How to make a scrappy strip border for your quilt

by Jean Boyd November 22, 2017

written by Jean Boyd November 22, 2017

Yesterday I showed you how to use 7 machine embroidered blocks created on THE Dream Machine 2 by Brother and add some strips to make larger blocks for the Working Girls Quilt.

For your quilt, you could use any of more than 900 built-in embroidery designs from THE Dream Machine 2 or use designs that you have scanned and/or saved in the machine.

Be sure to check out my QUILTsocial blog postings from September and October to see how to scan and use your own embroidered designs.

THE Dream Machine 2 by Brother showing the home screen

Quilt top ready to add the borders

Inner border

From the light colored inner border fabric, cut 5 – 1¼” x WOF (width of fabric).
Join 3 strips together, end to end, to make 1 long strip. Press seams open.
From this long strip cut 2 – 1¼” x 45½”
From remaining 1¼” strips, cut 2 – 1¼” x 41″. If your strips aren’t long enough, just add a piece left over from the 45½” strips.
Sew a 45½” strip to each side.
Sew a 41″ strip to the top and bottom.

Outer border

Cut the remaining fat quarter or scrap fabrics into 2″, 3″, and 4″ strips that are about 7½” long. The length doesn’t have to be exact, because the strips will be trimmed to 6″ after the borders have been sewn on.

Sew the strips together to make 2 border strips that are about 48″ long and 2 that are about 55″ long.

Border strips ready to sew together

Sewing on the borders

Sew on the top border first, using a partial seam.

Sew on top border using a partial seam.

Sew on right border. Trim off extra fabric from end of border strip.

Sew on bottom border and then the left border.

Finish sewing partial seam on top border. Trim off extra fabric from end of strip.

Borders sewn on and ready to be trimmed

Trim the border so it’s 6″ wide. I like to place one or more of the lines on my ruler on the seams to help keep the border straight while cutting.

Trim border so it’s 6″ wide.

And now you’re all ready to quilt your machine embroidered block quilt.

When quilting with THE Dream Machine 2, you’ll love that extra-wide area between the needle and the LCD screen. It’s 11¼” wide – a real bonus for any machine quilter!

The dual feed walking foot is pretty amazing too. It does an excellent job of keeping all 3 layers of your quilt together so they don’t shift as you’re quilting. And of course you can use the camera button to help you see exactly where you’re stitching. You can also use the “fabric thickness sensor” button, found on help screen #9, to make adjustments for your particular fabric combination.

Help screen #9 showing the fabric thickness sensor button

Be sure to come back tomorrow to learn about some other fun things you can do with the embroidery features on THE Dream Machine 2 by Brother.

This is part 3 of 5 in this series.

Go back to part 2: Making Log Cabin-style borders for machine embroidered quilt blocks

Go to part 4: Creating machine-embroidery wonders using the fill stitch feature

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Jean Boyd

Jean has been designing and publishing patterns since 1997. For the past several years she has been designing patterns for new fabric collections by Northcott Fabrics. Her work has been published in several magazines in both Canada and the United States. Jean holds a Fiber Arts Certificate in quilting and has taught extensively throughout Canada, including six national Quilt Canada conferences. She was named "Canadian Teacher of the Year" in 2003 by the Canadian Quilters Association and has won numerous awards for her quilts.

Making Log Cabin-style borders for machine embroidered quilt blocks

1 comment

Nicole A November 5, 2018 - 11:22 pm

I really like the look of your scrappy border 🙂

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