Removing borders
 

I made a quilt for my son and daughter-in-law a few years ago. It was extensively pieced and a California King size, quite large. I did a small border of solid beige fabric about 2 inches and then added a second border 4 inches and then the binding. The small solid beige border fabric was purchased at a quilt shop. I am very upset because this fabric is shredding and I don't know how to repair this quilt. It is just this fabric that is shredding. I guess I will have to cut the borders off and replace them with a new border and then quilt the borders. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Thanks so much for any ideas.

Never tried anything like this before, I wonder if it would be possible to cut away any of the shredded border and cut a border to fit over this one, iron the seam allowance under and kind of applique it over the old one...just a thought. I would just top stitch it onto the old one then maybe quilt it with something that blends in. I hope you get the perfect answer from one of our quilting experts.

I actually had that problem once and I cut a new border and appliqued it on and nobody was the wiser. Sharonve

I haven't had it happen (knock on wood) yet. I would cut a new border and applique it over the old one if it wouldn't show through

I agree with the suggestions of putting a new boarder over the old one as an applique. Too much trouble to take apart and have to requilt it. Only you and the rest of us will know.

This exactly what I would do, except that I would hand applique rather than topstitch (because of personal preference - topstitching would work perfectly well). But I am sorry that you have to!

Alison

I would not take it apart either but rather add the new border on top. Did you SID the old border? You could try to sew the new one over the existing SID line.

That would be my suggestion.

How disappointing! I agree with appliqueing over the present border. Good luck.

clip out what you can and add a new one over as suggested. Good luck!!

I would also just put the new border over the old one. I'd do a 'flip and fold' for the first seam, then fold under the opposite edge and top stitch close to the fold.

How would you apply this to a quilt that is too wide? Bought a different mattress, and quilt is now more of a bedspread.

There's nothing wrong with having a quilt that is too wide for the bed - I use Queen or King bedspreads on my Full bed all the time, but if you don't like the look then you would have to cut down the borders and put on a new binding.

It drags on the floor and hides the bedskirt. It's a Fun and Done and it's heavy. I went from an innerspring mattress to a memory foam on a trundle bed. There's no box spring.

I would put a new border over the first quilt and no one will know.

You can try un sewing the seam that joins the 2 blocks, but you would probably have to unsew the top stitched portion of the block you are removing to get to the seam. You can always just cut it off using a rotary cutter at a logical place in the block pattern and bind the raw edge.

That does sound like the easiest way of dealing with it. Since I now have EQ5, I can set up the same size blocks as the patterns I'm interested in and see what I have to adjust before buying supplies instead of taking the pattern size as gospel.

Stuff used to be standard sized, but I've seen quilt sizes run the gamut on width. None seem to specify drop.

Thank you so much everyone for your suggestions. I am going to try to sew a new border right over the old one the way PaperPrincess suggested a flip and sew. The funny thing is I just did a search looking for answers to repair the inner border hoping someone else asked this question and found some solutions. I started reading the post that came up from March 2013 about replacing borders thinking to myself wow this person had the same problem. I started to laugh when I realized it was my post that I had already asked about. LOL That is how long I have been putting off repairing this quilt. I forgot that I had already asked about this a long time ago. Thanks again to all.

To Weezy Rider: I made a beautiful blue and yellow quilt for my guest room. After it was almost completed (binding was not finished) it was way to large for the bed. I just cut off equal amounts from each side and then put the binding on. Since it was already quilted I used the extra that I had cut off and made pillow shams to match. The quilt was way to busy for me so I put a white quilt on the bed, folded the blue and yellow quilt at the bottom and with the matching shams it is just the right amount of color for me. Happy accident. You could just remove the binding cut the amount off that you need to make it fit now and use the extra for some throw pillows or shams like I did.

I agree with Sharonve - I just put a new border piece in and top stitched it. Looked nice and could have been done by hand but since it was for a child's bed, I machine sewed it. The mother (my sister) loved it and the kid didn't notice it a all.