Most quilters know what quilt borders are. And most quilters also realize that not all quilts have borders. We also recognize quilt borders can vary in widths and can be designed as strips of fabric, pieced blocks, or applique.
Yup. We know what quilt borders are, but what are they supposed to do? We will look at all the answers to that question as well as work with some quilty math to make sure our borders look the way they’re supposed to.
Borders perform the following important functions:
- They help square up a quilt.
If you have followed the “Sherri’s Squaring Up Process”, your quilt should be squared up – which means it’s the same measurement on both vertical sides and the top and bottom are the same size. So if the pattern states the quilt should measure 75-inches wide and 102-inches long, this means the left and right side will measure 102-inches and the top and bottom will measure 75-inches exactly.
However, we all know technically this can be difficult to achieve. If you square up each step of the way – meaning you measure each block unit, each block, each sashing, and each row to make sure they’re the right size – before sewing them together, everything should come out correctly. By squaring up at each step, it’s easy to find where you may be off a bit and fix the issue then, not after the center is completed. If you do this now, when it’s time to sew on the borders, the center should be pretty much dead on the correct size.
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However, sometimes, no matter how careful you are, the center isn’t square. One side may be a half inch longer than the other one. This is when borders can really help square up the quilt center. The process isn’t difficult. You simply need your quilt center and a space large enough to lay your quilt out flat.
Step One – Measure the quilt across the left, right, and center vertically. Then average your three measurements together. So taking the quilt above as an example, let’s say the three vertical measurements were 102, 102 ½, and 102. Add these three figures together and then divide by three:
102 + 102 ½ + 102 = 306 1/2
306 1/2 divided by 3 = 102 1/6, which I would round to 102 and then add 1/2-inch for seam allowances.
We make the borders 102 1/2-inches long and sew those onto the left and right sides, easing in any fullness.
Now to deal with the horizonal borders. The center is supposed to measure 75 across, but since we’ve added left and right borders it will be bigger. Let’s say the borders are 5-inches wide each (finished). That allows us to add 10 total inches of additional width to the 75-inches of the original center. So now our center should measure 85-inches across. Again, get out that measuring tape. Take a measurement horizontally across the top, bottom, and middle of the quilt. Let’s say our measurements are 85, 84 ¼, and 84 ¾ inches. Let’s add them together and average.
85+ 85 + 84 ¾ = 254 ¾
254 ¾ divided by 3 = 84 11/12 which I would round to 85 and add a half-inch seam allowance.
Make the horizontal borders 85 1/2- inches long and sew them onto the top and bottom, easing in any fullness.
If you follow this process, your quilt should be square and ready to sandwich and quilt. However, let me also throw in a couple of warnings. First, if the three numbers your averaging are off by ¾-inch or more, something is really off somewhere. Take a long, hard look at the quilt and see if you can figure out exactly why it’s off so much and correct it. This is why it’s important to square up as you go. It’s a lot easier to determine why one block is off and it’s not as much to rip apart and correct. Second, if your quilt averages are off more than ¾-inch, it’s super easy to just cut off some strips of border fabric, sew them on, trim off the extra, and then repeat on the other two sides of the quilt.
As a long armer, I’m pleading with you not to. Unsquared quilts are really a pain to quilt and make them look pretty. There are tucks and pleats and it’s just a pain-in-the-you-know-where to quilt. And if the quilt is a wall hanging, it may look good with the initial hanging, but over time, the quilt will droop, making the longer side more obvious.
- They prevent tucks and puckers along the edges of the quilt during the quilting process.
Personally, I love a quilt without borders as much as I love a quilt with borders. Many of the 1930’s quilts I adore don’t have borders. However, if you have a pieced quilt – especially if it’s a heavily pieced quilt – it’s easy for the edges of the blocks to get tucked under the quilting foot (either on a stationary or moveable head) and form a pleat or pucker. The smooth surface of a border allows the foot and needle to travel over the edge of the quilt completely without getting hung up on a seam. If you really don’t want borders on your quilt, then baste some removable strips of fabric (this is a great way to use up ugly fabric) to allow your long armer a “safe” area to exit the quilt and then return to it. After everything is over, these temporary borders can be removed before you bind the quilt.
- Borders secure seams.
With some quilts this doesn’t matter as much as with others. If you made a quilt which is pieced, often the blocks which line the top, bottom, and sides of the quilt will begin to become “unsewn” as the top as handled. Seams will begin to pop. This can be a real issue when the quilting process is started, as it’s easy for the quilting foot to get tangled up in these open seams. This is especially true with heavily pieced quilts. There are a couple of ways to get around these unraveling seams. First, after the top is completed, stitch around the entire top, about 1/8-inch inside the outer edge to prevent the thread from raveling out of the seam. The second way to prevent this is to add a border. The border seam will encase the outer edges of the blocks and keep the seams stable.
- Borders frame the quilt.
Borders can act as a frame for your beautiful quilt center. It can pull out your focus fabric to pull the quilt together. It can echo your applique theme, or the pieced blocks used in the center. I’ve always said borders are the punctuation marks for your quilt sentence. Make those borders an exclamation point, not a period or a comma. Use the borders to enhance and frame the quilt center, not detract by overpowering it or by being completely underwhelming.
- Borders can increase the size of the quilt.
This sounds like such an obvious answer to the question, “What do borders do?”. Of course, they make a quilt bigger. However, this answer can save the day if you’re making a quilt which is size-specific. When I made the hubs his “Everyday is a Good Day to Fish” quilt, he had a couple of definite requests: He wanted it long enough that it would have a pillow tuck and wide enough that it would drop over the bottom edge of the mattress. Since I was working with panels, my options for height and width were somewhat limited, but adding borders saved the day. Eventually it became the perfect size. You may experience the wonder of this border characteristic yourself. If you have a limited number of blocks – such as some donated for a charity quilt – or you get elbow-deep into a pattern and decide after 10 or so blocks you really don’t want to make any more – adding borders can bring these blocks to a decent sized quilt for use.
If limiting your stash is a priority, borders can be used to eliminate leftover fabric. Because the options are always open to make several borders of different sizes, a great deal of stash can be used. In one fell swoop you’ve reduced your stash, added height and width to a quilt, and framed it beautifully. What’s not to love about that?
- Borders can create a desired look.
As well as echoing the quilt’s theme, borders can make your quilt look very traditional or very modern. Don’t believe it? Let’s take this quilt center:
This is a very traditional quilt, constructed in batiks. Let’s throw on a very traditional border, such as one with swags:
Now it takes on a very traditional look. Nothing wrong with that, but you can see how the traditional swag added to the old-fashioned look of the traditional blocks.
Let’s add a more modern border and see what happens.
Suddenly those very traditional quilt blocks look much more up to date than the ones with the swag border.
As well as framing the quilt or extending its theme, borders can also “age” the quilt. This is something to keep in mind as you design your quilt.
Historically, antique quilts are shown both ways – both with and without borders. And to complicate the border issue, some of those older quilts may have borders on either the top and bottom and not the sides, or on the sides and not the top and bottom. Some of them have borders on three sides. Our quilting foremothers were pretty fabric savvy. They often would add borders only to the sides of the bed which would be seen. So if only the sides of the bed were in view from the door of the bedroom, only the sides received borders. If the top of the quilt would be covered by pillows, it didn’t have a border. And if the quilt did have a top border, often it was covered by a piece of muslin. These pieces of muslin were called “Whisker Guards.” They protected the top surface of the quilt from the long beards some men had.
Today, borders are quilty items which may come with a pattern or not. If you’re designing your own quilt, they’re something you may choose to omit or add. Are there rules about how many borders you can add and how big they should be?
Nope. There are as many border choices as there are stars in the sky. Quilting has no hard, fast rules, but there are a few guidelines to consider. Here are a few of them.
- Consider the Golden Ratio – Two of my most popular blogs are https://sherriquiltsalot.com/2020/06/03/destination-the-borders/ and https://sherriquiltsalot.com/2018/07/26/sashing-and-the-golden-ratio/. Both of these go into more detail about the Golden Ratio than I will here. The Golden Ratio is considered to be the perfect proportion and occurs in nature pretty regularly. Mathematically, the Golden Ratio is 1.618. It works like this:
To begin, with please note when we’re working these equations, we use the finished size of the block, then add in the seam allowances prior to cutting the fabric.
Let’s say you have 8-inch blocks, and you want to add a couple of borders, but you have no idea where to start. Multiply 8 x 1.618 to get 12.944. Now divide 12.944 by 4 (because the block has four sides) to get 3.236, which we round down to 3-inches. The widest we could make the first border is 3-inches. Now let’s see what’s the narrowest width we could make the first border. To do this, divide 8 by 1.618, which equals 4.94438. Now divide 4.94438 by 4 to get 1.23609, which we round down to 1. The narrowest width we could make the first border is 1-inch.
However the best news about the first border is that it can measure anywhere between 1-inch and 3-inches wide and look perfectly wonderful. So pick any measurement between 1-inch and 3-inches and add ½-inch to it for seam allowances. For the sake of this blog, let’s pick 2-inches as the finished size of the first border. Now we want to add a second border. How wide and how narrow could we make it? This time we take the size of the finished first border (2-inches) and play with that.
Multiply 2-inches by 1.618, which gives us 3.236, which can round to 3. The second border can be 3-inches wide. Since typically borders progress in size, we won’t formulate how narrow the border could be, I just add ½-inch to the width for seam allowances and cut my border fabric out. But let’s say we want a third border. How do we work that? There are a couple of ways I go about it. If I’m constricted by size (such as the quilt may be a wall hanging) or simply want a smaller quilt, I take the finished width of the second border (3-inches) and multiply it by 1.618 to get 4.854, which we round up to 5-inches. However if I needed extra width on the last border, I can add the first two borders together (3 + 2 = 5) and multiply that sum by 1.618. In our quilt, this means the final border could be as wide as 8.09 or 8-inches.
- Consider the blocks’ proportions – This method isn’t quite as “mathy” as the Golden Ratio. It uses a fraction of the size used in the body of the quilt. Using ¼ to 1/3 or ½ to 2/3 of the block size can be used to determine the border(s) size(s). For instance, if you had 12-inch blocks, the borders can be 3-inches (12 divided by 4), 4-inches (12 divided by 3), 6-inches (12 divided by 2) or 9-inches (12 divided by 2/3). The size you select is your personal choice, and sometimes it depends on the border fabric. If you have fabric which has a large scale print you want to keep intact and emphasize, you’ll want to have a wider border. Just make sure the border doesn’t overwhelm the patchwork.
- Consider the size of the quilt – This is really the “looks good to me” method, although I prefer the term “common sense” reasoning. Smaller quilts need smaller borders. Otherwise they look completely overwhelmed. Larger quilts can handle larger borders. Guidelines (not rules) for this are:
- Wall Quilts: 3-inches or less
- Crib Quilts: 3-inches
- Twin Quilts: 4-inches
- Full Quilts: 5-inches
- Queen Quilts: 6-inches
- King Quilts: 6-to-7-inches
When posing the question, “What do borders do?” the answers are numerous and sometimes they do more than one thing. They can both frame and enlarge the quilt. They can carry on the theme of the center and make sure your quilt center is square. Like a lot of quilty parts, they perform more than one duty. I hope this blog gives you a real idea of what all they can do, as well as how to put them on correctly.
Until Next Week, From My Studio to Yours,
Love and Stitches,
Sherri and Felix
8 replies on “What Do Borders Exactly Do?”
Thanks for this post.
You’re welcome!
Wonderful information! You never disappoint with all the information you give us. I use a basting stitch about 1/8″ around my unfinished quilts, especially right now since I can only piece the tops and stack them on a shelf. They are squared up, just as you suggest we do, after some piecing and always after a block is finished. It’s the odd triangles and wedges that need special attention before moving onto the next piece to sew onto the block.
Oh yes….anything involving bias needs special attention!
I don’t do a lot with bias, let alone to have bias pieces on the outside edges of a quilt, but if I do, then I will do a basting stitch and add a border before putting it aside. I have visions of the bias stretching while I’m asleep, giggling as it does so! With the borders in place, I stop that possibility…nip it at the knees!
I thought about adding a temporary border after my long-arming neighbor seemed to have a bit of trouble with my last quilt, which was a scrappy quilt with lots of small pieces. My larger version of the same quilt was fine. I did square each block and the whole quilt was nice and square, but somehow the edge looks like it shifted on two adjoining blocks along the left edge.
Were those edges on the bias? That’s the only thing I can think of that may make them shift like that.
No bias. I think my neighbor was just rushing and didn’t take enough care when advancing the quilt for the next horizontal pass of the machine. Of course, since I do not know how to operate a longarm machine and have only watched a handful of videos, that is merely a guess.