A Charming Baby Quilt (Part 2)

The border is done, the batting and backing basted, and I'm all ready to quilt the new baby quilt.  That was fast!

Designing the border

I decided to buy more of the solid colors that came with the charm packs, since the quilt is so busy, and to make a striped border with a 9-patch in each corner.  My new software, Quilt-Pro for Mac, was helpful.  Because my sewing still isn't all that accurate, the quilt top was a little undersized after I squared it up.  But I just plugged the measurements into the program and then made small adjustments in the border width until I had a border that allowed me to cut nice, handy 2" strips (less likely to accidentally cut on the wrong line).


Sewing the border

Since I talked about chain-stitching in the last post, I figured I'd take the opportunity to get some pictures of the process while  I pieced the border:

Note the slight space as I move from one strip to the next.

You can just barely see the chains of stitches connecting the strips.

The nine-patches are almost done.  Rather than making a 9-patch block for each corner, I sewed the squares to the shorter strips, then just sewed the strips together to make a single wide  strip for the horizontal borders.  Voila!

I pressed the seams in each individual strip in one direction, alternating between strips.  This allowed the seams to nest nicely when I sewed the strips together.

I added the side borders first.

The horizontal borders with the 9-patch cornerstones.

I put the brown as the inside border strip to frame the rest of the quilt.  Using Quilt-Pro, I tried it out in the middle and outer locations, but I liked the inside better.  And I swapped out the locations of some of the squares in the nine-patch so that the brown squares would step down evenly.

See how nicely the seams come together?  This is the best quilting trick I've learned.



The binding is all pieced, too.  Now for the quilting, which readers of this blog know is my Achilles heel.  Wish me luck!