Borders, Borders, Borders - Episode 203

[Music] hi I'm Nancy Roth's mom with on points tutorials tips and tours we are at the point in our quilt making that it's about time to put the borders on so before I actually take you through step by step how to put the borders on your learn to quilt quilt I thought it would be fun to do a little quilt show on the table so I brought quite a few quilts from home it was very hard to decide which ones to bring because there was a lot to choose from so I tried to pick ones that have different interesting borders so I hope that you enjoy the show so the first quilt on the table is a quilt that it's going to show you the simple straight borders so with this quilt you're just gonna have horizontal borders generally speaking you're gonna put on your two side borders first and then the top and the bottom so this would be a traditional horizontal set border this next border is going to be a border with cornerstones but what makes this one extra fun is that the corner is not just a regular piece of fabric so oftentimes I find myself using a cornerstone border when I realize I don't have enough fabric for the borders so instead of the fabric having to go all the way across to the top I can cheat and put a border fabric or a cornerstone fabric here in the corner but with this one I took this stripe fabric and I laid the two squares together and sewed across the diagonal so it looks like I have a perfect miter border so I don't know what I would call this this would be a corner storm book corner stone border plus just because it's got that little bit of an extra little look there this is a really popular border and this is going to be a fun border to do when you have lots of scraps left over of the quilt when you're making it so this is a piano key border and the idea is you're just gonna take the leftover strips of fabric cut them anywhere from 1 to 3 inches wide it really wouldn't matter it'd be up to you and you actually just piece them all together into a long strip for the border so normally I'm gonna put on an inner border first and then I'm gonna put on the piano key border and I did that same kind of little trick with the corner up here so I get this perfect little mitre but I just took the two squares sold across the diagonal and it gives you that look that I actually pieced a perfect mitre what this is just a fun quilt so that's one of the reasons I wanted to show it so I was talking about the piano key using one two three inch strips well how about a six or eight inch strip so I've just used some of the fun fabrics that I had from the owl that from the fabric pack that I used for the owls and I just cut large pieces of it so it's just a fun border showing a lot more of the fabrics that came with the collection this is a quilt I made a long time ago for my husband and when I made it I love this piece border so you use the two shades of the green so this is a rectangle with a connecting corners triangle and then you have the dark fabric light fabric dark fabric light fabric and so it gives it that three-dimensional look but I mentioned my husband's very tall I think this quilt ended up being 70 inches square so I had to just add about 10 inches to both sides to make it long enough for him this is one of my favorite borders this would be a simple horizontal border but I put a table on it which totally bumps up the interestingness is that a word the the coolness of your quilt by adding a cable border to it instead of just a traditional straight border make the cables cutting the bias strips like I showed you earlier and in this case I use that 1/2 inch wide bias cable bar and I made these large cables and it really makes a cool border now this is one doing the mitre corner so this is gonna be a little bit more of a traditional not a cheater mitre like the other two that I showed you so here I've got the two pieces of fabric that are a miter in the corner now in this segment I'm not going to take you step-by-step how to do a mitre border we will do that at a later time though this border is very cool because not only is it a miter so starting all the way down here from the corner of the quilt I have one two three four fabrics all sewn together that creates the miter in the quilt and then I added the cable to that to give it really a lot of interest now I cheated on this cable I did not make this black bias cable this was a purchased clover black bias that oftentimes you'll see used in some of the stained-glass quilt making so I didn't make the bias but I did put it down and I machine applicate it down love the look of this miter border going all the way out now this last one my friend Marty took my learn to quilt class so this is the quilt that we've been making all along so in the back you see all the different pieces and parts that we've been working on well when Marty finished the quilt it actually stops here there learn to quilt quilt stops at this border makes it about 70 inches square well Marty decided she needed to have it big enough for a queen-size bed I am opposed and it's just a personal preference I am opposed to just putting a 20 inch border on a quilt to make it bigger I just don't like the look so her being my student I told her she couldn't do that that she had to come up with something more creative than just adding 10 or 15 inches to the edge of the quilt so she repeated the two borders that were done on the inside so went with the stripe and then a green and then for the actual border itself she recreated the rail fence blocks that were in the center of the quilt this quilts border is really really interesting so from here I'm gonna take you through step-by-step on how to do a straight border and a cornerstone border [Music] I have a quick tip for you on squaring up large blocks so for this tip you're gonna use freezer paper now freezer paper has been around for a hundred years farmers everywhere use it to wrap their a meat in it but you don't see it used very often and there was a time that they stopped making it but you're gonna find it pretty readily in your grocery store now so here's the idea so here we've got an applique block it's supposed to finish to 16 and a half inches but I don't have a 16 and a half inch ruler I have a 15 inch ruler and then I could also use a couple of additional rulers along with it so here's my six and a half inch ruler and if I line that up and then add the extra wide ruler to it that can get me to my 16 and a half inches and then of course I'd have to turn it and go the other way trying to Center up my appliquéd design inside of the square the whole time another way to do it is to buy a rather expensive twenty and a half inch wide ruler you can buy a square ruler that's twenty and a half inches it's a fabulous ruler and it's about fifty to sixty dollars so if you don't have the extra funds to buy the extra-large ruler this technique uses freezer paper which is really inexpensive and just end this is a nine and a half inch square ruler I'm gonna take the freezer paper I just cut myself off a chunk and I folded it nice and neat so now I have it folded to half the size using my nine and a half inch square ruler I'm going to line up the two folded edges at eight and a quarter inches because eight and a quarter plus eight and a quarter is sixteen and a half inches which is the size I need whoops I've moved a little bit stay still and then because I like to use the paper as registration marks on my quilt also I'm gonna add a couple of diagonal folds to it so now I have a sixteen and a half inch square a freezer paper I can go to my appliquéd like freezer paper has a waxy side which is the shiny side and then the paper side which is the dull side and I'm gonna line it up centering up my block underneath the freezer paper then I'm gonna press the freezer paper down that waxy side is actually gonna melt a little bit of that wax so that the wax will hold on to the applique piece now we come back to our cutting surface with the freezer paper down on my block I can now line up the edge of my ruler on top of the edge of the freezer paper trim and go all the way around the block trimming it off to the size that I need two more sides it's just a little smidge of a side here peel off the freezer paper and voila my block is all squared to the 16 and 1/2 inches that we need for the learn to quell well so I'm going to take you through some steps on cutting and piecing your borders we're going to start with the cutting of the borders and how you might do that there's a couple of different choices that you have here so I have that block that we've squared up and I've chosen these two fabrics to be the border for it so I'm going to have a little one-inch gold border and then this plaid border on the outside so to start with the one and a half inch first border I want to kind of remind you a little bit about power cutting here's my six inch ruler I'm gonna line it up on the horizontal of the fabric square that edge off turn it around now I'm going to line it up at six inches then I can scooch it over to four and a half now two three and finally to one and a half inches so now I have four pieces of my border cut at one and a half inches now the next border I want to use for this design is a plat now working in the quilt shop I had a lot of customers come in that were afraid of using plaid because using plaids the way that they're made when they're printed or woven it's very it's actually easy to get the lines be straight but you have to know how to do it so I'm going to show you on this gray and white plaid because I think it'll be very clear when I show it to you here's my fabric rolled up just the way I always do with the two salvages together to the fold so I've got four layers of fabric I'm going to cut this piece into a one and a half inch strip just like we cut that gold fabric so line it up on the horizontal line of the ruler turn it around and I'm going to cut one and a half inches off of this this is where the problem comes in do you see what that design is doing when you use a plaid fabric and you cut it the width of fabric no matter how much you have paid for that fabric it has nothing to do with the quality of the fabric although I always want you to be using high quality fabrics but don't think that it's the fabrics fault anytime you have a stripe or a plaid fabric that's going the width of the fabric that line is gonna run off the edge it's just not possible for it with the width of fabric to run straight so this is what you need to do you need to take your fabric and unroll it from the way that we've been using it up till now and fold it length of grain together so I've unfolded it and here's my 40 40 some inches of fabric I'm gonna fold it one more time so my salvages are at the very top and at the very bottom now I'm gonna fold it just like I always do from the left side here's my selvage edge nice and straight I'm gonna line up my ruler on the horizontal line at the fold turn it around now I'm gonna cut that same one and a half inch strip look at the difference all right those lines are running pretty true I've got a little bit of lankiness up here but overall that's a fairly true straight line compared to the one that we cut the width of fabric so when you're using plaids or stripes in your quilts anytime that the piece is going to be big now if it's in the block it doesn't matter it's a two inch square no one's gonna notice that for two inches if that line actually doesn't run true but when you're using it in a sashing or a border it is really important that you actually cut these fabrics the length of the green so that you can get that line to be much straighter so now going back to the red fabric that I want to use for this little block I've already folded this fabric length of green line up my little designs there and I want to cut this one a little bit wider so they line up on the horizontal line square the square it off first now I'm gonna cut three inches so again I'm gonna use power cutting gonna start at six inches and then go to three inches so now I have the strips that I need for piecing the borders onto this little block next I'm gonna show you how to actually sew these blocks together for making them very long for when you have a larger quilt now I'm going to show you how I actually piece the border strips together if your quilt is small you probably don't need to do this but you're gonna make bigger quilts and when you make bigger quilts you oftentimes have to piece the borders together I'd like to start by saying I almost always piece the borders on the diagonal and I do that because I think it's less noticeable in the quilt but it will waste a little bit of fabric so you want to kind of keep that in mind so let's say I've got some short strips and I need to piece them together you're gonna start with the strip the right sides up so I'm looking at the good side of the fabric my next strip is gonna go right sides down on top of that and I overlap it I on purpose I'm having it overhang a little bit so I can very clearly see the start and to stop for my stitching line now on a small piece like this I don't normally pin it or drop it I want to show you how you would do that if you wanted to gonna line up my ruler going from the top left to the bottom right and draw a diagonal line then you can take your pins and put a pin into in there now I'm gonna take this to the machine to sew it in a minute I want to show you what it looks like when you're doing a larger piece so this is that six inch wide piece that I cut same idea you're gonna line it lay it down right sides up you can see the selvage edge here this is the other piece that I need to piece to it right sides down so the selvages themselves are overhanging now I'm gonna use my ruler go from the top left to the bottom right and draw my diagonal line now when a strip of when the border strip is actually wider like this I will actually draw the line I want it to be straight if it's not straight it's gonna bow right in the center and I don't want that in the middle of my quilt and one more before we actually go to the Machine what about when it's a plaid I've talked about cutting plants and when you're working with the plaid if you try to piece it on the diagonal like the other ones the chances of you getting that diagonal to match up and actually be nice are pretty slim so if it is a plaid or striped fabric I actually will line it up straight edges and I'll look at the design you see if you can see this I'll try to line up the design so that the design lines actually match up and then I'll pin that and when I'm sewing this and will actually choose a design line in a matching color thread and actually sew right on that line with the plaid or striped fabric you're gonna get a better look that way now we're gonna go to the sewing machine and sew these other ones together so coming over here I set my machine up with a like colored thread now in this case I used black that is not a light colored thread but I want you to be able to see what I'm showing you so for a gold fabric like this I'm gonna put a gold thread in my machine for a creamy or tan color thread like this I'm gonna put a tan colored thread because of the way that the seams gonna work and I want it to be as as unnoticeable as possible I want to try to use an like colored thread so we're gonna take that gold piece that we did I've got my pins in it and here's my diagonal line going across I've got my leader in already oh the other thing with my sewing machine is I'm gonna shorten the stitch length so on this machine I set it to a 2.0 stitch length and I'm gonna sew on that diagonal now because I'm generally trying to do more than one thing at a time I actually can chain piece these together picking up the next one right sides down the next one going on top of it right sides up and then right sides down spin it around chain piece now this is a short one so I don't really need to draw that line pick up another one lay it down so do you see how quickly I can do that not that I'm trying to rush it through the quilt making process it's just one of those things that can make the process go a little bit faster so you can get to the end stage of your finished quilt I'm gonna bring my ender and cut this part so you can see here with them lined up together that I've sewed on that diagonal now I'm gonna do the big one so here's the big one that I laid down I drew that diagonal going all the way down and let's cut her off so the next step is the pressing of it the reason that we want the smaller stitch length and the like colored thread is because when you're piecing a border the best way to get it to be as known as least noticeable as possible is to press that seam open so I cut off the fabric just a little bit past the seam allowance or the stitching line and I'm gonna press it open so even with the black thread because I use that small stitch length it's gonna be very hard to see the stitching line between here so I'm gonna do the same thing with the gold and then we're gonna start actually piecing the border on our quilt so here is a tip on preparing your fabric the length of grain so here's my little quilt I've got it designed out and this is the fabric that I want to be on the border but I don't want it to be the width of fabric I really like the design the length of green so I'll have this prepared lengths of grain and then these will be my cornerstones but here's the trick it's the idea of preparing the fabric lengths of grain instead of cutting it so I'm gonna open the fabric completely out and I'm going to nip it so I'm gonna nip it at the selvage then I'm gonna measure in this case let's say oops got turn that around let's see I'm gonna make it a 5 inch border I'm gonna nip it at 5 I'm gonna measure it again nip it at 5 measure again snip at 5 one more time 1 2 3 and 4 now I told you real early on in one of the very first episodes about the way that they make fabric that the length of grain is going to be very very straight well because of the way they make the fabric very straight length of grain that also means that you can tear the fabric perfectly straight now traditionally when I do this and I'm in a class I'll have students gasping oh no she's tearing the fabric yep and I'm doing it on purpose so this is a couple of things that people don't like about when they're tearing their fabric is that it curls the edge a little bit well that's okay I'm just gonna press it and that'll straighten that edge right out the other thing that they'll say is that it distorts the edge well it doesn't distort more than a quarter of an inch and sees how my seam allowance is gonna be a quarter of an inch I'm okay with that one thing I really love about it is that there's no frayed edges this one long piece will come off these others um little threads they won't fray off so along with the idea of having the length of grain on the outside order border so that it does not stretch I also like it because I can rip it hope you liked that tip [Music] [Music] you

Channel: OnPoint-TV and Quilting with Nancy

Views: 61,605

Rating: 4.9164395 out of 5

Keywords: OnPoint Tutorials Tips & Tours, quilt tutorials, quilting tutorials, Nancy Roelfsema, Learning to Quilt, quilting, sewing, putting a border on a quilt, perfect quilt borders, how to quilt, free online quilt class

Id: B6nqt-NVpj8

Length: 25min 40sec (1540 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2017