Dilys The Quilt: BLOG 110

This week I have been enjoying the Olympics and rejoicing in our continued success as a nation. On Saturday (4th August) I was emotionally drained during a day of athletics which saw Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford bring home gold medals. I don’t think I can take any more excitement today! I have become a sports geek too, along with the rest of the UK. And I have to say for the record that I do have abs like Jessica Ennis, but I wrap them up in copious rolls of adipose to protect them!

Signature Quilt

I have managed to get my friend’s birthday signature quilt together and want to concentrate on the border now. At this stage it measures 45 ½” square.

Signature quilt

There is room for more signatures and once the border has been attached, I will hand it over to her to collect more from friends and work colleagues who were unable to attend her party.

Signatures and spaces

I want to make simple border from strips of both fabrics but I’m not quite sure yet what I am going to do. So I have cut some of the Batik at 9 ½” x 2” (the size of the star block) and the cream at 3 ½” x 2” (the size of the individual squares) to have a play.

Strips

I joined some of these strips together and auditioned them around the edge of the quilt to see how they looked.

Suggested border

Seeing it on the wall like this, I felt it didn’t look quite right because it took away the delicacy of the points around the outer edge of the blocks. So I then decided that a cream border was needed to give a breathing space between the blocks and the fragmented border. As the cream fabric is 44” wide, I needed to join 2” strips together to give me the required lengths. This is done on the diagonal as shown below.

Diagonal seam

Remove corners

To prevent wavy borders on a quilt, always measure through the centre of the quilt and cut the borders to this length.

Measure through the centre

Seam allowances vary fractionally during sewing, so borders sometimes don’t finish accurately. Fabric also stretches with ironing and the outer edges suffer the most. I am as pleased as punch to report that my 15 x 3” squares have resulted, with seam allowances, at exactly 45 ½”, and here’s the proof (shame in my moment of glory that the pic is not focused!!)

Measurement

I add the cream borders to the quilt before sewing. First I secure the corners, then the centre points and then I add several pins in between. These pins are always at right angles to the seam for easy removal. I sew with the seam allowances uppermost so that the border strip is on the machine table. This means that I can double check the direction of the seams. A coloured corner square completes the first border.