How to make a scrappy strip border for your quilt

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.

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.

Sewing on the borders

Sew on the top border first, 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.

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.

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.

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.