We Can Build a Snowman-Borders

I love how this quilt is coming out.  So does my husband, which means he has requested I add more borders to make it large enough to go on our bed. 
​For my pattern however, this is where I stop. To make it fit our bed I will be adding an 8" grey border all around and then a 9" dark blue border to give me a finished size of 97" x  97" which will fit our queen size bed with the drape on the sides we like. (92x96 is the dimension I normally shoot for to get a 16" drop.)  At the end of this post I will share some options I came up with to enlarge the size of this quilt for a bed.

It is especially important when cutting long border strips to start with a fabric that has been squared up.  The photo below shows what happens when I fold my fabric in half and it is not squared-see those wrinkles along the bottom folded edge?  I do not want to see that or I will end up with a strip of fabric that is not straight.

The dark blue fabric is pretty wonky because I did not square up the fabric before cutting my strip.  The grey is nice and straight just like I want.  So how do we achieve that?

I hold the two top edges of the fabric I am working with between my thumb and index finger, separating the two sides between those fingers.  Now I can slide them independently until that bottom fold edge is nice and smooth.  My fabric is now squared up. (I cannot take the photo and hold the fabric so I have laid it out on my ironing board, lol) 

Leah Day has a video that demonstrates this pretty well.

Another tip that will help as you add those long borders:  I place pins about every five inches or so and sew with the border strip on top.  Whenever I add a border strip I find the middle of the strip  and the middle of my quilt then match them up and place my first pin.  Next I pin the ends as I have already cut the strips to the correct length.  From there I ease everything to fit and pin from the center working my way to the outer edges. 

 Cutting your border strips to length before adding them is a great way to keep your quilt square as you go.  I find the length I need by measuring down the middle of the quilt rather than along the edge and I cut my strips to that measurement.  I give you the lengths in my pattern, but if your blocks did not come out to the dimensions that I have given for each block  you will need to make some adjustments to those measurements.

    For my quilt I managed to find a grey snowflake material that goes nicely with what I already had and I had plenty of my dark blue to work with as it was going to be the backing and I will just find something else for the back.  You could also frame it with completely different fabrics as option 3 shows.  Option 4 replaces the last Dark Blue border in the original pattern with a wider blue border to continue the blue and white theme.

Opt. 1:Mulitple Borders

Option 2: Basic 2-Border

Opt. 3: New Color to Frame

Opt. 4: With Blue that replaces final blue border with wider one.

My pattern testers have shared their progress and what they are doing with their borders.
​  I think they are looking great!

Deanna's with the center borders

Michele's

Susie's

I am looking forward to seeing what all of your finished quilts look like.  I will be taking a break over the summer so will come back to quilt mine in September so that I can hopefully have it completed before winter arrives.  

You can find the directions for finishing HERE.  Scroll down the page to the directions for the Snowman quilt.

Happy Quilting!