Project 2 - Woodland Winter - Borders

It's border time!  Keeping it simple, I made double butted borders for this top.  I wanted to ensure I understood the basic process before moving on to mitered borders.

You may remember this quilt top pre-borders, from an early post.  It's the first top in the book and the first one I actually followed the pattern on :)

I decided to add a 1 inch red border and a 3 inch black/red border to this top. 

As this is a small quilt, I was able to cut the borders from a single length of fabric, without needing to piece them together.  All the instructions to calculate how much fabric is needed per border are in the book and are not difficult to follow.

Following the instructions in the book, to make the 1 inch border, I cut my fabric strips an inch wider than I needed. 

Next, I needed to put marker pins on both the border and the quilt top, then match them up, easing in any differences in length, which I really didn't need to do, as they matched up beautifully.

The borders are sewn on, pressed and starched then trimmed back to the desired size.  This is a great idea, as it gives you the opportunity to ensure the borders are dead straight and the correct width all the way around.

I did a bit of an opps here - I trimmed the border back to exactly 1 inch, forgetting to leave a seam allowance!  No big deal though, I like the narrower result anyway.

Now for the second border, which follows the exact same procedure - cut (oversize), pin, sew, press, starch and trim back. 

Pin matching the 2nd border

Trimming the 2nd border

I got this done in an afternoon, and it was all pretty non-stressful.  I do have a slight problem now, in that my chosen backing fabric is now a few inches too short, so I may have to get a bit creative and piece a couple of fabrics together.

The finished borders

I'm going to have a shot at mitered corners on the next quilt top.  For now I need to decide to go straight to the next border, or to quilt and finish up this one first. ???