Bordering Your Quilt

This will be a short tutorial on placing the borders on your drop shadow stack quilt.  By now you have placed your sashing and your quilt top should look something like this:

Quilts tops can vary in size during construction based on your accuracy in cutting and the accuracy of your 1/4 inch seam.  For that reason there is a method designed to help you kind of "square" things up.  Here is a little video by Wenatqueens that will walk you through this process.  This is an excellent tutorial so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel!

Once I have determined my measurements for the length of my border I start auditioning possible borders.  I find it helps to take a photo of each so that you can kind of "stand back" and take a look at the different options.

One of the obvious choices is to border your quilt with the original fabric that you cut your stack blocks from.  This is a nice option. Shown here with a thin strip of black.  I did not select this because it took my eye away from the bold graphic nature of these blocks.  Same for the reverse below.

What would it look like if you put the thin strip of the original fabric first and then a black border and used some of the smaller  blocks in the border?  Also interesting.  Again, I did not select this option, although I was teetering (I love the little blocks in the corner) because it drew the eye to the border and away from the graphic nature of these blocks.

The third option I considered was a black border, some random extra blocks and a bit of the original fabric for the binding.  This also did not make my cut...too much draw away from the graphic nature of the blocks.

After considering all of the options above, I decided to go with a simple black border, when I quilt this I will also bind it with black binding.  Why?  It keeps the focus on the blocks and the optical illusion of the drop shadow.   I think you would agree that your eye stays there and does not drift to the border in this quilt.  If there was a lot of busy stuff happening in the border you would be looking at that and the overall effect would be diminished.

Having said that, here is another one that I finished shortly after and you can see that I used the original fabric for the border.  This quilt has a softer look, almost like an opal to me.  That softer look did not require the boldness of the border above.  

Let's talk a moment about the width of your border.  The two quilts above use the same technique in creating the blocks.  The blocks in the red quilt were made with a 6" square stack and the blocks in the opal quilt were made with a 4" square stack.  The quilts are about the same width (65" vs 63") but the length is longer on the opal quilt.  (65" vs 73").  Your border can be as wide or as narrow as you want, my rule of thumb that I personally use is to pick a border width that works with my blocks.  Either as wide as the block, or 1/2 or 1/4 of the width of my block.  I like the aesthetics of that balance.  There is no "right" or "wrong" width to your border.  You may need to cover the edge of a bed and don't want to make more blocks, you want them floating on the top of the bed, well then, make your borders long enough to complete your drop.  

Quilting is an expression of you!  Your choice of fabric, design, and ultimate execution is an expression of you.  You don't have to color in the lines, the quilt police will not come to your door.  Use your camera as an audition tool and don't be afraid to try something wild!  Be bold!  If you make one of these drop shadow quilts, I hope you will send me a photo, I would love to see your creations!  

Tutorial - Sashing Your Blocks and Assembling Your Quilt Top

In this tutorial, we will learn how to sash our blocks for this quilt.

I love me some Kona Cotton!!!  We will use 2 1/2 inch strips for our sashing...why?  because you can buy them precut in a jelly roll if you like and save time, or you can buy by the yard and cut your own.  It's a standard size and easy to work with.  If you want more space between your blocks...use a wider sashing strip.

For this quilt top, I have used 15 strips.

Take a strip and sew it using a 1/4 inch seam to one of the shadow sides of your block.  Now...you can cut strips to fit your block, or you can feed them one after another onto your strip as you sew and cut them apart after, which is what I like to do.  Don't butt them right up against each other, leave about 1/2 inch between blocks. You will be able to get three blocks to a strip.  

When you have stitched one side on all your blocks, press them open with the seam toward your shadow. Trim any excess fabric even with your blocks. Stack them all the same way, next to your machine and do the same for the remaining side of your shadowed block, as shown below.  Your block should look like it has 2 "L" shapes on one side of it.

Again, press toward the shadow.

Now, lay out your blocks in a way that is pleasing to you, stand back and take a look...you may want to switch some.  Make sure that your shadow is falling the same way for all of your blocks!

If you have a camera, take a picture of your layout.  Sometimes, things will pop out at you in a photo that you don't see with your natural eyes.  This is the time to change it up, before you start sewing.  If you are happy with the layout, proceed.

Now we will sew our blocks into rows as shown below.

Be careful as you are transferring your blocks to your machine to sew that you are not rotating them, keep all your shadows in the same direction.  Now we will stitch our rows together and our quilt top will almost be finished!  Oooooh!  You can see the illusion of the blocks floating above the background!  Isn't that fun?!

We need to stitch two lengths of background fabric to the two remaining sides.  To do this, you will need to piece two strips together for each side as they will not be long enough on their own.

Again, using a 1/4 inch seam allowance, stitch your strips to your sides and you are ready to start thinking about borders!

At this point, your quilt top will measure 56" x 56".  You can add borders to fill it out to the size you would like.  My suggestion is that you audition possible borders, think about the fact that the drop shadow design in this quilt is really the focus.

Next in this quilt tutorial will be the borders.

Creating a Drop Shadow - Tutorial

We will be continuing with the blocks we created the other day.  Directions for how to create a Stack and Whack Block can be found here: 

 http://www.sisterofthedivide.blogspot.com/2014/05/stacking-fun.html

Starting with the blocks, we will square them up to 11 inches.  To do that, I place my square up ruler on my block, lining up the 5 1/2" line with the center seam going both ways, trim around those two sides and turning your block around 180 degrees, do the same for the remaining two sides.  Do this for all of your blocks.

Now we will create the strip set for our drop shadow.  For this block I have selected a black shadow and white background fabrics. You can use a multitude of colors for the shadow, yours may be dark gray or light gray, navy blue...actually any color.  Your background fabric will need to match the fabric that you will be sashing your block with in order to create the illusion.

Cut:

2- Strips       11" x width of fabric   Shadow fabric

2- Strips         2" x width of fabric   Background fabric

You should have two strips like the ones in the photo above.  My strips are folded in half as you would cut them.  If you are uncomfortable working with a long strip set, you can cut the fabric strips in half on the fold and work with shorter strips.  

Next we will seam these together using a 1/4" seam as shown below.

You are now ready to start cutting your drop shadow strip set.  Lay your ruler along one edge, making sure that you have lined it up straight before you cut.  You will be cutting strips measuring 1 1/2" wide by the width of this strip set as shown below.  One of the ways you can make sure you are cutting this straight...Line up one of the lines of your ruler along the seam line between light and dark fabric.  

You will need to cut 2 strips for each block in your quilt.  My quilt will have 16 blocks.  I will need to cut 32 strips for this quilt.  

Carefully lining up the background fabric with the edge of your bock, stitch one strip to the side of your block, using a 1/4 inch seam allowance, as shown above.  ALWAYS start from your background fabric with your stitching, not from the shadow end. Press your block. Trim away any excess even with your block.

Take your second strip and sew it to the bottom of your block as shown above, again STARTING from the background fabric and stitching toward the shadow fabric.  Press your block and trim off any excess at the end.

The next in this tutorial series will be sashing the blocks.  You have finished creating the shadow illusion.  You can set them out as I have on my background fabric to audition your blocks for your final layout.  

That was fun!  Look at the great effect we are getting with that drop shadow!  If you don't want to make the Stack blocks, you can substitute a feature fabric.  Let your mind go, there are lots of possibilities with this technique!