Photo tutorial - Recralitant borders

Remember this quilt whose borders wouldn't fit? Well I considered all your suggestions then came up with one of my own! Here is the illustrated tutorial on how I got them to fit:

The problem

The quilt is made up of half square triangles. The border is constructed from larger triangles, the base of one of which should be equal to two of the squares. My problem was that the base of some of the large triangles were too big meaning that the border strip was overall too long.

The solution

1. Plug in a lap top by your sewing area and play a DVD of The Sopranos through it. This step is optional but I thought it would lend credibilty to my muttering to the fabric that if it didn't do what I said this time, I would wrap it around a corpse and get Tony and Pussy to bury it in a gravel pit in New Jersey somewhere.

2 With right sides together pin the upward facing triangle points to the corresponding seamlines of the squares. This resulted in the bases of the downwards facing triangles being 'puffy' and not lying flat.

3 I took the point of the downward facing triangles and aliged it with the seam line of the squares to which it should correspond. I pinned it.

4 then, I pinched the fabric so that there was a ridge in line with the seam line. Either side of the ridge the fabric then lay flat. I pinned along the bottom on this ridge.

5 Then I sewed in line with the pins creating a permanent ridge. Most of mine were in fact a quarter inch seam but one or two were less. Sew the actual width of the ridge.

6. The effect is that some of my pink triangles now have a seam down them as if they were pieced and the borders now fit.

7. The borders make all the difference to the quilt and I am so glad I persevered . And it was so quick - less time than the Ireland - v - Italy match which was on at the time. This is the top hung over my bookcases - I really do need a place where I can put larger tops to photograph well!

8 However, there was one slight problem. I had accidentally used a piece of the border fabic ( which does occur throughout the center) at the very edge near the borders which led to this effect. Ooops! So having finally got the borders on I had to unpick a little and swap the half square triangle and resew... and still the match was on.

Much better!I can't take it further yet because I don't have any suitable fabric for backing but I am sure that can be recitfied sometime!!