Canada Day Quilt...ready to quilt

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The first thing I discovered when making the outside border was that I didn't have enough half square triangles.  I guess I miscounted, so back to sewing and cutting and trimming I went!

Then the sewing in pairs

Then long strips, and then double strips.  No matter how careful, sometimes I end up with a section that is just a little longer than it's counterpart on the other strip. Always sew with the longer part on the bottom so the feed dogs will help. I like to sew so that I can see where my point is, as in the photo below, but that section was one of the ones which was too long. I flipped it over, sewed a 1/8th inch seam, and then flipped it over again to sew the quarter inch seam where I could carefully sew just above my point.  


Then I measured the borders, they were all within a quarter inch of each other (I had 8 because of the 2 quilts), but the lengths of the 8 sides of the quilts were all different!  They were between 0.75 and 2 inches shorter than my borders. They were supposed to be shorter because I hadn't added the inner border, but as I feared, the border suggested in the pattern wouldn't work well.

Bonnie's suggested inner border was 1.5" wide. A quarter inch is lost in the seam, and also a quarter inch of the original quilt side. Down to 1 inch. 2 borders added, equals 2 inches. But only 1 of my sides was 2 inches shorter. One was only 0.75 shorter,  and most were between 1 and 1.25 shorter. I decided to go with a 1.25" inner border. That gave me 1.5" additional length, which by carefully choosing my  pieced borders, which varied by up to a quarter of an inch,  and by easing in with the longest side near the feed dogs, fit perfectly! Well...more perfectly than it would have with the wider border!

I made one more change. Since I was going to long arm quilt these  and then trim after they came off the long arm, I wanted a narrow outside border that I would trim, rather than having to trim the border with the pieced half square triangles and then lose the points. So, I added a 1.25" outside border in cream.

The last post will show the quilting and binding!

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