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Easy-to-Make Dollhouse Quilts If you've read Rodale Press's Classic American Quilt Series, you've read other books by Janet. She was the freelance writer for eight out of ten books in that series, and continued writing and editing for other Rodale quilting books. She has also been a contributor to other topnotch quilting publications. |
Using Border Prints in Your Quilts
The inner border of the quilt below was created with a border print, a special type of fabric that usually has several stripe-like motifs printed side-by-side along the lengthwise grain. Stripes are usually coordinated, but are nearly always of different widths to offer plenty of options for your quilts.
The border print strip is mitered at each end, which means it is cut at an angle--like a picture frame. Before cutting the miters, I cut two straight border strips from the fabric and placed them right sides together, making sure the strips were aligned so that their printed motifs matched each other perfectly. The careful placement and angled cut gave me two border strips that were mirror images of each other. When sewn together along the angled edges the mirror images came together to form a kaleidoscope effect. Remaining strips were cut the same way. The entire wallhanging is shown below. I assembled the center medallion with four mirror image triangles cut from the same border print, sewing them together to make a kaleidoscope "blossom."
You can see that the print in my border strips ends at the same place in all four corners. That's fairly easy to do with a square quilt, but can be tricky with a rectangle, because the length of the top and bottom borders isn't the same as the length of side borders--so they end in different spots. I made my match-up even easier by inserting on-point star blocks between border segments all around the quilt to break up the length of the border print. You'll find border prints from many fabric designers, but Jinny Beyer is considered the Queen of border prints--and a master of color. The border print in this quilt is one of her designs. The instructions for this quilt are in my book "Quick Little Quilts." It's out of print, but usually available from Amazon resellers.
©Janet Wickell 2005 |
