pumpkin seed. For the one inch border, if you have an embroidery function on your machine, you could run a pretty embroidery stitch down its length.

What was suggested to me recently was a double serpentine. Just run a wavy line the length of the border, rounding the corners. Then do a second wavy line over the first, not trying to match the first, just overlapping it. It looked great.

The small one I would highlight the seam either stitch in ditch or shadow line each side.
2 inch one I would do joined circles in opposite directions. Or twisted line one way the back up with twist making a boat shape.

Great ideas everyone and Tartan - thanks for sharing hte website, great tutorials on there!

That is a great link Tartan, thanks!

What batting are you using? How dense is the rest of your quilting going to be? The goal is to have the density fairly even over the entire quilt. Something to think about.