la Passacaglia - how I attached my borders

I always knew that I wanted to attach straight borders to my la passacaglia. My thinking was that it frames the design, and makes you feel that you are getting a sneak peek at a bigger overall pattern.   Fortunately I stumbled across the perfect border fabric back in September. My quilt was already 50% complete by then, but the fabric worked with it so well.

The border fabric is Effervescence by Amelia Caruso for Robert Kaufman.  I chose the Caribbean colour way, and I purchased it from The King's Fancy on etsy USA. They stock all the colour ways.

As I was assembling my rosettes I drew a cutoff line on my pattern.  I wanted my quilt to be slightly larger than the one in the pattern to show more complete rosettes.  Mine ended up at 54" x 64" before I added the borders.

I was careful not to sew beyond that line because I didn't waste time attaching stars which were then going to be cut off. As a result my quilt had fairly straight edges.  The sides are harder to align than the top and bottom, but I kept to my plan.

Checking the straight edge with a tape measure

You can see how my sides are reasonably straight

A number of people have asked me to document how I attached my borders, so here is a step by step guide.  Please bear in mind that this is just what worked for me.

1. I wanted a skinny blue strip before my fancy border, so I joined the blue strips together first, and then sewed them to the fancy border. That meant I only had to attach one big border to the quilt. I cut my first border, leaving quite a bit over overhang because I wanted to miter the corners.  There are a variety of methods for mitering corners, but my quilt was quite stretchy so I didn't want to cut the 45 degree angle until I had the borders on.  It would be terrible if the border was too short.

2. I left the very edge row of paper pieces in the quilt while I attached the borders. I pinned the border along the straight edge I had drawn on my pattern. I used a walking foot and sewed right through the paper pieces.  The seam line is 1/4" inside the line on the pattern, but that's fine.

the paper pieces are still in the edge row of pieces

3. I then checked the border, and once I was happy I trimmed back to a 1/4" seam allowance - right through the paper pieces and all.

trimming off the excess with an old rotary cutter

4. I then mitered the corner, which I'm not going to explain here sorry.  I suggest you google it until you find a method you are comfortable with.  I'm not great at explaining and don't want to put anyone wrong.

ready to miter the corners

5. I then removed the paper pieces very carefully.  The edge paper pieces had been sewn through, so they had to come out in two parts, and could not be used again. Tweezers helped to get the tiny bits out.

And here's the final result.

I thought about pattern matching the fabric at the corners, but I've since had it pointed out to me that I couldn't because the pattern is not symmetrical.  That makes me feel relieved, because I don't usually like to take the easy way out. Instead I've just tried to make the corner patterns relatively similar so they look good together.

You've probably noticed that I haven't really ironed my quilt. It would be impossible to iron all those seam allowances beautifully, and a number of people quote Jinny Beyer as once saying "just iron it flat, don't worry about the seam allowances on English paper pieced quilts".  I don't really know whether Jinny said that or not, but it works for me.  Some of those pieces have been wrapped around paper pieces for a year, so they hardly even need ironing, though I will give a quick press before I baste it for quilting.

The stats:
1. my quilt was 54" x 64" before I added the borders.  I made mine slightly larger than the pattern in the book.

2.  I purchased 10 yards of the border fabric to get enough of the fancy border to go around my quilt.  However, please do not rely on my measurements - you must do your own calculations.

3.  I expect it to be approx 72" x 82" once the borders are on.

I hope this helps.  It's hard to explain all this in writing - it would be much easier face to face. I'm off to tackle three more mitered corners now, and then the hand quilting in the months to come.

There's more information about how I made this quilt on the la passacaglia - Millefiori Quilts tab at the top of the page (including links to all my previous posts).