Borders!

hi i'm donna jordan from jordan fabrics today we're going to be talking about putting borders onto your quilt I like borders I almost always put borders on to my patchwork and I get a lot of questions from my customers how much fabric do I need how do I get my borders on smoothly so that they don't ripple or pull so today we are going to take a small quilt that I've got already we're going to cut the borders we're going to stitch them on so let's go over to the work room I have my quilt top patchwork all done and it's iron's nice and flat so the first step is to measure it both ways and then write that down and then get some ideas what you wanna do for borders I'm going to use I'm going to use about a three inch of this light and a two inch of the red and then about a five inch of this black one so I'm going to cut the borders and then I'm going to lay them out again and make sure that the proportions look good with the quilt so let's look at the measurements we need so we know how much fabric to use my quilt top is 38 by 53 and I almost always draw this out and I'm not drawing the borders to scale I'm just putting three borders around here I'm not going to miter the corners on this so I'm just going to be sewing them on straight you would need a little more yardage if you are going to miter the corners so since the quilt is 38 by 53 this is 38 this is 53 and my borders are going to be cut three inches two inches and five inches so they're going to finish two and a half one and a half four and a half so this first border is going to be 53 this next border is going to be 53 long plus two of these widths so I'm just going to do 50 three plus two and a half twice so this is going to be 58 that's 58 right there the next quarter is going to be 58 plus the width of the second quarter twice I know it's a lot of math but this will tell you how much fabric you need okay now to get this border length here it's going to be 38 plus the width of the first border twice so we've got 38 plus five is 43 the next one is 43 plus the width of the middle border twice and the last one is 46 plus the width of the outside border okay so now we've got all the numbers we need since my borders are going to be the same width all the way around all we have to do is add 43 twice and 53 twice to get the length of the whole border border so we're going to need 192 inches and I'm going to divide that by 40 inches because 40 inches is usually the useful amount I can get out of the width so I need 4.8 pieces so I'm going to need five pieces because you got to round up five pieces at three inches now I'm going to the same thing for the other numbers here so I know it's a lot of math but it doesn't really take that long we're going to need six pieces here and we're going to need six pieces of the outside so now you can see if you need five pieces at three inches you're probably going to get 5/8 of a yard six pieces at two inches that's 12 inches wide you might get 3/8 of a yard here going to need 30 inches I'm probably going to get one yard so that gives you an idea on a small quilt exactly how much yardage you need we have a lot of customers come in the store and they just get a yard of everything or two yards and everything and that's great because you can add that to your stash but this is how you figure it out exactly so let's cut our yardage off the bolts get it ironed up and stitch it on to the quilt I've got my fabric cut off the bolt and steam pressed it's always a good idea to steam press it very very flat so you know there's no wrinkles in it that way when you cut it it'll be really really accurate so I need five strips at three inches so I like to fold it over and cut a few more layers at a time so I've got it lined up nicely along one of these lines here and folded real straight so that when I cut these borders and open them up they will be straight and they won't have a little elbow in them I'm going to use my weight here to help hold my plastic measuring stick here and then I'm just going to cut I have all of the borders cut here now we want to see if we like them with the quilt I always pick out fabrics I like with the quilt but sometimes when I get them cut I will change my mind so I'm going to slide this over just a little bit so we can see what the finished size is going to look like because with these have seam allowances so let's move this out of the way here we're going to have about that's going to be our approximate finish sizes and I do like the proportions of this but remember if you lay your strips out for borders and they don't look good or they fight with your Patrick you might decide you know I really don't want a light border on that I only want to read in the black and that's okay I always audition them right next to the quilt to make sure I like them since I do let's take to the sewing machine and start sewing them on to the cloth now we need to sew all of these into one long strip so we're going to sew these short ends together so the first one I'm going to flip to the back I'm going to take these two pieces and I'm going to take a generous seam allowance because we've got a wide selvage here and we don't want any of that selvage in our quilt so I'm going to go in about an inch I'm going to leave it on the machine I'm going to grab the next one so it's straight I'm going to do that for all of these pieces and then I'm going to trim off all the excess seam allowance alright that's the last one so I'm going to trim this down to a quarter inch seam and I'll just snip these apart at the same time this will get all that extra bulk out of the way and then we are going to finger press all of these seams open and that will keep them really really flat we're going to open all these seams and just finger press them nice and flat so I'm going to do that with every one of the seams and that way we are reducing the bulk as much as we can around the edges now I'm just going to sew together the next border color and I'm going to do this for all of the borders so a nice big seam so it nice and straight and then trim it down to a quarter inch now that my borders are all in one long piece here I'm just going to start sewing it on now if you're not comfortable starting to sew right away you can measure your quilt traditionally you would measure the quilt and you would measure the border to that exact length and then pin it on I've shown so many borders on that I know this is going to work without doing that so the trick is to not stretch the border as you sew and not stretch the quilt as you sew so we're just going to start and then we will check as we go and make sure nothing is rippley or being pulled so I don't want that selvage on there so I'm going to just fold this and cut that off so it's nice and straight you want a nice perpendicular cut there so we're going to start at the top of the quilt and we are going to use a quarter inch seam and we are going to carefully sew this on to the quilt so you do have to go somewhat slow and careful on this first border because we're sewing a border on to patchwork so you don't want to pull this too hard you don't want to stretch this you want to lay them right down on top of themselves with no stretching and we're going to do this all the way around the quilt so you can see we've got the scene in the border here and you just sew right over it and you keep it open now every seam on the quilt was ironed a certain way so you want to keep those going the way they were ironed when you sew your border on now I'm coming to the end of the border here to the end of the quilt and I'm going to sew right off the end so I'm just going to keep going and then I'm just going to veer off now to cut your border at a 90 degree angle the easiest way is to fold this back on itself so that you can see that the edges are lined up and this edge is even with the edge of the quilt and then put your scissors in there and then put the blade up against there and cut now you've got a nice 90 degree angle and it's perfectly lined up now I'm going to finger press these seams toward the border they want to go towards the border naturally because we've got a lot of seam allowances over here so this is an important step open it up draw your fingernail down it and it will lay just the way you want it to go now we're going to go around all the other sides with this exact same border so we're going to start right here we're going to start filling the first border is all the way around the quilt and I'm starting on the second border here you use the same procedure again don't stretch anything now this one will stitch up a little faster because there's no seam allowances or any Patrick here it's just a nice straight border you just want to be really careful the whole way around that you don't stretch anything you just lay the pieces right with their edges right next to match strip really nicely and then sewn I'm ready to start the last side of this border and right at the beginning here I've got this small piece and I don't like to have little pieces if I can help it for on the border so I'm just going to cut this off because I've got plenty of length and then we won't have to have one little piece there right at the beginning and if I came to the end and the same thing happened I might move that same way up so I don't like a little piece right near the corners it just looks neater this way I'm coming to the left bit of the last border here will cut this off and then we'll finger press this border and then we are going to lay the quilt up and take a look at how the borders came out all of the borders are stitched on there just finger pressed I haven't even ironed them yet but look at how flat their length so the borders are nice and flat and this is what you want to give your long armor you don't want a bunch of extra border here and you also don't want it pull tight so there's a bunch of extra middle you want it nice and flat like this your long arm will love you if this is what you give them I'm just going to take this over to the ironing board and make sure my team are nicely pressed out here and then we're going to put it on the machine and get clipping thanks for watching our tutorial today on how to put borders onto your quilt we will have a tutorial showing you how to make this exact pattern also so check back in a couple of days thanks for watching happy quilting [Music]

Channel: Jordan Fabrics

Views: 170,642

Rating: 4.9382558 out of 5

Keywords: Quilt, quilting, quilts, 12 block, log cabin, fabric, fabrics, pre cuts, table runner, table runners, sew, sewing, log cabin 12 blocks, Jordan Fabrics, Jordan's, jordan, floating point, Floating Point, North Star, north star, Donna Jordan, Matt Jordan, Patterns, Pattern, Trade, Winds, trade winds, batik, Batik, Bali Batik, bali batik' sister's choice, Borders, border, tutorial, Donna, Matt

Id: rl7a4eUA22s

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 05 2017