Raining Cats and dogs
Border #1 –
one side attached
3/15/2016
I spent a bit of time working on border #1 of raining cats and dogs.
I’m trying to be more precise and not do the hack and sew method. I don’t know if that’s what it’s called but I’m talking about the where you sew a long piece of border to a side and trim and then repeat at each border. I didn’t realize that this will distort the borders until I started quilting on Bailey, my mid arm. For some reason, I’ve been seeing and hearing long armers more and more talking about how to prep your quit if you send it off to long arm. Between a podcast (Daisy’s Lazy Daisy Quilts) and some bloggers I follow and even a recent Valley Modern Quilt Guild meeting, I keep getting information and each long armer has different preferences so it’s important to know what your long armer’s preferences are. I haven’t sent my quilts to a long armer before so they never had to deal with my quilts. But hearing what they had to say made me realize some of my issues when quilting. Anyway, now I’m trying to improve my technique in applying my borders onto my quilt and the first step is in the way I cut them. I cut strips for Raining Cats and Dogs’ border #1 and pieced each strip together. I measured one side of the quilt and cut the long strip of border to the measured side. Then I pinned and sewed. I’ve only got one side on but I’m hoping to get the other three on by the end of the week.
I was having trouble measuring the fabric so I could cut it accurately. I do not have a big enough space in my sewing room to be precise. Now that I write this, I guess I could have gone out and used the dining table. I’ll try that when I do the next 3 sides. But for the first side I measured it to be 46 1/8″ and I did my best to cut the border accurately. Like I said I need to be more precise. I pinned but it looked like I was about 1/8″ too long. I sewed it on and it was a bit too long. I still need to trim the bit of excess. Is that still considered hack and wack or whatever? I’m not sure. Let me know how you do it. I have a feeling I was trying to do this when I was tired and my brain wasn’t functioning right!
Linking with
🙂
~Melanie
If you measure across the middle and use that measurement for both sides, then measure again in the other direction and use that measurement for top and bottom borders, you wind up with a quilt that is generally flat and the corners meet. I think the worst quilt I had sent to me had a 7″ difference from the top to the bottom – there was just no way to fix that!
This is so helpful Susan! Thank you so much.