Day 6 - of 100 days of quilts
Paint the Barn Red
This is one of our earliest projects. Way back in 1998 we came up with this simple two block quilt. It was a basic quilt top, but we thought we would be clever, and add a small pieced border around the very outer edge. We had never seen anyone do this before, and we thought that we had come up with a neat idea. Well, we learnt a really important lesson.
When you piece the center of a project, and your seam allowance is slightly thick or thin of a true 1/4", it will be OK. You add your normal borders, and then the quilt will stay flat. However, if you ever decide to add piecing to the outer edge - especially little piecing, you must be very exact in your seam allowance. There are 40 little 1" half squares in the final border. If you are off your seam allowance by even a 1/16", it will mean that this pieced border will end up being 2 1/2" longer than it should be. And when you try to add this to the quilt, you will have a wavy edge. It is also a lot harder to quilt and bind a project that has a pieced edge.
So, we learnt a few lessons with this piece, and we have never done a final border like this since.
-myra
p.s This quilt is also HAND quilted - I guess I had more time back then :) ~cori
3 comments:
Yikes! You are reminding me I haven't finished the project from Kenora (how many years ago) that had that pieced border around each block! Maybe this year...
...and still it ended up being a beautiful quilt. Have to say i'm just a little envious that you have 100 quilts to share with us - but oh so grateful!!! I look forward to 94 more days of beauty!
Wow, difficult and problematic as that pieced border was for you, it is very enchanting, adds to the quilt. What patience, though!
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