How to Attach Quilt Borders

Depending on the quilt design, adding a border is a common last step when completing a quilt top. Toby Lischko shows you how to properly attach quilt borders, including giving tips on squaring quilts and cutting border strips so everything fits together nicely.

Adding Quilt Borders

Before you can add a border to a quilt, it is important to know whether or not your quilt top is square. While accurate piecing and diligent pressing during the construction of the quilt top will help ensure a square quilt, Toby explains why it is always important to confirm that it is square and make any necessary trims or adjustments as needed- no matter what size of quilt top you are making. She shares and demonstrates her preferred technique for squaring a quilt, and while demonstrating on a small sample that fits on the table top, she explains how the same method can be used on a larger quilt.

Once the quilt is square, Toby explains how to attach the borders. She shares which borders she likes to sew on first and why and then demonstrates the method she uses to prepare her borders. If following a quilt pattern, it will generally tell you what size to cut the side as well as top and bottom borders. While these measurements will generally work when assembling a quilt, it is always important to measure your quilt top and make adjustments to the border length if needed, before attaching it to the quilt. This will help ensure that the borders lay flat once they are sewn in place and there is no waviness to the border.

Toby shows how she likes to align and pin the borders onto the quilt top before stitching in place. Ensuring a square quilt top and following these guidelines for creating great quilt borders should help all of your future quilts and border turn out as desired.