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Some Tips for Finishing up that Quilt!

Happy new year! Let’s start it out with some tips for finishing a quilt. From borders and labels to figuring yardage for binding, these tips will hopefully inspire you to tackle that stack of UFOs!

Tip#1

Do you have fabric left over after making your blocks and you want to make your quilt a little bigger? Consider using that leftover fabric to make a border! One of my favorites is a piano key border.

It’s simple but it’s colorful and adds a striking frame around your quilt. Other easy pieced borders are checkerboard style and just strips of all the colors used in the quilt.

Use your imagination and use up that fabric!

Tip #2

Labels are something that we should all add to the back of our quilts. Not only to write your name as the maker, but to record the special occasion that the quilt was made for, the receiver of the quilt and the date it was made. If you read some antique quilt books, you will see the phrase “maker unknown” in many of the captions. We don’t want that to happen to our quilts, do we?

On the subject of labels, I like to secure mine by placing two sides of the label on the edge of the quilt so when the binding is attached on the front, the label is also attached.

By doing this, you then only have to hand stitch two sides of the label to complete it. You can also do a folded piece of fabric for the label. This will create a little pocket in the back.

As you can see from the photos I folded a square of fabric into a triangle. The the two raw edge sides can be stitched down when the binding is attached to the front of the quilt. That makes the little “pocket” (where my finger is pointing in the last photo). 

Tip #3

Finally, I’ve talked about binding in past blog posts, but one thing I have not covered is how to accurately figure how much yardage you need to make your quilt binding. Here’s how I do it:

  1. Figure the perimeter of the quilt by adding up the length of all the sides. For example for a quilt that is 60 x 72″ here is the calculation:   60 + 60 + 72 + 72 = 264
  2. Add 2″ to that measurement to account for the length of the binding used on the corners (I figure in 1/2″ per corner): 264 + 2 = 266
  3. Then divide that measurement by the width of fabric to determine how many strips I need. I use 40″ for my usable width: 266/40 = 6.65.  I always round up, so I need 7 strips for this quilt’s binding.
  4. Multiply the strip amount by the size of the strips needed. If I am making double-fold binding, I use 2 1/4″ strips so: 7 x 2 1/4″ = 15 3/4″. I round up to the nearest common cut of fabric, so I will need 1/2 yard to make the binding for this quilt. If I was only doing single-fold binding, I use 1 1/2″ strips so: 7 x 1 1/2″ = 10 1/2, rounding up, I would use 1/3 yard of fabric here.

I hope these quick New Year’s tips are something that will motivate you to get those quilts done! It’s a new year and I will have lots of new stuff to share with you!

Happy Quilting!
Deanne

Don’t Forget the Label!

Once the binding is done on the quilt…. you’re done, right? Wrong! You need to label that quilt. You don’t want one of your creations to turn up years later “maker unknown, do you? Also, labels are a great way to personalize the quilt, especially if you are giving it away as a gift. Think of it as your signature!

So, there are different ways to label. The first way is to write on the back of the quilt with fabric safe, permanent pens. This works best of course is you have a quilt back that is not dark.

I like to put the name of the piece, year it was completed and my contact information. If you won’t be showing your quilt in a show, you may not need the contact information, of course.

The next type of label will work best for any quilt. A scrap piece of fabric stitched onto the back of the quilt. You can either stitch it on after the binding or you can tuck two sides of the label under the binding for even more security like I did in the photo below.

Here’s another photo showing how I tucked the label into the binding while stitching it down:

Next, you can make a personalized label by printing it directly onto fabric meant to go through your ink jet printer. Many of those they make today and sell in the quilt shops do not need any special preparation either. They can go straight from your printer to the back of the quilt! Here’s a few I’ve used: EQ Printables and Avery Printable Fabric.

Many of my personalized labels are on quilts that I have given away to friends and family, so I don’t have many examples to share. But, here are a few labels from the back of my daughter’s graduation quilt to give you an idea of what I did. I created a document in Word and then printed it onto the fabric. Here, I have listed things like her graduation date among other things.

I also put a piece of fabric on the greeting table for her friends to sign. This is a really fun way to personalize it!

So now that I’ve shown you some examples, you have no excuse!

I like the idea of using labels to tell a story, whether it’s for a member of your family or just for yourself. You can talk about what inspired you to make the quilt, what fabrics you used, the date it was made, etc. The possibilities are endless! I have even written a poem for the back of the quilt when I made one for one of my nieces.

How do you label your quilts? I’d like to hear what you do and what you like to put on your labels. Tell me in the comments below and win a free pattern! My new one: Follow the Stars.

The drawing will be on Monday, May 13th. **We have a winner! Congrats, Linda!**

Happy Quilting!
Deanne