How do you border?

I was recently quilting one of my quilts, and ran into a small issue at the bottom- my border wasn’t laying flat. Then I remembered I sewed on the border, then trimmed it to size. Maybe I should have measured first, then sewn it on? Is there really that much of a difference? I wanted to figure out which way really would be better, so I made two test squares.

1: For the first square, I measured two border strips, pinned at each end and the middle, and sewed them on to the sides.

2: Then I measured two more border strips, pinned, and sewed them on to the top and bottom. My test square measured 20 ½” inches.

3: For my second square I sewed on border strips to the left and right sides, careful not to tug too hard, and then trimmed it up.

4: Here it is after all four border strips were added. As you can see it is a tad larger than 20 ½”.

RESULTS: The light gray border was the measured, pinned, sewn border. The dark border was sewn first, then just trimmed up. It’s not much of a difference on a 20 ½” square, but multiply that difference over a whole quilt and you now have a huge discrepancy! There’s just too much extra fabric. The second picture shows both blocks. See how the light grey is laying nice and flat? And the dark grey is wavy? While longarming that waviness can present a bit of an issue. I have a few tricks up my sleeve to ease in the extra fabric, but sometimes there’s just so much extra fabric that the only option is to make a small pleat in the top.

Yikes- a wavy border is not ideal- it means there’s too much fabric.

So next time you have a quilt with borders, try to measure the quilt first and cut your border to match, then pin and sew. The more accurate results will be worth it!