Bad Quilter!

I’m a lurker in a Facebook group for longarm quilters.  99% make their living quilting for hire.  Occasionally someone will post a quilt top a customer has given her to quilt. Invariably it has a combination of issues; one issue that continually gets discussed is a quilter’s inability to measure the borders correctly so they are flat.  

Well, I’m here to tell you today that bad quilter would have been me.  LOL!

I’ve picked up 3 hints along my 15 year longarm quilting journey:

1.   Spray starch & a hot iron will shrink some of the fullness out. 

2.   Taking a false seam will eliminate big wads of border.  

3.    Relax.  Who really cares anyway?   What’s a little wrinkle between friends?  

I had a feeling the border on my mom’s quilt wasn’t really flat.  I was right.  It’s flat now! 

Note to self:  how hard would it be to measure borders?  Really now! 

What look like flat borders to the naked eye really show their true identities when stretched out on the longarm bed.  All the supporting layers are very flat so if the top wrinkles or wobbles, it's obvious.

It's not obvious but I took a tuck about mid-border.  One reason I love print borders is they hide mistakes!  I'll hand stitch the tuck down so it's even less obvious.

And there you have it!  The tuck took away the initial fullness and the wavy quilting  smoothed down the remaining fullness.

I'll bind this baby and get it delivered to my parents soon.  Yippee Skippy!  

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