Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Sassy Chevron Borders Tutorial

For my Lazy Sunday Mystery Quilt, I decided that I didn't want to make the borders as directed.

Too many stitch and flip triangles (also known as, too much waste!).

I decided that I wanted to use fast flying geese instead and came up with a really fun border idea. Maybe someone else already thought of this, but I'm super proud of myself for figuring this out and figured I should share.



Scared? Don't be! This whole border is entirely flying geese! The clever part of this whole thing is color placement.

I'm making my borders with goose units that are 2" x 4" finished (2.5" x 4.5" unfinished).

Square cutting:
This can be found all over the internet, but it bears repeating.
Cut one square for your "geese" that is 1 1/4 inches larger than the height (long side) of your finished goose rectangle. (4 inches finished + 1 1/4 inches = 5 1/4 inches square)
Cut 4 squares for your "background" that is 7/8 inch larger than the width (short side) of your finished goose rectangle (2 inches finished + 7/8 inch = 2 7/8 inches square

Draw diagonal lines down each of your "background" squares.


Line up two of your background squares along one of the diagonals of the goose square.


Sew 1/4" away on each side of the line and cut along the marked line. I use scissors so I don't have to walk over to my cutting space.


Iron background triangles away from your goose triangles.


Line up your remaining two marked background triangles, one on each of the cut halves, with the remaining 90 degree corner. Again, stitch 1/4" away from each side of the marked line.


Cut part along the marked line.


Iron background triangles away from the goose triangles. Trim off dog ears and gaze in awe at your amazing four finished flying geese.


For each chevron unit, you need oppositely colored flying geese. I called the light peach my "background" and my orange (or pink) fabric as my "chevrons".


To make each chevron unit, just sew together along your "chevron" fabric so that both geese point in the same direction and the colored background from one goose unit connects to the colored goose triangle of the other goose unit.


I had to use two different fabrics to have enough to have a border all the way around my quilt. For the most part they alternated pink, orange but I had to sneak in a few more pink units because I ran out of orange!


To attach it to my quilt. I just added goose units until it was equal to or ever so slightly longer than the side of the quilt that I was working on and eased if necessary.

Here's the quilt with all of the borders added:


This is one of my first forays into pieced borders and I think it turned out pretty nice! Obviously, accuracy is key in making sure that your borders fit your quilt correctly (and that one side isn't inches longer than the other!). This would be a really fun addition to a medallion type quilt as a skinnier border separating rings of blocks, I think.

Tuck this one away in your hats for a future project!

2 comments:

  1. Wow! That IS clever! I love how it creates "movement" around your (BEAUTIFUL) quilt! Great instructions too! Thanks for sharing!

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  2. I'm glad to have learned the fast flying geese technique from your bee block - I agree that it's easy and quick, and I don't blame you for choosing something that wastes less precious fabric! Can't wait to see how you quilt this!

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