Sunday, May 8, 2016

Long Borders - how do you measure them?

Long Borders.  Seems like I always have a hard time measuring for them.  I use a retractable tape measure but today I thought of something very simple but very helpful.

I taped the end of the borders to where the wall and floor meet.  Then stretched out the borders and tape measure, and marked where I needed them to be.  The scrappy border was from 18" x 4 1/2" pieces cut from fat quarters, which was about the largest I could get.  It worked out great for my 95x104" king quilt.  I just had to cut a tad off the end.  It fit on the quilt perfectly. What other ways do you measure for borders?

Usually I stretch the quilt across my machine roller and measure horizontally in the center.  This was way too big for that. I tried to be very careful with my 1/4" seam and when squaring up the blocks so I didn't even measure the quilt, but calculated the width and length. I know I took a chance, but it worked out great.

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